35.—“Now if among the lettered men of good talent and judgment who to-day are found in our midst, there were a few who would take care to write in this language (as I have described) things worthy of being read, we should soon see it studied and abounding in beautiful terms and figures, and capable of being written in as well as is any other whatsoever; and if it were not pure old Tuscan, it would be Italian,—universal, copious and varied, and in a way like a delightful garden full of various flowers and fruits. Nor would this be a novel thing; for from the four dialects that the Greek writers had in use,[[90]] they culled words, forms and figures from each as they saw fit, and thence they brought forth another dialect which was called ‘common,’ and later they called all five by the single name Greek. And although the Attic dialect was more elegant, pure and copious than the others, good writers who were not Athenians by birth did not so affect it as to be unrecognizable by their style and by the perfume (as it were) and essence of their native speech. Nor yet were they disprized for this; on the contrary those who tried to seem too Athenian, were censured for it. Among the Latin writers too, many non-Romans were highly esteemed in their day, although there was not found in them that typical purity of the Roman tongue which men of other race can rarely acquire. Thus Titus Livius was not at all discarded, although someone professed to have detected a Paduan flavour in him;[[91]] nor was Virgil, albeit reproached with not speaking Roman. Moreover, as you know, many writers of barbarian race were read and esteemed at Rome.
“We, on the contrary, much more strict than the ancients, needlessly impose certain new laws upon ourselves, and with the beaten highways before our eyes, we seek to go along the by-paths; for in our own language,—of which, as of all others, the office is to express thought well and clearly,—we delight ourselves with obscurity; and calling it the vulgar tongue, we try in speaking it to use words that are understood neither by the vulgar nor yet by the gentle and lettered, and are no longer used in any place; unmindful that all the good writers of old disapproved words discarded by custom. Which to my thinking, you do not rightly understand; since you say that if some fault of speech is widely prevalent among the ignorant, it ought not for that reason to be called custom or accepted as a rule of speech, and from what I have heard you sometimes say, you would have us use Campidoglio in place of Capitolio; Girolamo for Hieronymo; aldace for audace; and padrone for patrone, and other words corrupt and spoiled like these; because they are found written thus by some ignorant old Tuscan, and because the Tuscan country folk speak thus to-day.[[92]]
“Hence I believe that good custom in speech springs from men who have talent and who have gained good judgment from study and experience, and who therefore agree and consent to accept the words that to them seem good, which are recognized by a certain innate judgment and not by any art or rule. Do you not know that figures of speech, which give so much grace and splendour to an oration, are all infringements of grammatical rules, yet accepted and confirmed by usage, because, although unable to offer other reason, they give pleasure and seem to carry suavity and sweetness to our very sense of hearing? And this I believe to be good custom,—of which the Romans, the Neapolitans, the Lombards and the rest, may be as capable as the Tuscans are.
36.—“It is very true that in every language certain things are always good, such as ease, good order, richness, beautiful sentences, harmonious periods; and on the contrary affectation and other things opposed to these, are bad. But among words there are some that remain good for a time, then grow antiquated and wholly lose their grace; others gain strength and come to be esteemed. For as the seasons of the year despoil the earth of flowers and fruits and then clothe it anew with others, so time causes those primal words to decay, and use makes others to be born again and gives them grace and dignity, until they in their turn meet their death, consumed by the envious gnawing of time; for in the end both we and all our concerns are mortal. Consider that we no longer have any knowledge of the Oscan tongue.[[93]] The Provençal, although it may be said to have been but lately celebrated by noble writers, is not now understood by the inhabitants of that country. Hence I think, as my lord Magnifico has well said, that if Petrarch and Boccaccio were alive at this time, they would not use many words that we find in their writings: therefore it does not seem to me well for us to copy these words. I applaud very highly those who know how to imitate that which ought to be imitated, but I do not at all believe that it is impossible to write well without imitating,—and particularly in this language of ours, wherein we may be aided by usage: which I should not dare say of Latin.”
37.—The messer Federico said:
“Why would you have usage more esteemed in the vernacular than in Latin?”
“Nay,” replied the Count, “I esteem usage as mistress of both the one and the other. But since those men to whom the Latin tongue was as natural as the vernacular now is to us, are no longer on earth, we must needs learn from their writings that which they learned from usage. Nor does ancient speech mean anything more than ancient usage of speech, and it would be a silly business to like ancient speech for no other reason than a wish to speak as men used to speak rather than as they now speak.”
“Then,” replied messer Federico, “the ancients did not imitate?”
“I believe,” said the Count, “that many of them did, but not in everything. And if Virgil had imitated Hesiod in everything, he would not have surpassed his master; nor Cicero, Crassus; nor Ennius, his predecessors. You know Homer is so ancient that many believe he is the first heroic poet in time as he is also in excellence of diction: and whom would you think he imitated?”
“Some other poet,” replied messer Federico, “more ancient than he, of whom we have no knowledge because of excessive antiquity.”