“To give reasons in support of your opinion, you cite the doings of women, who for the most part are quite unreasonable. And if you cared to tell the whole truth, this favourite of so many women must have been a dunce and at bottom a man of little worth. For their way is always to favour the meanest, and like sheep to do what they see others doing, whether it be good or evil. Moreover they are so jealous among themselves, that even if the man had been a monster, they would have tried to steal him from one another.”
Here many began to speak, and nearly everyone wanted to contradict my lord Gaspar; but my lady Duchess imposed silence on all, and then said, laughing:
“If the evil you say of women were not so far from the truth, that the saying of it casts blame and shame on him who says it rather than on them, I should allow you to be answered. But I am not willing that, by being confronted with the arguments which it is possible to cite, you should be cured of this evil habit, in order that you may suffer very grievous punishment for your fault: which shall be the bad opinion wherein you will be held by all who hear you argue in such fashion.”
GIACOPO SANNAZARO
1458-1530
Head enlarged from a photograph, specially made by Alinari, of a part of the fresco, “Leo X’s Entry into Florence,” in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574). See Milanesi’s edition of Vasari’s Opere, viii, 142.
Then messer Federico replied:
“My lord Gaspar, do not say that women are so very unreasonable, even if they are sometimes moved to love by others’ judgment rather than by their own; for gentlemen and many wise men do the same. And if I may say the truth, you yourself and all the rest of us here do often and even now trust more to the opinion of others than to our own. And in proof of this, it is not long ago that certain verses, handed about this court under the name of Sannazaro,[[175]] seemed very excellent to everyone and were praised with wonder and applause; then, it being known for certain that they were by another hand, they promptly sank in reputation and were thought less than mediocre. And a certain motet,[[176]] which was sung before my lady Duchess, found no favour and was not thought good until it was known to be the work of Josquin de Près.[[177]]
“What clearer proof of the weight of opinion would you have? Do you not remember that in drinking a certain wine, you at one time pronounced it perfect, and at another most insipid? And this because you believed there were two kinds of wine, one from the Genoese Riviera, and the other from this country; and even when the mistake was discovered, you would not at all believe it,—so firmly fixed in your mind was that wrong opinion, although you had received it from the report of others.
36.—“Hence the Courtier ought to take great care to make a good impression at the start, and to consider how mischievous and fatal a thing it is to do otherwise. And they of all men run this danger, who pride themselves on being very amusing and on having acquired by these pleasantries of theirs a certain freedom that makes it proper and permissible for them to do and say whatever occurs to them, without taking thought about it. Thus they often begin a thing they know not how to finish, and then try to help matters by raising a laugh; and yet they do this so clumsily that it does not succeed, insomuch that they rouse the utmost disgust in him who sees or hears them, and fail most lamentably.