The dialogue on the second day opens with a critical examination by Augustine of the main sources of Francesco's pride and self-complacency. This is, at bottom, as we shall see, a confession of Petrarch's own misgivings that his literary ambitions are vain and hopeless. Augustine declares that Francesco is distracted by the phantoms and idle anxieties of ambition, which are especially likely to drag down the more noble spirits to their ruin; and that it is high time to endeavour to save him from such a fate. It is easy to prove how trivial are the advantages that have aroused his pride.
You trust to your intellectual powers and your reading of many books; you glory in the beauty of your language and take delight in the comeliness of your mortal frame. But do you not perceive in how many respects your powers have disappointed you, in how many ways your skill does not equal that of the obscurest of mankind, not to speak of weak and lowly animals whose works no effort on your part could possibly imitate? Exult then if you can in your abilities! And your reading, what does it profit you? From the mass that you have read how much sticks in your mind, how much takes root and brings forth fruit in its season? Examine your mind carefully and you will find that all you know, if compared with your ignorance, would bear to it the same relation as that borne to the ocean by a tiny brook, shrunk by the summer heats.
Man may know much of heaven and earth, of the courses of the stars, the virtues of herbs and stones and the secrets of nature, and still be ignorant of himself. He may be familiar with all the deeds of illustrious men in the past, but not heed his own conduct.
What shall I say of your eloquence [Augustine continues], except what you yourself confess? Has not your reliance on it often proved vain? Your hearers may perhaps have applauded what you said, but what advantage is that, if you yourself condemn your words? Although the applause of the auditors seems the natural fruit of eloquence, not to be despised, yet if the inward applause of the orator himself be wanting, how little gratification can the cheers of the crowd afford!
Then follows a very interesting digression upon the poverty of language. Words are often wanting worthily to express the commonest of our daily experiences. How many things about us have no names at all! How many that have names can never be adequately described by human speech! "How often have I heard you bitterly complain and seen you silent and dejected, because thoughts that were perfectly clear and easily understood in the mind, could not be fully expressed by tongue or pen." This leads to a discussion of the asserted superiority of Greek over Latin in respect to the richness of its vocabulary, and of the opinions of Cicero and Seneca. Augustine concludes with his own conviction that both languages are poor.
Petrarch was far too gifted a scholar not to recognise the limitations of language. In the little guide-book which he once prepared for a friend who was planning to visit the Holy Land, he speaks again of his inability to describe the beauties of nature. He felt the same discouragements that the conscientious student feels to-day, although his field of knowledge seems to us hopefully limited and well-defined.
Francesco refutes Augustine's accusations with some warmth:
You say that I rely upon my abilities, although I certainly discover no indication of genius in myself, unless it be the fact that I place no faith in possessing it. My reading of books, moreover, is not a source of pride, since it has brought me little knowledge and new causes of anxiety. I strive, you say, to gain fame by my style, and yet, as you yourself mentioned, nothing so vexes me as that my words are inadequate to reproduce my conceptions. You know, unless you are merely aiming to try me, that I have always been conscious of my insignificance; and if I have sometimes thought otherwise, it was due to a consideration of the ignorance of others. It has happened to me, as I am accustomed often to repeat, that according to the well-known saying of Cicero, we shine rather by the obscurity of others than by our own brightness.
Augustine sees in this the most noxious kind of pride, and says that he would prefer that Francesco should frankly overrate himself rather than that he should assume a haughty humility through despising everyone else.