The fact is, I still grieve over the fate of these great men; but I do not lament their faults any the less because of that. Furthermore, I beg you to note that I say nothing against Seneca's private life, nor against Cicero's attitude toward the state. Do not confuse the two cases. It is Cicero alone whom we are discussing now; and I am not forgetting that he as consul was vigilant and patriotic, and cured the disease from which the republic was suffering; nor that as a private citizen he always loved his country faithfully. But what of his fickleness in friendship; and his bitter quarrels upon slight provocation,—quarrels that brought ruin upon himself and good to no one; and his inability to understand his own position and the condition of the republic, so unlike his usual acumen; and, finally, the spectacle of a philosopher, in his old age, childishly fond of useless wrangling? These things I cannot praise. And remember that they are things concerning which no unbiassed judgment can be formed, by you or anyone else, without a careful reading of the entire correspondence of Cicero, which suggested this controversy.[3]
May 13th, en route.
[1] Fam., xxiv., 2.
[2] This artificial repetition of the adversative conjunction is a trick of style that Petrarch is very fond of.
[3] This last sentence, with its schoolmasterly tone, is an interesting revelation of Petrarch's feeling of superiority, in point of scholarship, to all of his associates. It was a feeling that the facts fully justified.
Of the two letters addressed directly to Cicero himself, and referred to in the preceding epistle, one has already been given. The other is, in part, as follows:
To Marcus Tullius Cicero.[1]
If my earlier letter gave you offence,—for, as you often have remarked, the saying of your contemporary in the Andria is a faithful one, that compliance begets friends, truth only hatred,—you shall listen now to words that will soothe your wounded feelings and prove that the truth need not always be hateful. For, if censure that is true angers us, true praise, on the other hand, gives us delight.