“True. If you see him at Bologna, tell him I am expecting to hear from him about Russia. He can address my letters to my banker, Bianchi, at Milan, and they will be sent on to me.”
“I will not fail to do so if I see him.”
“I have heard that the Italians do not care for his style.”
“No; all that he writes is full of French idioms. His style is wretched.”
“But do not these French turns increase the beauty of your language?”
“They make it insufferable, as French would be mixed with Italian or German even though it were written by M. de Voltaire.”
“You are right; every language should preserve its purity. Livy has been criticised on this account; his Latin is said to be tainted with patavinity.”
“When I began to learn Latin, the Abbé Lazzarini told me he preferred Livy to Sallust.”
“The Abbé Lazzarini, author of the tragedy, ‘Ulisse il giovine’? You must have been very young; I wish I had known him. But I knew the Abbé Conti well; the same that was Newton’s friend, and whose four tragedies contain the whole of Roman history.”
“I also knew and admired him. I was young, but I congratulated myself on being admitted into the society of these great men. It seems as if it were yesterday, though it is many years ago; and now in your presence my inferiority does not humiliate me. I wish to be the younger son of all humanity.”