‘Quasi che ‘l nome i buon giudici inganni,
E che quel meglio t’ abbia a far poeta,
Che non farà lo studio di molt’ anni!’
So jests Ariosto, to whom fortune had certainly given a harmonious name, in the Seventh Satire, vs. 64.
[583] Or after those of Bojardo, which are in part the same as his.
[584] The soldiers of the French army in 1512 were ‘omnibus diris ad inferos devocati!’ The honest canon, Tizio, who, in all seriousness, pronounced a curse from Macrobius against foreign troops, will be spoken of further on.
[585] De infelicitate principum, in Poggii Opera, fol. 152: ‘Cujus (Dantis) exstat poema praeclarum, neque, si literis Latinis constaret, ullâ ex parte poetis superioribus (the ancients) postponendum.’ According to Boccaccio, Vita di Dante, p. 74, ‘Many wise men’ even then discussed the question why Dante had not written in Latin. Cortesius (De hominibus doctis, p. 7) complains: ‘Utinam tam bene cogitationes suas Latinus litteris mandare potuisset, quam bene patrium sermonem illustravit!’ He makes the same complaint in speaking of Petrarch and Boccaccio.
[586] His work De vulgari eloquio was for long almost unknown, and, valuable as it is to us, could never have exercised the influence of the Divina Commedia.
[587] To know how far this fanaticism went, we have only to refer to Lil. Greg. Gyraldus, De poetis nostri temporis, passim. Vespasiano Bisticci is one of the few Latin writers of that time who openly confessed that they knew little of Latin (Commentario della vita di G. Manetti, p. 2), but he knew enough to introduce Latin sentences here and there in his writings, and to read Latin letters (ibid. 96, 165). In reference to this exclusive regard for Latin, the following passage may be quoted from Petr. Alcyonius, De exilio, ed. Menken, p. 213. He says that if Cicero could rise up and behold Rome, ‘Omnium maxime illum credo perturbarent ineptiae quorumdam qui, amisso studio veteris linguae quae eadem hujus urbis et universae Italiae propria erat, dies noctesque incumbunt in linguam Geticam aut Dacicam discendam eandemque omni ratione ampliendam, cum Goti, Visigothi et Vandali (qui erant olim Getae et Daci) eam in Italos invexerant, ut artes et linguam et nomen Romanum delerent.’
[588] There were regular stylistic exercises, as in the Orationes of the elder Beroaldus, where there are two tales of Boccaccio, and even a ‘Canzone’ of Petrarch translated into Latin.
[589] Comp. Petrarch’s letter from the earth to illustrious shades below. Opera, p. 704 sqq. See also p. 372 in the work De rep. optime administranda: ‘Sic esse doleo, sed sic est.’