Page:Petrach, the first modern scholar and man of letters.djvu/307

 let my love for you excuse such boldness. My regard for your reputation compels me to speak, for if I keep silent you will be sure to hear these things from others, or, still worse, will be injured by severe judgments uttered behind your back.…

Let me say, then, that I detect in your writings a constant effort to make a display. This, I take it, accounts for your tendency to roam through strange volumes, culling out fine passages to weave into your own discourses. Your pupils, amazed at such an array of names, applaud you and call you omniscient, just as if you really knew every author the titles of whose books your memory happens to retain. Scholars, however, find it easy to discriminate between a man's acquisitions and his borrowings; easy, too, to determine what portion of the latter he has a right to, what he holds by precarious tenure, and what he has simply stolen; when he has drunk deep, from a full fountain, and when he has taken only a hasty sip.

It is a childish thing to glory in a mere display of memory. As Seneca has said, it is unseemly for a grown man to go gathering nosegays; he should care for fruit rather than flowers. But you, in spite of your years and the venerableness that they have brought with them; in spite of the fact that you are of great eminence in your profession; indeed,—for this task of taking you down is a thankless one, and I am glad now and then to try smoothing you down instead, —are the very first man of your time in the