Page:Petrach, the first modern scholar and man of letters.djvu/312

 Italy from the writers of old something new. Now, however, imitation actually is his greatest joy, as is usual at his time of life. Sometimes his delight in another's genius seems to lend to his spirit wings, and he defies all the restraints of his art and soars aloft, so high that he cannot continue his flight as he should, and has to descend in a fashion that betrays him. The strongest of all these admirations is for Virgil. It is marvellously strong. He thinks very many of our poets worthy of praise, but Virgil worthy almost of worship. He loves him so, is so fascinated by him, that he often takes pains to weave bits from his poems into his own verse. I, rejoicing to find that he is overtaking me and longing to see him press on and become what I have always aspired to be, warn him, in a fatherly and friendly fashion, to consider carefully what he is about. An imitator must see to it that what he writes is similar, but not the very same; and the similarity, moreover, should be not like that of a painting or statue to the person represented, but rather like that of a son to a father, where there is often great difference in the features and members, and yet after all there is a shadowy something,—akin to what our painters call one's air,—hovering about the face, and especially the eyes, out of which there grows a likeness that immediately, upon our beholding the child, calls the father up before us. If it were a matter of measurement every detail would be found to be different, and yet there certainly is some subtle presence there that has this effect.

In much the same way we writers, too, must see to