Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/100

 terms that the custom of their times permitted: wherein I think Petrarch succeeded more happily than the others in amourous subjects.

"Afterwards from time to time, not only in Tuscany but in all Italy, among noble men and those well versed in courts and arms and letters, there arose some desire to speak and write more elegantly than had been done in that rude and uncultivated age, when the blaze of the calamities inflicted by the barbarians was not yet quenched. Many words were laid aside, as well in the city of Florence itself and in all Tuscany as in the rest of Italy, and instead of them others were taken up; and herein there thus occurred that change which takes place in all human affairs and has always happened in the case of the other languages also. For if those earliest writings in ancient Latin had survived until now, we should see that Evander and Turnus83 and the other Latins of that age spoke differently from the last Roman kings and the first consuls. See how the verses that the Salian priests chaunted were hardly understood by posterity;84 but being established in that form by the first founders, out of religious reverence they were not changed. Likewise the orators and poets continued one after another to lay aside many words used by their predecessors: thus Antonius, Crassus, Hortensius and Cicero avoided many of Cato's words, and Virgil avoided many of Ennius's;85 and the others did the same. For although they had reverence for antiquity, yet they did not esteem it so highly as to consent to be bound by it in the way you would have us bound by it now. Nay they criticised it where they saw fit, as did Horace, who says that his forefathers lauded Plautus foolishly, and thinks he has a right to gather in new words."86 And in sundry places Cicero reprehends many of his predecessors, and slightingly affirms that Sergius Galba's orations had an antique flavour,87 and says that Ennius himself disprized his predecessors in certain things: so that if we would imitate the ancients, in doing so we shall not imitate them. And Virgil, who (you say) imitated Homer, did not imitate him in language.

33.— "Therefore I for my part should always avoid using these antique words, save however in certain places, and seldom