Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/197

 Then messer Federico replied: "My lord Caspar, do not say that women are so very unreasonable, even if they are sometimes moved to love by others' judgment rather than by their own; for gentlemen and many wise n^fen do the same. And if I may say the truth, you yourself and all the rest of us here do often and even now trust more to the opinion of others than to our own. And in proof of this, it is not long ago that certain verses, handed about this court under the name of Sannazaro,175 seemed very excellent to everyone and were praised with wonder and applause; then, it being known for certain that they were by another hand, they promptly sank in reputation and were thought less than mediocre. And a certain motet176, which was sung before my lady Duchess, found no favour and was not thought good until it was known to be the work of Josquin de Près.177

"What clearer proof of the weight of opinion would you have? Do you not remember that in drinking a certain wine, you at one time pronounced it perfect, and at another most insipid? And this because you believed there were two kinds of wine, one from the Genoese Riviera, and the other from this country; and even when the mistake was discovered, you would not at all believe it, — so firmly fixed in your mind was that wrong opinion, although you had received it from the report of others.

36.— "Hence the Courtier ought to take great care to make a good impression at the start, and to consider how mischievous and fatal a thing it is to do otherwise. And they of all men run this danger, who pride themselves on being very amusing and on having acquired by these pleasantries of theirs a certain freedom that makes it proper and permissible for them to do and say whatever occurs to them, without taking thought about it. Thus they often begin a thing they know not how to finish, and then try to help matters by raising a laugh; and yet they do this so clumsily that it does not succeed, insomuch that they rouse the utmost disgust in him who sees or hears them, and fail most lamentably. "Sometimes, thinking it to be droll and witty, they say the foulest and most indecent things before and even to honourable ladies; and the more they make these ladies blush, the more