Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/95

 men devote care and assiduity to acquiring a very odious fault. And truly it would be no light task for me, if I were to try in these discussions of ours to use those antique Tuscan words that are quite rejected by the usage of the Tuscans of to-day; and besides I think everyone would laugh at me."

29.— Then messer Federico said:

"Of course in discussing among ourselves as we now are doing, perhaps it would be amiss to use those antique Tuscan words, since (as you say) they would be fatiguing to him who uttered them and to him who listened to them, and by many would not be understood without difficulty. But if one were writing, I should certainly think he would be wrong not to use them, because they add much grace and authority to writing, and from them there results a style more grave and full of majesty than from modern words."

"I do not know," replied the Count, "that writings can gain grace and authority from those words that ought to be avoided, not merely in such talk as we are now engaged in (which you yourself admit), but also under every other circumstance that can be imagined. For if any man of good judgment should chance to make a speech on serious matters before the very senate of Florence, which is the capital of Tuscany, or even to converse privately with a person of weight in that city about important business, or with his closest friend about affairs of pleasure, with ladies or gentlemen about love, or joking or jesting at feasts, games, and where you will,— or whatever the time, place or matter,— I am sure he would avoid using those antique Tuscan words; and if he did use them, besides exciting ridicule, he would give no little annoyance to everyone who listened to him.

"It seems to me then a very strange thing to use as good in writing those words that are avoided as faulty in every sort of speaking, and to insist that what is never proper in speaking, is the most proper style that can be used in writing. For in my opinion writing is really nothing but a form of speech, which still remains after we have spoken, as it were an image or rather the life of our words: and thus in speech, which is lost as soon as the sound has gone forth, some things are bearable perhaps