Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/98

 to: still it would be more to our purpose if you were to teach us in what manner the Courtier ought to speak, for I think he has greater need of it and more often has occasion to employ speaking than writing."

The Magnifico replied:

"Nay, for a Courtier so excellent and so perfect there is no doubt but it is necessary to know both the one and the other, and that without these two accomplishments perhaps all the rest would not be very worthy of praise. So if the Count wishes to perform his duty, he will teach the Courtier not only how to speak, but also how to write well."

Then the Count said:

"My lord Magnifico, that task I will on no account accept; for great folly would be mine to pretend to teach others that which I do not myself know, and (even if I did know it) to think myself able to do in only a few words that which with so much care and pains has hardly been done by most learned men,— to whose works I should refer our Courtier, if I were indeed bound to teach him how to write and speak."

Messer Cesare said:

"My lord Magnifico means speaking and writing the vernacular [Italian], and not Latin; so those works by learned men are not to our purpose. But in this matter there is need for you to tell us what you know about it, because for the rest we will hold you excused."

The Count replied:

"I have told you that already; but as we are speaking of the Tuscan tongue, perhaps it would be, more than any other man's, my lord Magnifico's ofiice to give an opinion on it."

The Magnifico said:

"I cannot and in reason ought not to contradict any man who says that the Tuscan tongue is more beautiful than the others.81 It is very true that in Petrarch and in Boccaccio are found many words that are now discarded by the custom of to-day; and these I for my part would never use either in speaking or in writing; and I believe that they themselves, if they had survived until now, would no longer use those words."

Then messer Federico said: