Page:The Earliest Lives of Dante (Smith 1901).djvu/98

 understood them; nor is it surprising, seeing that they are ignorant of the Greek tongue.

I say, then, that this name poeta is a Greek word, meaning maker. I know that I should not be understood if I stopped here, so there is need to explain my statement more at length. Consider books, and works of poetry. Some men are readers of the work of others, and originate nothing themselves; this is the case with most people. Others are the makers of these works: as Virgil, for example, made the Æneid, Statius the Thebaid, Ovid the Metamorphoses, and Homer the Iliad and the Odyssey. These men who made the works were poets, that is makers, of these works which we others read. We, then, are the readers, and they were the makers. When we hear a man praised for his learning or for his letters, do we not ask, 'Is he producing anything? Will he leave behind any work of his own making?'

A poet, then, is the maker of any work. Some one may say that, according to this statement, the merchant who makes up a book of accounts is a poet, and that Livy and Sallust were poets, for each of them wrote books, and made works for perusal. To this I reply that one does not speak of making poetic works, unless they be in verse. Now verse results from excellence of style, for syllables, measure, and sound pertain to poetry alone. We are in the habit of saying in our vernacular, 'This person makes songs and sonnets;' but if he wrote a letter to a friend, we should not say that he had made a work. The name of poet connotes an excellent and admirable style in verse, veiled and adorned with gracefulness and with high imagination. But even as every presiding officer commands and governs, yet only he is emperor who is the head of all, so among those who compose works in verse, only he who is supremely excellent therein is called a poet.

This is the real and absolute truth as to the name and office of poet. Whether the composition be in the vulgar or the literary style is of no importance, nor is there any difference save as between writing in Greek and writing in Latin.