Page:The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart.pdf/136

132 was the purpose of this. I was told in answer that it was done that the brains of the listeners might be coloured in this fashion or that. I again said: "Is it for portraying truth or lies that they use these colours?" The interpreter answers: "It is as it happens." "Then there is here as much falsehood and vanity as truth and profit," say I; and I go from there.

4. Then we arrive elsewhere, and behold, here was a troop of agile young men who were weighing syllables on balances, and measuring them by the span, rejoicing meanwhile, and skipping round them. And I marvelled what this was, and the interpreter said to me: "Of all the arts that spring from letters, none is more skilful or gayer than this." "And what, then, is it?" quoth I. He answered: "That which cannot be said in simple speech can be expressed in these their compositions." But seeing that those who were learning this art of composing words looked into certain books, I look also, and see names such as "De Culice," "De Passere," "De Lesbia," "De Priapo," "De Arte Armandi," "Metamorphoses," "Encomia," "Satyræ," and generally farces, poems, love passages, and amatory trifling of every sort. Then was I again disgusted with the whole matter; particularly when I saw that whoever flattered these measurers of syllables, him they endeavoured in every fashion to further. But if one was not agreeable to them,