He affected
utterly to despise the Papal court because he knew it so well; the true
reason was that Rome neither could nor would pay him any longer.
Venice, which sheltered him, he was wise enough to leave unassailed.
The rest of his relations with the great is mere beggary and vulgar
extortion.
Aretino affords the first great instance of the abuse of publicity to
such ends. The polemical writings which a hundred years earlier Poggio
and his opponents interchanged, are just as infamous in their tone and
purpose, but they were not composed for the press, but for a sort of
private circulation. Aretino made all his profit out of a complete
publicity, and in a certain sense may be considered the father of
modern journalism. His letters and miscellaneous articles were printed
periodically, after they had already been circulated among a tolerably
extensive public.
Compared with the sharp pens of the eighteenth century, Aretino had the
advantage that he was not burdened with principles, neither with
liberalism nor philanthropy nor any other virtue, nor even with
science; his whole baggage consisted of the well-known motto, 'Veritas
odium parit.' He never, conse- quently, found himself in the false
position of Voltaire, who was forced to disown his 'Pucelle' and
conceal all his life the authorship of other works.
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