To
maintain a faultless style under all circumstances was a rule of good
breeding, and a result of habit.
The letters of Cicero, Pliny, and others, were at this time diligently
studied as models. As early as the fifteenth century a great mass of
manuals and models for Latin correspondence had appeared (as off-shoots
of the great grammatical and lexicographic works), a mass which is
astounding to us even now when we look at them in the libraries. But
just as the existence of these helps tempted many to undertake a task
to which they had no vocation, so were the really capable men
stimulated to a more faultless excellence, till at length the letters
of Politian, and at the beginning of the sixteenth century those of
Pietro Bembo, appeared, and took their place as unrivalled
masterpieces, not only of Latin style in general, but also of the more
special art of letter-writing.
Together with these there appeared in the sixteenth century the
classical style of Italian correspondence, at the head of which stands
Bembo again. Its form is wholly modern, and deliberately kept free from
Latin influence, and yet its spirit is thoroughly penetrated and
possessed by the ideas of antiquity.
But at a time and among a people where 'listening' was among the chief
pleasures of life, and where every imagination was filled with the
memory of the Roman senate and its great speakers, the orator occupied
a far more brilliant place than the letter-writer.
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