Modern names and things no longer harmonized with the style,
unless they were first artificially changed. Pedants found a pleasure
in addressing municipal counsellors as 'Patres Conscripti,' nuns as
'Virgines Vestales,' and entitling every saint 'Divus' or 'Deus'; but
men of better taste, such as Paolo Giovio, only did so when and because
they could not help it. But as Giovio does it naturally, and lays no
special stress upon it, we are not offended if, in his melodious
language, the cardinals appear as 'Senatores,' their dean as 'Princeps
Senatus,' excommunication as 'Dirae,' and the carnival as 'Lupercalia.'
The example of this author alone is enough to warn us against drawing a
hasty inference from these peculiarities of style as to the writer's
whole mode of thinking.
The history of Latin composition cannot here be traced in detail. For
fully two centuries the humanists acted as if Latin were, and must
remain, the only language worthy to be written. Poggio deplores that
Dante wrote his great poem in Italian; and Dante, as is well known,
actually made the attempt in Latin, and wrote the beginning of the
'Inferno' first in hexameters. The whole future of Italian poetry hung
on his not continuing in the same style, but even Petrarch relied more
on his Latin poetry than on the Sonnets and 'Canzoni,' and Ariosto
himself was desired by some to write his poem in Latin.
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