Tuscany itself was rich in writers and the first order, who
ignored and ridiculed these endeavors. Ridicule in abundance awaited
the foreign scholar who explained to the Tuscans how little they
understood their language. The life and influence of a writer like
Machiavelli was enough to sweep away all these cobwebs. His vigorous
thoughts, his clear and simple mode of expression wore a form which had
any merit but that of the 'Trecentisti.' And on the other hand there
were too many North Italians, Romans, and Neapolitans, who were
thankful if the demand for purity of style in literature and
conversation was not pressed too far. They repudiated, indeed, the
forms and idioms of their dialect; and Bandello, with what a foreigner
might suspect to be false modesty, is never tired of declaring: 'I have
no style; I do not write like a Florentine, but like a barbarian; I am
not ambitious of giving new graces to my language; I am a Lombard, and
from the Ligurian border into the bargain.' But the claims of the
purists were most successfully met by the express renunciation of the
higher qualities of style, and the adoption of a vigorous, popular
language in their stead. Few could hope to rival Pietro Bembo who,
though born in Venice, nevertheless wrote the purest Tuscan, which to
him was a foreign language, or the Neapolitan Sannazaro, who did the
same.
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