Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
more will be known hereafter than we know of the Ptolemies and the
Pharaohs; while popes and princes are lying as unregarded as the fleas
that are shaken out of the window. Upon my life, Francesco! to think
of this is enough to make a man presumptuous.
_Petrarca._ No, Giovanni! not when the man thinks justly of it, as
such a man ought to do, and must. For so mighty a power over Time, who
casts all other mortals under his, comes down to us from a greater;
and it is only if we abuse the victory that it were better we had
encountered a defeat. Unremitting care must be taken that nothing soil
the monuments we are raising: sure enough we are that nothing can
subvert, and nothing but our negligence, or worse than negligence,
efface them. Under the glorious lamp entrusted to your vigilance, one
among the lights of the world, which the ministering angels of our God
have suspended for His service, let there stand, with unclosing eyes,
Integrity, Compassion, Self-denial.
_Boccaccio._ These are holier and cheerfuller images than Dante has
been setting up before us. I hope every thesis in dispute among his
theologians will be settled ere I set foot among them. I like Tuscany
well enough: it answers all my purposes for the present: and I am
without the benefit of those preliminary studies which might render me
a worthy auditor of incomprehensible wisdom.
_Petrarca._ I do not wonder you are attached to Tuscany. Many as have
been your visits and adventures in other parts, you have rendered it
pleasanter and more interesting than any: and indeed we can scarcely
walk in any quarter from the gates of Florence without the
recollection of some witty or affecting story related by you. Every
street, every farm, is peopled by your genius: and this population
cannot change with seasons or with ages, with factions or with
incursions. Ghibellines and Guelphs will have been contested for only
by the worms, long before the _Decameron_ has ceased to be recited on
our banks of blue lilies and under our arching vines. Another plague
may come amidst us; and something of a solace in so terrible a
visitation would be found in your pages, by those to whom letters are
a refuge and relief.
_Boccaccio._ I do indeed think my little bevy from Santa Maria Novella
would be better company on such an occasion, than a devil with three
heads, who diverts the pain his claws inflicted, by sticking his fangs
in another place.
_Petrarca._ This is atrocious, not terrific nor grand. Alighieri is
grand by his lights, not by his shadows; by his human affections, not
by his infernal. As the minutest sands are the labours of some
profound sea, or the spoils of some vast mountain, in like manner his
horrid wastes and wearying minutenesses are the chafings of a
turbulent spirit, grasping the loftiest things and penetrating the
deepest, and moving and moaning on the earth in loneliness and
sadness.
_Boccaccio._ Among men he is what among waters is
The strange, mysterious, solitary Nile.
_Petrarca._ Is that his verse? I do not remember it.
_Boccaccio._ No, it is mine for the present: how long it may continue
mine I cannot tell. I never run after those who steal my apples: it
would only tire me: and they are hardly worth recovering when they are
bruised and bitten, as they are usually. I would not stand upon my
verses: it is a perilous boy's trick, which we ought to leave off when
we put on square shoes. Let our prose show what we are, and our poetry
what we have been.
_Petrarca._ You would never have given this advice to Alighieri.
_Boccaccio._ I would never plough porphyry; there is ground fitter for
grain. Alighieri is the parent of his system, like the sun, about whom
all the worlds are but particles thrown forth from him. We may write
little things well, and accumulate one upon another; but never will
any be justly called a great poet unless he has treated a great
subject worthily. He may be the poet of the lover and of the idler, he
may be the poet of green fields or gay society; but whoever is this
can be no more. A throne is not built of birds'-nests, nor do a
thousand reeds make a trumpet.
_Petrarca._ I wish Alighieri had blown his on nobler occasions.
_Boccaccio._ We may rightly wish it: but, in regretting what he
wanted, let us acknowledge what he had: and never forget (which we
omitted to mention) that he borrowed less from his predecessors than
any of the Roman poets from theirs. Reasonably may it be expected that
almost all who follow will be greatly more indebted to antiquity, to
whose stores we, every year, are making some addition.
_Petrarca._ It can be held no flaw in the title-deeds of genius, if
the same thoughts reappear as have been exhibited long ago. The
indisputable sign of defect should be looked for in the proportion
they bear to the unquestionably original. There are ideas which
necessarily must occur to minds of the like magnitude and materials,
aspect and temperature. When two ages are in the same phasis, they
will excite the same humours, and produce the same coincidences and
combinations. In addition to which, a great poet may really borrow: he
may even condescend to an obligation at the hand of an equal or
inferior: but he forfeits his title if he borrows more than the amount
of his own possessions. The nightingale himself takes somewhat of his
song from birds less glorified: and the lark, having beaten with her
wing the very gates of heaven, cools her breast among the grass. The
lowlier of intellect may lay out a table in their field, at which
table the highest one shall sometimes be disposed to partake: want
does not compel him. Imitation, as we call it, is often weakness, but
it likewise is often sympathy.
_Boccaccio._ Our poet was seldom accessible in this quarter. Invective
picks up the first stone on the wayside, and wants leisure to consult
a forerunner.
_Petrarca._ Dante (original enough everywhere) is coarse and clumsy in
this career. Vengeance has nothing to do with comedy, nor properly
with satire. The satirist who told us that Indignation made his verses
for him, might have been told in return that she excluded him thereby
from the first class, and thrust him among the rhetoricians and
declaimers. Lucretius, in his vituperation, is graver and more
dignified than Alighieri. Painful; to see how tolerant is the atheist,
how intolerant the Catholic: how anxiously the one removes from among
the sufferings of Mortality, her last and heaviest, the fear of a
vindictive Fury pursuing her shadow across rivers of fire and tears;
how laboriously the other brings down Anguish and Despair, even when
Death has done his work. How grateful the one is to that beneficent
philosopher who made him at peace with himself, and tolerant and
kindly toward his fellow-creatures! how importunate the other that God
should forgo His divine mercy, and hurl everlasting torments both upon
the dead and the living!
_Boccaccio._ I have always heard that Ser Dante was a very good man
and sound Catholic: but Christ forgive me if my heart is oftener on
the side of Lucretius![17] Observe, I say, my heart; nothing more. I
devoutly hold to the sacraments and the mysteries: yet somehow I would
rather see men tranquillized than frightened out of their senses, and
rather fast asleep than burning. Sometimes I have been ready to
believe, as far as our holy faith will allow me, that it were better
our Lord were nowhere, than torturing in His inscrutable wisdom, to
all eternity, so many myriads of us poor devils, the creatures of His
hands. Do not cross thyself so thickly, Francesco! nor hang down thy
nether lip so loosely, languidly, and helplessly; for I would be a
good Catholic, alive or dead. But, upon my conscience, it goes hard
with me to think it of Him, when I hear that woodlark yonder, gushing
with joyousness, or when I see the beautiful clouds, resting so softly
one upon another, dissolving ... and not damned for it. Above all, I
am slow to apprehend it, when I remember His great goodness vouchsafed
to me, and reflect on my sinful life heretofore, chiefly in summer
time, and in cities, or their vicinity. But I was tempted beyond my
strength; and I fell as any man might do. However, this last illness,
by God's grace, has well-nigh brought me to my right mind again in all
such matters: and if I get stout in the present month, and can hold
out the next without sliding, I do verily think I am safe, or nearly
so, until the season of beccaficoes.
_Petrarca._ Be not too confident!
_Boccaccio._ Well, I will not be.
_Petrarca._ But be firm.
_Boccaccio._ Assuntina! what! are you come in again?
_Assunta._ Did you or my master call me, Riverenza?
_Petrarca._ No, child!
_Boccaccio._ Oh! get you gone! Get you gone! you little rogue you!
Francesco, I feel quite well. Your kindness to my playful creatures in
the _Decameron_ has revived me, and has put me into good humour with
the greater part of them. Are you quite certain the Madonna will not
expect me to keep my promise? You said you were: I need not ask you
again. I will accept the whole of your assurances, and half your
praises.
_Petrarca._ To represent so vast a variety of personages so
characteristically as you have done, to give the wise all their
wisdom, the witty all their wit, and (what is harder to do
advantageously) the simple all their simplicity, requires a genius
such as you alone possess. Those who doubt it are the least dangerous
of your rivals.
FOOTNOTE:
[17] Qy. How much of Lucretius (or Petronius or Catullus, before
cited) was then known?
FIFTH DAY'S INTERVIEW
It being now the last morning that Petrarca could remain with his
friend, he resolved to pass early into his bedchamber. Boccaccio had
risen and was standing at the open window, with his arms against it.
Renovated health sparkled in the eyes of the one; surprise and delight
and thankfulness to Heaven filled the other's with sudden tears. He
clasped Giovanni, kissed his flaccid and sallow cheek, and falling on
his knees, adored the Giver of life, the source of health to body and
soul. Giovanni was not unmoved: he bent one knee as he leaned on the
shoulder of Francesco, looking down into his face, repeating his
words, and adding:
'Blessed be Thou, O Lord! who sendest me health again! and blessings
on Thy messenger who brought it.'
He had slept soundly; for ere he closed his eyes he had unburdened his
mind of its freight, not only by employing the prayers appointed by
Holy Church, but likewise by ejaculating; as sundry of the fathers did
of old. He acknowledged his contrition for many transgressions, and
chiefly for uncharitable thoughts of Fra Biagio: on which occasion he
turned fairly round on his couch, and leaning his brow against the
wall, and his body being in a becomingly curved position, and proper
for the purpose, he thus ejaculated:
'Thou knowest, O most Holy Virgin! that never have I spoken to
handmaiden at this villetta, or within my mansion at Certaldo,
wantonly or indiscreetly, but have always been, inasmuch as may be,
the guardian of innocence; deeming it better, when irregular thoughts
assailed me, to ventilate them abroad than to poison the house with
them. And if, sinner as I am, I have thought uncharitably of others,
and more especially of Fra Biagio, pardon me, out of thy exceeding
great mercies! And let it not be imputed to me, if I have kept, and
may keep hereafter, an eye over him, in wariness and watchfulness; not
otherwise. For thou knowest, O Madonna! that many who have a perfect
and unwavering faith in thee, yet do cover up their cheese from the
nibblings of vermin.'
Whereupon, he turned round again, threw himself on his back at full
length, and feeling the sheets cool, smooth, and refreshing, folded