The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — Complete
The time of Herod will come again, for the little innocent children
will be taken from their nurses, and will die of terrible wounds
inflicted by cruel men.
V.
DRAUGHTS AND SCHEMES FOR THE HUMOROUS WRITINGS.
Schemes for fables, etc. (1314-1323).
1314.
A FABLE.
The crab standing under the rock to catch the fish which crept under
it, it came to pass that the rock fell with a ruinous downfall of
stones, and by their fall the crab was crushed.
THE SAME.
The spider, being among the grapes, caught the flies which were
feeding on those grapes. Then came the vintage, and the spider was
cut down with the grapes.
The vine that has grown old on an old tree falls with the ruin of
that tree, and through that bad companionship must perish with it.
The torrent carried so much earth and stones into its bed, that it
was then constrained to change its course.
The net that was wont to take the fish was seized and carried away
by the rush of fish.
The ball of snow when, as it rolls, it descends from the snowy
mountains, increases in size as it falls.
The willow, which by its long shoots hopes as it grows, to outstrip
every other plant, from having associated itself with the vine which
is pruned every year was always crippled.
1315.
Fable of the tongue bitten by the teeth.
The cedar puffed up with pride of its beauty, separated itself from
the trees around it and in so doing it turned away towards the wind,
which not being broken in its fury, flung it uprooted on the earth.
The traveller's joy, not content in its hedge, began to fling its
branches out over the high road, and cling to the opposite hedge,
and for this it was broken away by the passers by.
1316.
The goldfinch gives victuals to its caged young. Death rather than
loss of liberty. [Footnote: Above this text is another note, also
referring to liberty; see No. 694.]
1317.
*(Of Bags.)*
Goats will convey the wine to the city.
L.1 39b]
1318.
All those things which in winter are hidden under the snow, will be
uncovered and laid bare in summer. *(for Falsehood, which cannot
remain hidden)*.
1319.
A FABLE.
The lily set itself down by the shores of the Ticino, and the
current carried away bank and the lily with it.
1320.
A JEST.
Why Hungarian ducats have a double cross on them.
1321.
A SIMILE.
A vase of unbaked clay, when broken, may be remoulded, but not a
baked one.
1322.
Seeing the paper all stained with the deep blackness of ink, it he
deeply regrets it; and this proves to the paper that the words,
composed upon it were the cause of its being preserved.
1323.
The pen must necessarily have the penknife for a companion, and it
is a useful companionship, for one is not good for much without the
other.
Schemes for prophecies (1324-1329).
1324.
The knife, which is an artificial weapon, deprives man of his nails,
his natural weapons.
The mirror conducts itself haughtily holding mirrored in itself the
Queen. When she departs the mirror remains there ...
1325.
Flax is dedicated to death, and to the corruption of mortals. To
death, by being used for snares and nets for birds, animals and
fish; to corruption, by the flaxen sheets in which the dead are
wrapped when they are buried, and who become corrupt in these
winding sheets.-- And again, this flax does not separate its fibre
till it has begun to steep and putrefy, and this is the flower with
which garlands and decorations for funerals should be made.
1326.
*(Of Peasants who work in shirts)
Shadows will come from the East which will blacken with great colour
darkness the sky that covers Italy.
*(Of the Barbers.)*
All men will take refuge in Africa.
1327.
The cloth which is held in the hand in the current of a running
stream, in the waters of which the cloth leaves all its foulness and
dirt, is meant to signify this &c.
By the thorn with inoculated good fruit is signified those natures
which of themselves were not disposed towards virtue, but by the aid
of their preceptors they have the repudation of it.
1328.
A COMMON THING.
A wretched person will be flattered, and these flatterers are always
the deceivers, robbers and murderers of the wretched person.
The image of the sun where it falls appears as a thing which covers
the person who attempts to cover it.
*( Money and Gold. )*
Out of cavernous pits a thing shall come forth which will make all
the nations of the world toil and sweat with the greatest torments,
anxiety and labour, that they may gain its aid.
*( Of the Dread of Poverty. )*
The malicious and terrible [monster] will cause so much terror of
itself in men that they will rush together, with a rapid motion,
like madmen, thinking they are escaping her boundless force.
*( Of Advice. )*
The man who may be most necessary to him who needs him, will be
repaid with ingratitude, that is greatly contemned.
1329.
*( Of Bees. )*
They live together in communities, they are destroyed that we may
take the honey from them. Many and very great nations will be
destroyed in their own dwellings.
1330.
WHY DOGS TAKE PLEASURE IN SMELLING AT EACH OTHER.
This animal has a horror of the poor, because they eat poor food,
and it loves the rich, because they have good living and especially
meat. And the excrement of animals always retains some virtue of its
origin as is shown by the faeces ...
Now dogs have so keen a smell, that they can discern by their nose
the virtue remaining in these faeces, and if they find them in the
streets, smell them and if they smell in them the virtue of meat or
of other things, they take them, and if not, they leave them: And to
return to the question, I say that if by means of this smell they
know that dog to be well fed, they respect him, because they judge
that he has a powerful and rich master; and if they discover no such
smell with the virtue of meat, they judge that dog to be of small
account and to have a poor and humble master, and therefore they
bite that dog as they would his master.
1331.
The circular plans of carrying earth are very useful, inasmuch as
men never stop in their work; and it is done in many ways. By one of
these ways men carry the earth on their shoulders, by another in
chests and others on wheelbarrows. The man who carries it on his
shoulders first fills the tub on the ground, and he loses time in
hoisting it on to his shoulders. He with the chests loses no time.
[Footnote: The subject of this text has apparently no connection
with the other texts of this section.]
Irony (1332).
1332.
If Petrarch was so fond of bay, it was because it is of a good taste
in sausages and with tunny; I cannot put any value on their foolery.
[Footnote: Conte Porro has published these lines in the _Archivio
Stor. Lombarda_ VIII, IV; he reads the concluding line thus: _I no
posso di loro gia (sic) co' far tesauro._--This is known to be by a
contemporary poet, as Senatore Morelli informs me.]
Tricks (1333-1335).
1333.
We are two brothers, each of us has a brother. Here the way of
saying it makes it appear that the two brothers have become four.
1334.
TRICKS OF DIVIDING.
Take in each hand an equal number; put 4 from the right hand into
the left; cast away the remainder; cast away an equal number from
the left hand; add 5, and now you will find 13 in this [left] hand;
that is-I made you put 4 from the right hand into the left, and cast
away the remainder; now your right hand has 4 more; then I make you
throw away as many from the right as you threw away from the left;
so, throwing from each hand a quantity of which the remainder may be
equal, you now have 4 and 4, which make 8, and that the trick may
not be detec- ted I made you put 5 more, which made 13.
TRICKS OF DIVIDING.
Take any number less than 12 that you please; then take of mine
enough to make up the number 12, and that which remains to me is the
number which you at first had; because when I said, take any number
less than 12 as you please, I took 12 into my hand, and of that 12
you took such a number as made up your number of 12; and what you
added to your number, you took from mine; that is, if you had 8 to
go as far as to 12, you took of my 12, 4; hence this 4 transferred
from me to you reduced my 12 to a remainder of 8, and your 8 became
12; so that my 8 is equal to your 8, before it was made 12.
[Footnote: G. Govi _says in the_ 'Saggio' p. 22: _Si dilett*
Leonarda, di giuochi di prestigi e molti (?) ne descrisse, che si
leggono poi riportati dal Paciolo nel suo libro:_ de Viribus
Quantitatis, _e che, se non tutti, sono certo in gran parte
invenzioni del Vinci._]
1335.
If you want to teach someone a subject you do not know yourself, let
him measure the length of an object unknown to you, and he will
learn the measure you did not know before;--Master Giovanni da Lodi.
_XXI._
_Letters. Personal Records. Dated Notes._
_When we consider how superficial and imperfect are the accounts of
Leonardo's life written some time after his death by Vasari and
others, any notes or letters which can throw more light on his
personal circumstances cannot fail to be in the highest degree
interesting. The texts here given as Nos._ 1351--1353, _set his
residence in Rome in quite a new aspect; nay, the picture which
irresistibly dwells in our minds after reading these details of his
life in the Vatican, forms a striking contrast to the contemporary
life of Raphael at Rome._
_I have placed foremost of these documents the very remarkable
letters to the Defterdar of Syria. In these Leonardo speaks of
himself as having staid among the mountains of Armenia, and as the
biographies of the master tell nothing of any such distant journeys,
it would seem most obvious to treat this passage as fiction, and so
spare ourselves the onus of proof and discussion. But on close
examination no one can doubt that these documents, with the
accompanying sketches, are the work of Leonardo's own hand. Not
merely is the character of the handwriting his, but the spelling and
the language are his also. In one respect only does the writing
betray any marked deviation from the rest of the notes, especially
those treating on scientific questions; namely, in these
observations he seems to have taken particular pains to give the
most distinct and best form of expression to all he had to say; we
find erasures and emendations in almost every line. He proceeded, as
we shall see, in the same way in the sketches for letters to
Giuliano de' Medici, and what can be more natural, I may ask, than
to find the draft of a letter thus altered and improved when it is
to contain an account of a definite subject, and when personal
interests are in the scale? The finished copies as sent off are not
known to exist; if we had these instead of the rough drafts, we
might unhesitatingly have declared that some unknown Italian
engineer must have been, at that time, engaged in Armenia in the
service of the Egyptian Sultan, and that Leonardo had copied his
documents. Under this hypothesis however we should have to state
that this unknown writer must have been so far one in mind with
Leonardo as to use the same style of language and even the same
lines of thought. This explanation might--as I say--have been
possible, if only we had the finished letters. But why should these
rough drafts of letters be regarded as anything else than what they
actually and obviously are? If Leonardo had been a man of our own
time, we might perhaps have attempted to account for the facts by
saying that Leonardo, without having been in the East himself, might
have undertaken to write a Romance of which the scene was laid in
Armenia, and at the desire of his publisher had made sketches of
landscape to illustrate the text.