Cristoforo Landino, Preface to Vergil in a Florentine Gymnasium (Part 1)

Since I am about to bring into the middle, in this annual event of ours, that poet who, of all the regions whose inhabitants are known to history or of all the times which have come down to our own recollection thanks to the good offices of writers, is either the first poet or at any rate entirely equal to the first, I have judged it neither alien to my duty nor unpleasing to your ears if, before we approach the interpretation of Vergil himself, I bring to your notice in the briefest manner not only on what poetry is, and from where it drew its origins and where the name of the poet stems from, but also expatiate on what venerable fame and what ample honor it has been held from the earliest ages of humanity and among various nations. I will add finally that it did not only confer dignity and glory upon individual and private people, but also that it has always stood out in well-ordered republics and the most successful peoples, and has always been a not trifling use, and even a great ornament.

Poetry is not, I would say, one of those arts which our ancestors called liberal, but one which, embracing them all, bound by certain meters and distinguished by various lights and blossoms, ornaments whatever it is that people have done or known with wonderful contrivances and translates them into other forms. As the divine Plato shows in his Phaedrus, and the Platonic Cicero demonstrates in his Tusculan Disputations, no mortal was ever able to attain to poetry without some divine madness. For, when that philosopher whom I just mentioned describes the three other types of divine madness, he expresses, unless I am mistaken, the fourth, which he wishes to be the poetic, in this idea. For he says that our minds, while they were still in their celestial seats, were participants in that harmony which consists in the eternal mind of God, and in that harmony which is made by the motions of the heavens. Then, weighed down by the contagion of mortal affairs and on that account devolving to lower things, enclosed in bodies, impeded by terrestrial limbs and bodies bound to fail, they were barely able to perceive with their ears those sounds which were made by mortal industry. Which, nevertheless, even if they are far from those heavenly sounds, nonetheless, since they are simulacra or images of them, draw us on to a silent recollection of the first music and inflame us with the most burning desire of flying back to our ancient fatherland so that we can experience that true music, whose shadowy image this is. But meanwhile, as much as one can in this most vexatious prison of the body, we strive to imitate that heavenly music with these sounds of ours.

Cum eum vobis poetam hoc annuo cursu in medium allaturus essem, qui vel ex omnibus regionibus <quarum habitatores> historia cognoscantur vel ex omnibus saeculis quae ad nostram usque memoriam scriptorum beneficio pervenerint, aut primus sit aut primo omnino par atque aequalis, neque ab officio nostro alienum neque auribus vestris iniocundum futurum existimavi si, antea quam ipsius Maronis interpretationem aggredimur, brevissimis quidem verbis non solum quid ars poetica sit atque unde originem traxerit unde<que> poetae nomen deducatur in medium afferam, verum etiam quam vetustissima a priscis hominum saeculis apud multas variasque nationes maxima celebritate amplissimisque honoribus fuerit disseram. Addam postremo illam non solum singulis privatisque hominibus dignitatem gloriamque attulisse, verum bene institutis rebus publicis florentissimisque populis et usui non mediocri et ornamento maximo semper extitisse.
Est igitur poetica disciplina non dicam unam ex iis artibus quas nostri maiores liberales appellarunt, sed quae illas universas complectens, certis quibusdam numeris astricta variisque luminibus ac floribus distincta, quaecunque homines egerint, quaecunque norint miris figmentis exornet atque in alias quasdam speties traducat. Quam quidem rem, ut et divinus ille Plato in Phaedro et Platonicus Cicero in Tusculanis disputationibus ostendit, nemo unquam mortalium sine divino quodam furore attingere potuit. Nam cum is quem paulo ante dixi philosophus et tria alia divini furoris genera describat, quartum quem poeticum esse vult hac, nisi fallor, sententia exprimit. Ait enim animos nostros, dum in caelestibus sedibus versarentur, et eius harmoniae, quae in aeterna Dei mente consistit, et eius, quae caelorum motibus conficitur, participes fuisse; deinde, cum mortalium rerum contagione degravati et propterea ad inferiora iam devoluti corporibus includantur, iam terrenis arctubus et moribundis membris impeditos, vix eos concentus, qui mortalium industria conficiuntur, auribus percipere posse. Qui tamen, quicunque ii sint, etsi a caelestibus longe absint, nihilominus cum simulachra quaedam ac imagines illorum existant, nos in tacitam quandam primorum recordationem inducunt ardentissimaque cupiditate ad antiquam patriam revolandi inflamant, ut veram ipsam musicam, cuius adumbrata quaedam haec imago est, pernoscamus. Interim vero, quoad per molestissimum nobis corporis carcerem licet, hac nostra illam imitari contendimus.

Giovanni Boccaccio, de Casibus Virorum Illustrium 3.10:

Our present age, having ignored ancient custom, rips little children away, I will not say from the rules of grammar, but from the breasts of their mothers, so that it can force them out not into the schools but into the brothels, in which sacrosanct laws are dragged with a base sort of prostitution from the most just into sinful seductions. This is not done, as some pretend, so that a tender age which will not lose what it has learned will be more aptly imbued with the laws, but rather so that it can be more quickly accommodated to serving avarice. Nor do those who, decked out in robes, mount the cathedrals and pulpits fear to profess this in a sonorous clamour while omitting philosophical proofs as though unnecessary, and defiling the parts from which justice consists and by which the manners of people are reformed for the better by saying, “Let’s forget about these things – they’re superfluous, and don’t teach us how to seek our bread.”

And so, while it doesn’t suffice for armored asses to have neglected what they don’t know, they try even to shamefully mar what is known if they can, pressing on with this mission with all of their strength to the point from which they can disembowel the simplicity and sanctity of the laws and extract quarrels unwilling to come into public notice, and to make the disputes among the litigants immortal with their raillery. And since they celebrate with the loudest acclamation one who, with subterfuge and nefarious sagacity has protected mendacity against the truth for a long time, they nevertheless cultivate, praise, and extol the one to whom, by any fraud whatever, much wealth has accrued, as a father of the laws, an archive of justice, and the reliquary of the truth. O unbending justice of God, how long will you permit this crap?

Presens autem evum, spreta veteri solertia, non dicam a grammaticalibus regulis, sed a nutricum uberibus evellit infantulos, ut eos non in scholis sed in fornicibus trudat, in quibus sacrosancte leges turpi quodam lenocinio ex iustissimis in scelestas trahuntur illecebras; nec agitur hoc – ut aliqui conantur pretendere – ut tenella etas, non dimissura quod ceperit, aptius imbuatur legibus, quin imo ut citius avaritie serviatur. Nec hoc verentur profiteri clamore sonoro qui, fimbriati, cathedras conscendunt et pulpita, dum, omissis phylosophicis demonstrationibus tanquam superfluis et quibus ex partibus iustitia constat et mores hominum reformantur in melius, ore spurcido et obsceno vocabulo aientes: «Sinamus hec: superflua sunt; nec de pane querendo nos instruunt». Et sic dum faleratis onagris non sufficit neglexisse quod nesciunt, conantur etiam turpi nota fedasse, si possint, eo totis incumbentes viribus unde ex simplicitate ac sanctitate legum eviscerare possint nolentia in publicum devenire litigia, et litigantium lites cavillationibus immortales facere. Et cum illum boatu summo celebrent, qui subterfugiis astutiisque nephariis adversus veritatem diu mendacium tutatus est, eum tamen cui quibuscunque fraudibus ample devenere substantie legum patrem iuris archivum veritatisque sacrarium colunt predicant et extollunt. O Dei indeflexa iustitia quam diu pateris hec?

Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson:

The truth, however, is, that he loved to display his ingenuity in argument; and therefore would sometimes in conversation maintain opinions which he was sensible were wrong, but in supporting which, his reasoning and wit would be most conspicuous. He would begin thus: ‘Why, Sir, as to the good or evil of card-playing—’ ‘Now, (said Garrick,) he is thinking which side he shall take.’ He appeared to have a pleasure in contradiction, especially when any opinion whatever was delivered with an air of confidence; so that there was hardly any topick, if not one of the great truths of Religion and Morality, that he might not have been incited to argue, either for or against.

Flavio Biondo, On the Words of Roman Speech, (I):

There is a great dispute among the learned people of our time, and a contention in which I have often been involved, whether it is the maternal and as it were, among the rude and unlettered mass in our age vulgar idiom, or by the use of grammatical art, which we call Latin, that the Romans were accustomed to employ as their established mode of speaking.

Arguments are not lacking to those who either impugn or defend one side or the other of this debate. If I were to draw them into the fray, it would become apparent on what foundations each side rests, and there will be material for this dispute so tossed before the eyes of all that any fool ignorant of the laws of speaking, or, as the Florentines are in the habit of calling him, a market-stall judge, would not hesitate to bring forth his opinion easily and ex tempore.

Which I would yet maintain must be born by the judgment of the learned and most knowledgeable in Roman things if for no other reason than so that, when you and many others, the ornaments of the age in judgment, seem to dissent in turn, I alone, in a situation where such great men either entertain contradictions or feel uncertainly, would dare to affirm it for sure.

Magna est apud doctos aetatis nostrae homines altercatio, et cui saepenumero interfuerim contentio, maternone et passim apud rudem indoctamque multitudinem aetate nostra vulgato idiomate, an grammaticae artis usu, quod latinum appellamus, instituto loquendi more Romani orare fuerint soliti.

Nec desunt argumenta utramque vel impugnantibus vel defendentibus partem; quae si in medium adduxero, qualibus utrique nitantur fundamentis apparebit; eritque omnium oculis adeo subiecta huiusce disceptationis materies, ut quilibet iurisdicundi ignarus, sive, ut dicere Florentini solent, iudex emporinus, faciliter et ex tempore sententiam ferre non dubitet.

Quam tamen et docti et rerum romanarum callentissimi iudicio vel ea ratione servaverim ferendam, ne, cum tu pluresque alii, omnium iudicio saeculi ornamenta, invicem dissentire videamini, ego unus, in quo tales viri vel contraria sentiant vel addubitent, id ausim affirmare.