Imaginary Conversations and Poems Part 60

FOOTNOTES:

[15] Literally, _due fave_, the expression on such occasions to signify a small quant.i.ty.

[16] Contraction of _signor_, customary in Tuscany.

FOURTH DAY'S INTERVIEW

_Petrarca._ Giovanni, you are unsuspicious, and would scarcely see a monster in a minotaur. It is well, however, to draw good out of evil, and it is the peculiar gift of an elevated mind. Nevertheless, you must have observed, although with greater curiosity than concern, the slipperiness and tortuousness of your detractors.

_Boccaccio._ Whatever they detract from me, they leave more than they can carry away. Beside, they always are detected.

_Petrarca._ When they are detected, they raise themselves up fiercely, as if their nature were erect and they could reach your height.

_Boccaccio._ Envy would conceal herself under the shadow and shelter of contemptuousness, but she swells too huge for the den she creeps into. Let her lie there and crack, and think no more about her. The people you have been talking of can find no greater and no other faults in my writings than I myself am willing to show them, and still more willing to correct. There are many things, as you have just now told me, very unworthy of their company.

_Petrarca._ He who has much gold is none the poorer for having much silver too. When a king of old displayed his wealth and magnificence before a philosopher, the philosopher's exclamation was:

'How many things are here which I do not want!'

Does not the same reflection come upon us, when we have laid aside our compositions for a time, and look into them again more leisurely? Do we not wonder at our own profusion, and say like the philosopher:

'How many things are here which I do not want!'

It may happen that we pull up flowers with weeds; but better this than rankness. We must bear to see our first-born dispatched before our eyes, and give them up quietly.

_Boccaccio._ The younger will be the most reluctant. There are poets among us who mistake in themselves the freckles of the hay-fever for beauty-spots. In another half-century their volumes will be inquired after; but only for the sake of cutting out an illuminated letter from the t.i.tle-page, or of transplanting the willow at the end, that hangs so prettily over the tomb of Amaryllis. If they wish to be healthy and vigorous, let them open their bosoms to the breezes of Sunium; for the air of Latium is heavy and overcharged. Above all, they must remember two admonitions; first, that sweet things hurt digestion; secondly, that great sails are ill adapted to small vessels. What is there lovely in poetry unless there be moderation and composure? Are they not better than the hot, uncontrollable harlotry of a flaunting, dishevelled enthusiasm? Whoever has the power of creating, has likewise the inferior power of keeping his creation in order. The best poets are the most impressive, because their steps are regular; for without regularity there is neither strength nor state. Look at Sophocles, look at Aeschylus, look at Homer.

_Petrarca._ I agree with you entirely to the whole extent of your observations; and, if you will continue, I am ready to lay aside my Dante for the present.

_Boccaccio._ No, no; we must have him again between us: there is no danger that he will sour our tempers.

_Petrarca._ In comparing his and yours, since you forbid me to declare all I think of your genius, you will at least allow me to congratulate you as being the happier of the two.

_Boccaccio._ Frequently, where there is great power in poetry, the imagination makes encroachments on the heart, and uses it as her own.

I have shed tears on writings which never cost the writer a sigh, but which occasioned him to rub the palms of his hands together, until they were ready to strike fire, with satisfaction at having overcome the difficulty of being tender.

_Petrarca._ Giovanni! are you not grown satirical?

_Boccaccio._ Not in this. It is a truth as broad and glaring as the eye of the Cyclops. To make you amends for your shuddering, I will express my doubt, on the other hand, whether Dante felt all the indignation he threw into his poetry. We are immoderately fond of warming ourselves; and we do not think, or care, what the fire is composed of. Be sure it is not always of cedar, like Circe's. Our Alighieri had slipped into the habit of vituperation; and he thought it fitted him; so he never left it off.

_Petrarca._ Serener colours are pleasanter to our eyes and more becoming to our character. The chief desire in every man of genius is to be thought one; and no fear or apprehension lessens it. Alighieri, who had certainly studied the gospel, must have been conscious that he not only was inhumane, but that he betrayed a more vindictive spirit than any pope or prelate who is enshrined within the fretwork of his golden grating.

_Boccaccio._ Unhappily, his strong talon had grown into him, and it would have pained him to suffer amputation. This eagle, unlike Jupiter's, never loosened the thunderbolt from it under the influence of harmony.

_Petrarca._ The only good thing we can expect in such minds and tempers is good poetry: let us at least get that; and, having it, let us keep and value it. If you had never written some wanton stories, you would never have been able to show the world how much wiser and better you grew afterward.

_Boccaccio._ Alas! if I live, I hope to show it. You have raised my spirits: and now, dear Francesco! do say a couple of prayers for me, while I lay together the materials of a tale; a right merry one, I promise you. Faith! it shall amuse you, and pay decently for the prayers; a good honest litany-worth. I hardly know whether I ought to have a nun in it: do you think I may?

_Petrarca._ Cannot you do without one?

_Boccaccio._ No; a nun I must have: say nothing against her; I can more easily let the abbess alone. Yet Frate Biagio ... that Frate Biagio, who never came to visit me but when he thought I was at extremities or asleep.... a.s.suntina! are you there?

_Petrarca._ No; do you want her?

_Boccaccio._ Not a bit. That Frate Biagio has heightened my pulse when I could not lower it again. The very devil is that Frate for heightening pulses. And with him I shall now make merry ... G.o.d willing ... in G.o.d's good time ... should it be His divine will to restore me! which I think He has begun to do miraculously. I seem to be within a frog's leap of well again; and we will presently have some rare fun in my _Tale of the Frate_.

_Petrarca._ Do not openly name him.

_Boccaccio._ He shall recognize himself by one single expression. He said to me, when I was at the worst:

'Ser Giovanni! it would not be much amiss (with permission!) if you begin to think (at any spare time), just a morsel, of eternity.'

'Ah! Fra Biagio!' answered I, contritely, 'I never heard a sermon of yours but I thought of it seriously and uneasily, long before the discourse was over.'

'So must all,' replied he, 'and yet few have the grace to own it.'

Now mind, Francesco! if it should please the Lord to call me unto Him, I say, _The Nun and Fra Biagio_ will be found, after my decease, in the closet cut out of the wall, behind yon Saint Zacharias in blue and yellow.

Well done! well done! Francesco. I never heard any man repeat his prayers so fast and fluently. Why! how many (at a guess) have you repeated? Such is the power of friends.h.i.+p, and such the habit of religion! They have done me good: I feel myself stronger already.

To-morrow I think I shall be able, by leaning on that stout maple stick in the corner, to walk half over my podere.

Have you done? have you done?

_Petrarca._ Be quiet: you may talk too much.

_Boccaccio._ I cannot be quiet for another hour; so, if you have any more prayers to get over, stick the spur into the other side of them: they must verily speed, if they beat the last.

_Petrarca._ Be more serious, dear Giovanni.

_Boccaccio._ Never bid a convalescent be more serious: no, nor a sick man neither. To health it may give that composure which it takes away from sickness. Every man will have his hours of seriousness; but, like the hours of rest, they often are ill-chosen and unwholesome. Be a.s.sured, our heavenly Father is as well pleased to see His children in the playground as in the schoolroom. He has provided both for us, and has given us intimations when each should occupy us.

_Petrarca._ You are right, Giovanni! but we know which bell is heard the most distinctly. We fold our arms at the one, try the cooler part of the pillow, and turn again to slumber; at the first stroke of the other, we are beyond our monitors. As for you, hardly Dante himself could make you grave.

_Boccaccio._ I do not remember how it happened that we slipped away from his side. One of us must have found him tedious.

_Petrarca._ If you were really and substantially at his side, he would have no mercy on you.

_Boccaccio._ In sooth, our good Alighieri seems to have had the appet.i.te of a dogfish or shark, and to have bitten the harder the warmer he was. I would not voluntarily be under his manifold rows of dentals. He has an incisor to every saint in the calendar. I should fare, methinks, like Brutus and the archbishop. He is forced to stretch himself, out of sheer listlessness, in so idle a place as Purgatory: he loses half his strength in Paradise: h.e.l.l alone makes him alert and lively: there he moves about and threatens as tremendously as the serpent that opposed the legions on their march in Africa. He would not have been contented in Tuscany itself, even had his enemies left him unmolested. Were I to write on his model a tripart.i.te poem, I think it should be ent.i.tled, _Earth, Italy, and Heaven_.

_Petrarca._ You will never give yourself the trouble.

_Boccaccio._ I should not succeed.

_Petrarca._ Perhaps not: but you have done very much, and may be able to do very much more.

_Boccaccio._ Wonderful is it to me, when I consider that an infirm and helpless creature, as I am, should be capable of laying thoughts up in their cabinets of words, which Time, as he rushes by, with the revolutions of stormy and destructive years, can never move from their places. On this coa.r.s.e mattress, one among the homeliest in the fair at Impruneta, is stretched an old burgess of Certaldo, of whom perhaps 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 G.o.d have suspended for His service, let there stand, with unclosing eyes, Integrity, Compa.s.sion, Self-denial.