Chapter 8

[1]Fam., xxiv., 2.

[2]This artificial repetition of the adversative conjunction is a trick of style that Petrarch is very fond of.

[3]This last sentence, with its schoolmasterly tone, is an interesting revelation of Petrarch's feeling of superiority, in point of scholarship, to all of his associates. It was a feeling that the facts fully justified.

Of the two letters addressed directly to Cicero himself, and referred to in the preceding epistle, one has already been given. The other is, in part, as follows:

To Marcus Tullius Cicero.[1]

If my earlier letter gave you offence,—for, as you often have remarked, the saying of your contemporary in theAndriais a faithful one, that compliance begets friends, truth only hatred,—you shall listen now to words that will soothe your wounded feelings and prove that the truth need not always be hateful. For, if censure that is true angers us, true praise, on the other hand, gives us delight.

You lived then, Cicero, if I may be permitted to say it, like a mere man, but spoke like an orator, wrote like a philosopher. It was your life that I criticised; not your mind, nor your tongue; for the one fills me with admiration, the other with amazement. And even in your life I feel the lack of nothing but stability, and the love of quiet that should go with your philosophic professions, and abstention fromcivil war, when liberty had been extinguished and the republic buried and its dirge sung.

See how different my treatment of you is from yours of Epicurus, in your works at large, and especially in theDe Finibus. You are continually praising his life, but his talents you ridicule. I ridicule in you nothing at all. Your life does awaken my pity, as I have said; but your talents and your eloquence call for nothing but congratulation. O great father of Roman eloquence! not I alone but all who deck themselves with the flowers of Latin speech render thanks unto you. It is from your well-springs that we draw the streams that water our meads. You, we freely acknowledge, are the leader who marshals us; yours are the words of encouragement that sustain us; yours is the light that illumines the path before us. In a word, it is under your auspices that we have attained to such little skill in this art of writing as we may possess....

You have heard what I think of your life and your genius. Are you hoping to hear of your books also; what fate has befallen them, how they are esteemed by the masses and among scholars? They still are in existence, glorious volumes, but we of to-day are too feeble a folk to read them, or even to be acquainted with their mere titles. Your fame extends far and wide; your name is mighty, and fills the ears of men; and yet those who really know you are very few, be it because the times are unfavourable, or because men's minds are slow and dull, or, as I am the more inclined to believe, because the love ofmoney forces our thoughts in other directions. Consequently right in our own day, unless I am much mistaken, some of your books have disappeared, I fear beyond recovery. It is a great grief to me, a great disgrace to this generation, a great wrong done to posterity. The shame of failing to cultivate our own talents, thereby depriving the future of the fruits that they might have yielded, is not enough for us; we must waste and spoil, through our cruel and insufferable neglect, the fruits of your labours too, and of those of your fellows as well, for the fate that I lament in the case of your own books has befallen the works of many another illustrious man.

It is of yours alone, though, that I would speak now. Here are the names of those among them whose loss is most to be deplored: theRepublic, thePraise of Philosophy, the treatises on theCare of Property, on theArt of War, onConsolation, onGlory,—although in the case of this last my feeling is rather one of hopeful uncertainty than of certain despair. And then there are huge gaps in the volumes that have survived. It is as if indolence and oblivion had been worsted, in a great battle, but we had to mourn noble leaders slain, and others lost or maimed. This last indignity very many of your books have suffered, but more particularly theOrator, theAcademics, and theLaws. They have come forth from the fray so mutilated and disfigured that it would have been better if they had perished outright.

Now, in conclusion, you will wish me to tell you something about the condition of Rome and theRoman republic: the present appearance of the city and whole country, the degree of harmony that prevails, what classes of citizens possess political power, by whose hands and with what wisdom the reins of empire are swayed, and whether the Danube, the Ganges, the Ebro, the Nile, the Don, are our boundaries now, or in very truth the man has arisen who 'bounds our empire by the ocean-stream, our fame by the stars of heaven,' or 'extends our rule beyond Garama and Ind,' as your friend the Mantuan has said. Of these and other matters of like nature I doubt not you would very gladly hear. Your filial piety tells me so, your well-known love of country, which you cherished even to your own destruction. But indeed it were better that I refrained. Trust me, Cicero, if you were to hear of our condition to-day you would be moved to tears, in whatever circle of heaven above, or Erebus below, you may be dwelling. Farewell, forever.

Written in the world of the living; on the left bank of the Rhone, in Transalpine Gaul; in the same year, but in the month of December, the 19th day.

[1]Fam., xxiv., 4.

Over against the foregoing should be placed a part at least of the long letter addressed to Homer. This will serve to correct the somewhat too favourable impression of Petrarch's critical insight that the letters to Cicero may have induced, and will reveal some of the limitations of his scholarship.

To Homer[1]

Long before your letter[2]reached me I had formed an intention of writing to you, and I should really have done it if it had not been for the lack of a common language. I am not so fortunate as to have learned Greek,[3]and the Latin tongue, which you once spoke, by the aid of our writers,[4]you seem of late, through the negligence of their successors, to have quite forgotten. From both avenues of communication, consequently, I have been debarred, and so have kept silence. But now there comes a man[5]who restores you to us, single-handed, and makes you a Latin again.

Your Penelope cannot have waited longer norwith more eager expectation for her Ulysses than I did for you. At last, though, my hope was fading gradually away. Except for a few of the opening lines of certain books, from which there seemed to flash upon me the face of the friend whom I had been longing to behold, a momentary glimpse, dim through distance, or, rather, the sight of his streaming hair, as he vanished from my view,—except for this no hint of a Latin Homer had come to me, and I had no hope of being able ever to see you face to face. For as regards the little book that is circulated under your name, while I cannot say whose it is I do feel sure that it is yours only as it has been culled from you and accredited to you, and is not your real work at all.[6]This friend of ours, however, if he lives, will restore you to us in your entirety. He is now at work, and we are beginning to enjoy not only the treasures of wisdom that are stored away in your divine poems but also the sweetness and charm of your speech. One fragment has come to my hands already, Grecian precious ointment in Latin vessels....[7]

To turn now to details, I am very eager for knowledge, and consequently was delighted beyondall measure and belief by what you wrote about your instructors, of whom I had never before heard, although now I shall reverence them because of the merits of their great pupil; and about the origin of poetry, which you explain at the greatest length; and about the earliest followers of the Muses, among whom, in addition to the well-known dwellers upon Helicon, you place Cadmus, the son of Agenor, and a certain Hercules, whether the great Alcides or not I do not fully understand; and, finally, about the place of your nativity, concerning which there used to be very vague and misty views here in my country, and no great clearness, so far as I can see, among your compatriots; about your wanderings, too, in search of knowledge, into Phœnicia and Egypt, whither, several centuries after you, the illustrious philosophers Pythagoras and Plato also made their way, and the Athenian law-giver who in his late years wooed the Pierian Muses, wise old Solon, who while he lived never ceased to admire you, and when he died doubtless became one of your cherished friends; and, last of all, about the number of your works, the majority of which even the Italians, your nearest neighbours, have never so much as heard of. As for the barbarians, who bound us upon two sides, and from whom I would that we were separated not by lofty Alps alone but by the whole wide sea as well, they scarcely have heard—I will not say of your books, but even of your very name. You see how trivial a thing is this wonderful fame which we mortals sigh for so windily....

And now what shall I say about the matter of imitation? When you found yourself soaring so high on the wings of genius you ought to have foreseen that you would always have imitators. You should be glad that your endowments are such that many men long to be like you, although not many can succeed. Why not be glad, you who are sure of holding always the first place, when I, the least of mortals, am more than glad, am in fact puffed up with pride, because I have grown great enough for others—though I scarcely can believe that this is really true—to desire to imitate and copy me? In my case the pride and joy would only increase if among these imitators there should be found some few who were capable of surpassing me. I pray—not your Apollo, but the true God of Intellect whom I worship, to crown the efforts of all who may deem it worth their while to follow after me, and to grant that they may find it an easy thing to come up with me, and outstrip me too....

But I am wandering. It was my intention to speak to you of Virgil, than whom, as Flaccus says, this earth has produced no soul more spotless; and to suggest to you, great master of us both, certain excuses for his conduct.... I admit the truth of everything that you say concerning him, but it does not necessarily follow that I lend a sympathetic ear to the charges that you base upon this failure of his to make anywhere any mention of your name, laden and bedecked though he is with your spoils,—mention, you remind me, such as Lucan made, remembering in grateful strains the honour due to Smyrna's bard.Far from that, I am even going to suggest to you additional cause for complaint. Flaccus also remembers you, in many a passage, and always with the highest praise. In one place he exalts you above the very philosophers; in another he assigns to you the highest seat among the poets. Naso remembers you too, and Juvenal, and Statius. But why try to mention all who mention Homer? There is scarcely one of our writers but that belongs in that class. Why is it then, you will say, that I find the one man from whom I deserved most gratitude proving so utterly ungrateful? Before I answer you let me furnish you still another reason for complaint. Observe that he was not equally ungrateful in every case. Musæus and Linus and Orpheus are referred to more than once. So also, and with even greater humility, Hesiod the Ascræan and Theocritus of Syracuse. And finally, a thing that he never would have done if he had had any touch of jealousy, he takes pains to speak of Varus, and Gallus, and certain others of his contemporaries.

Well, have I aggravated sufficiently the resentment which I proposed to assuage, or entirely remove? The natural conclusion, certainly, for anyone to draw, if this were all that I had to say. But it is not; we have not considered yet the reasons for all this, and given them their due weight, and that we should always do, especially when we are sitting in judgment upon others.

Is it not true, then, that he chose Theocritus for his guide and model in the Bucolics, and Hesiod in the Georgics, and, having done so, took pains to introducethe name of each in its appropriate place? Yes, you will say; but after choosing me for his third model, in his heroic poem, what was there to prevent his making some mention there, in like manner, of my name? He would have done so, believe me, for he was the gentlest and most unassuming of men, as is proved by all that is written of him and all that we know of his daily life; but impious death forbade. The others he had referred to wherever he thought of it or found it convenient; for you, to whom he owed so much more, he was reserving a place that had been determined not by mere chance but by the most careful consideration. And what place, think you? What but the most prominent and conspicuous of all? The end of his glorious work!—it was for that that he was waiting; it was there that he was intending to exalt you and your name to the stars in resounding verse, and to hail you as his leader. What better place to praise a leader than at the journey's end? You have good reason, then, for lamenting his too early death, and so has the whole Italian world; but for reproaching your friend, none whatever....

Now, in conclusion, I must run over the various little complaints that are scattered up and down the whole length of your letter. You grieve because you have been mangled so by your imitators. But do you not see that it could not possibly have been otherwise? No one could deal comprehensively with so great a genius. Then you mourn because your name, which was held in great honour by the lawyers and physicians of old, is despised bytheir successors of to-day. But you forget that these professions are filled now by men of a very different stamp from those who followed them in former times. If they were of the same sort they would love and cherish the same things. So put away your indignation and your grief, and be of good hope; for to have gained the disfavour of the evil and the ignorant is to have given sure sign of virtue and genius....

A word now with reference to your complaint that the valley of Fiesole and the banks of the Arno can furnish only three men who know you and love you. You ought not to wonder at this. It is enough; indeed, it is a very great deal, more than I should have expected, to discover three Pierian spirits in a city so entirely given up to gain. But even if you think otherwise you need not be discouraged; it is a large and populous place, and if you seek you will find there a fourth. And to these four I could once have added a fifth, a man who well deserves to be honoured thus, for the laurels of Peneus bind his brow—or of Alpheus rather. But alas! the great Babylon beyond the Alps has contrived to steal him away from us. To find five such men at one time and in one city, is that, think you, a little thing? Search through other cities. Your beloved Bologna that you sigh for,[8]hospitable though she is to all who are of studious mind, has yet but onesuch person, though you seek in every corner and crevice. Verona has two; Solmona one; and Mantua one, if the heavens have not tempted him quite away from the things of earth, for he has left your banner and enlisted under that of Ptolemy. Rome herself, the capital of the world, has been drained of such citizens almost to a man, strange though it seems. Perugia did produce one, a man who might have made a name for himself; but he has neglected his opportunities, and turned his back not on Parnassus only but on our Apennines and Alps as well, and now, in old age, is leading a vagabond life, in Spain, toiling as a copyist to earn his daily bread. And other cities have given birth to others, but all of these whom I have known have before now left this mortal home and migrated to that continuing city which one day shall receive us all....

For a long while I have been talking to you just as if you were present; but now the strong illusion fades away, and I realise how far you are from me. There comes over me a fear that you will scarcely care, down in the shades, to read the many things that I have written here. Yet I remember that you wrote freely to me.

And now farewell, forever. To Orpheus, and Linus, and Euripides, and all the others, I beg you to give my kindest greetings, when you come again to your abode.

Written in the world above; in theMidlandbetween the famous rivers Po and Ticino and Adda and others, whence some say ourMilanderives itsname; on the ninth day of October, in the year of this last age of the world the 1360th.

[1]Fam., xxiv., 12.

[2]Someone had sent Petrarch an epistle that purported to come from the shade of Homer. It must have been even more interesting than this reply, in its unconscious revelation of mediæval limitations. Petrarch took it very seriously. He often forgets in this answer that he is not writing to Homer himself.

[3]In Petrarch's day, as has been hinted above (p.237), there was no apparatus for the study of Greek. Oral instruction, from Greek or Byzantine scholars, was the only possible means of access to the great writers of the past. Such instruction was very difficult to secure, as Petrarch's repeated efforts and final failure prove. For his own statements concerning this subject seeFam., xviii., 2.

[4]The reference is of course to the Latin translations of Homer, theOdysseyof Livius Andronicus and the abridgment of theIliadmentioned just below, p.254, note 1.

[5]Leo Pilatus (or Leontius Pilatus, as Boccaccio writes the name), a Calabrian, who, at the instance of Petrarch and Boccaccio, was making at Florence at about this time a Latin prose version of theIliadand theOdyssey. For a good brief account of what is known concerning Pilatus, with a few specimens of his translation, see Körting,op. cit., i., 474sqq.

[6]The reference here is to the metrical abridgment of theIliadby Silius Italicus. This contains 1070 lines, half of them condensed translation of passages from books I.-V., the remainder little more than the driest epitome. Poor as it is, it was widely accepted in the middle ages, in some confused sort of a way, as 'Homer.' But Petrarch was able to look below the surface and see just what it was.

[7]De Nolhac has shown (op. cit., pp. 342, 354) that Pilatus probably had made for Petrarch alone, more than a year before this epistle was written, a preliminary translation of the first five books of theIliad.

[8]Voigt argues from these words that the letter to which this of Petrarch's is a reply came from Bologna. De Nolhac thinks it more probable that it was written from Florence, by Boccaccio and his friends.

With this, as throwing further light upon Petrarch's limitations, may be placed the letter to his brother, upon the nature of poetry, to which reference was made above in discussing the question of allegory:

To his Brother Gherardo.[1]

I judge, from what I know of your religious fervour, that you will feel a sort of repugnance toward the poem which I enclose in this letter, deeming it quite out of harmony with all your professions, and in direct opposition to your whole mode of thinking and living. But you must not be too hasty in your conclusions. What can be more foolish than to pronounce an opinion upon a subject that you have not investigated? The fact is, poetry is very far from being opposed to theology. Does that surprise you? One may almost say that theology actually is poetry, poetry concerning God. To call Christ now a lion, now a lamb, now a worm, what pray is that if not poetical? And you will find thousands of such things in the Scriptures, so very many that I cannot attempt to enumerate them. What indeed are the parables of our Saviour, in the Gospels, but words whose sound is foreign to theirsense, or allegories, to use the technical term? But allegory is the very warp and woof of all poetry. Of course, though, the subject matter in the two cases is very different. That everyone will admit. In the one case it is God and things pertaining to him that are treated, in the other mere gods and mortal men.

Now we can see how Aristotle came to say that the first theologians and the first poets were one and the same. The very name of poet is proof that he was right. Inquiries have been made into the origin of that word; and, although the theories have varied somewhat, the most reasonable view on the whole is this: that in early days, when men were rude and unformed, but full of a burning desire—which is part of our very nature—to know the truth, and especially to learn about God, they began to feel sure that there really is some higher power that controls our destinies, and to deem it fitting that homage should be paid to this power, with all manner of reverence beyond that which is ever shown to men, and also with an august ceremonial. Therefore, just as they planned for grand abodes, which they called temples, and for consecrated servants, to whom they gave the name of priests, and for magnificent statues, and vessels of gold, and marble tables, and purple vestments, they also determined, in order that this feeling of homage might not remain unexpressed, to strive to win the favour of the deity by lofty words, subjecting the powers above to the softening influences of songs of praise, sacred hymns remote from all the forms of speech thatpertain to common usage and to the affairs of state, and embellished moreover by numbers, which add a charm and drive tedium away. It behoved of course that this be done not in every-day fashion, but in a manner artful and carefully elaborated and a little strange. Now speech which was thus heightened was called in Greekpoetices; so, very naturally, those who used it came to be calledpoets.

Who, you will ask, is my authority for this? But can you not dispense with bondsmen, my brother, and have a little faith in me? That you should trust my unsupported word, when I tell you things that are true and bear upon their face the stamp of truth, is nothing more, it seems to me, than I have a right to ask of you. Still, if you find yourself disposed to proceed more cautiously, I will give you bondsmen who are perfectly good, witnesses whom you may trust with perfect safety. The first of these is Marcus Varro, the greatest scholar that Rome ever produced, and the next is Tranquillus, an investigator whose work is characterised always by the utmost caution. Then I can add a third name, which will probably be better known to you, Isidore. He too mentions these matters, in the eighth book of hisEtymologies, although briefly and merely on the authority of Tranquillus.

But you will object, and say, "I certainly can believe the saint, if not the other learned men; and yet the fact remains that the sweetness of your poetry is inconsistent with the severity of my life." Ah! but you are mistaken, my brother. Why, even the Old Testament fathers made use ofpoetry, both heroic song and other kinds: Moses, for example, and Job, and David, and Solomon, and Jeremiah. Even the psalms, which you are always singing, day and night, are in metre, in the Hebrew; so that I should be guilty of no inaccuracy or impropriety if I ventured to style their author the Christian's poet. Indeed the plain facts of the case inevitably suggest some such designation. Let me remind you, moreover, since you are not inclined to take anything that I say to-day without authority, that even Jerome took this view of the matter. Of course these sacred poems, these psalms, which sing of the blessed man, Christ,—of his birth, his death, his descent into hell, his resurrection, his ascent into heaven, his return to judge the earth,—never have been, and never could have been, translated into another language without some sacrifice of either the metre or the sense. So, as the choice had to be made, it has been the sense that has been considered. And yet some vestige of metrical law still survives, and the separate fragments we still call verses, very properly, for verses they are.

So much for the ancients. Now as regards Ambrose and Augustine and Jerome, our guides through the New Testament,—to show that they too employed poetic forms and rhythms would be the easiest of tasks; while in the case of Prudentius and Prosper and Sedulius and the rest the mere names are enough, for we have not a single word from them in prose, while their metrical productions are numerous and well known. Do not look askance then, dear brother, upon a practice which you seehas been approved by saintly men whom Christ has loved. Consider the underlying meaning alone, and if that is sound and true accept it gladly, no matter what the outward form may be. To praise a feast set forth on earthen vessels but despise it when it is served on gold is too much like madness or hypocrisy....

But enough of preface, and of apology for form and style. Let me come to the point, without further explanation. You must know that three summers ago, when I was in Gaul, the heat drove me to the Fountain of the Sorgue, which we once fixed upon, you will remember, as the place where we would pass our life. By the grace of God, however, a far more safe and tranquil abode was being prepared for you; while I was to be denied the enjoyment of even the little tranquillity that would have been possible there, since fortune was planning to raise me to a much higher station, very little to my liking.

Well, here I was, with my mind divided, afraid to undertake a task of any magnitude while I was under such a burden of care, and yet quite unable to be altogether idle, because I have been nourished from my infancy on activity, an activity which I hope has been praiseworthy, but which I know has been incessant. So I chose a middle course, postponing all work that was of much importance but doing little odds and ends of writing, trifles that would help me pass away the time. Now the very nature of the region, the forest recesses to which the coming of dawn made me long to flee and forgetmy cares, and from which only the return of night could bring me home, suggested that I sing a woodland strain. Accordingly I began to compose a pastoral poem, in twelve eclogues, a thing that I had long had in mind; and you would scarcely believe me if I told you in how few days I had it all completed, under the stimulus of the place.

Now the first of these eclogues, in accordance with the intention that I had all along entertained, was about our two selves. Consequently it has won the distinction of being chosen to be sent to you; whether with the result of giving you pleasure or of completely spoiling all your pleasure I scarcely can decide. But that is neither here nor there. In either case this kind of poetry is one that cannot be understood unless a key to it is furnished by the person who constructed it. So, as I would not have you weary yourself to no purpose, I must give you a brief outline, first of what I say, then of what I mean by it.

Two shepherds are introduced, for it is of the pastoral style. Pastoral names are given them, naturally: Silvius and Monicus. Silvius, seeing Monicus lying all alone in a cave, happy and at his ease, envies him and speaks to him, expressing amazement at his good fortune, and lamenting his own estate. Monicus may forget his flocks and fields, and think of rest alone, while he must make his painful way over the rough hills. He marvels the more at this great difference in their lot from the fact that, as he expresses it, one and the same mother bore them both,—so that we may understandthat they are brothers. Monicus, in response, throws all the blame for this hard life on Silvius himself, saying that he is under no constraint whatever, but is wandering of his own free will through the trackless forests and over the mountain summits. Silvius replies that there is a reason for these wanderings; the reason is love, nothing less than love of the Muse. To make this clear he begins a rather long story of two shepherds, who sing very sweetly. He tells how he heard one of them in his boyhood, and afterwards the other, and was so captivated by them that he began to neglect everything else. He has been following them eagerly through the mountains, and while doing so has learned to sing, with a skill that others have praised, although he himself is not yet satisfied with it; and he intends to struggle on toward the summit, and either reach it or perish in the attempt.

Monicus now begins to urge Silvius to come into the cave, for he will hear there even sweeter singing. Presently, though, he breaks off, suddenly, as if he saw signs of agitation in the other's face. Silvius, however, offers some excuse, and Monicus continues. When he has finished, Silvius asks who this shepherd is that sings so sweetly; never before has he heard him mentioned. Thereupon Monicus, in the roundabout way that would be natural in an artless shepherd, instead of giving his name describes the land of his birth, making mention, after the fashion of rustics, who often wander in telling a story, of two rivers that spring from one source. Then immediately, as if he saw that he had made a mistake, heturns his words round, and where he had begun to speak of two rivers he goes on to tell of one, which flows from two sources. Both of these are in Asia. Silvius declares that he knows this river, citing in confirmation the fact that a certain youth who goes clad in hairy raiment bathes Apollo in it. In that region, continues Monicus, a singer has arisen. Silvius, upon hearing these words, remembers that he has heard of this man, and proceeds to speak slightingly of his voice and mode of singing, exalting his own by comparison. But Monicus objects, and heaps upon the far-away singer well-deserved praise. Thereupon Silvius after a time pretends to acquiesce, and says that later he will return and test the sweetness of these songs; now he must hurry away. Monicus, wondering at this, begs to know the reason of his haste, and learns that Silvius is intent upon a song of his own which he has begun to compose, concerning a certain famous youth whose deeds he is briefly reviewing, and that he consequently has no leisure now for other things. Monicus accordingly brings the conversation to an end. He bids Silvius good-bye, concluding with an earnest exhortation to weigh well the dangers and chances of such delay. And there you have the sum and substance of the narrative.

Now as to its meaning. The shepherds who converse are ourselves. I am Silvius, you are Monicus. These names are chosen for the following reasons: the former, partly because the scene of the eclogue is of a sylvan character, partly because I always have felt, from my earliest childhood, a hatred ofcities, implanted in me by nature, and a love of sylvan life, which has led many of our friends to style me Sylvanus much more frequently than Francesco. Then the other name comes from the fact that there was one of the Cyclops who was called Monicus, that is to say, one-eyed, and there seemed a certain fitness in applying the name to you, since of the two eyes which we mortals all use, one to behold heavenly things and the other those of the earth, you have cast away that which looks earthward and are content to employ the nobler one alone.

The cave, where Monicus dwells in solitude, is Montrieux, where you are living your life in the midst of grottoes and woods. Or it may be taken for the very cave of Mary Magdalene, close by your monastery, the place where she passed her period of penitence, and where God lent the props of his grace to your vacillating heart and made you steadfast in the holy purpose which you had so often discussed with me.

For flocks and fields, which you are said to care for no longer, understand your fellow-men and their haunts, which you abandoned when you fled away into solitude. The statement that we had one and the same mother, and father too for that matter, is not allegory but naked truth. The word sepulchre[2]is to be taken as referring to our final abode. The meaning is that heaven awaits you, but Tartarus me, unless divine mercy comes to my rescue. Orthe sentence can be taken literally, just as it reads, for you have now a sure abode, and consequently a fairly sure hope of sepulture, while I am still wandering about at random, and everything in my future is quite unsure.

The inaccessible peak, which Monicus upbraids Silvius for struggling toward, panting and exhausted though he is, is the height of fame, the rarer sort of fame, which but few succeed in attaining to. The deserts where Silvius is said to wander are scholarly pursuits. These to-day are desert places indeed, being in some cases forsaken outright, through love of money, in others despaired of and neglected, in consequence of intellectual sluggishness. The mossy rocks are the rich and great, the moss being their inherited wealth, which has slowly gathered about them. Murmuring fountains can be used of men of letters and of those who have the gift of eloquence, inasmuch as little streams of intellectual influence flow from the well-springs of genius that are within them, with a sound, so to speak, that charms and delights us. As for Silvius' swearing by Pales, that is a shepherd oath, for Pales is the shepherds' goddess. We may understand there Mary, who is not a goddess, to be sure, but yet is the mother of God. Parthenias is Virgil himself. It is not a name of my devising. We read in his biography that he well deserved to be styled Parthenias, or the virgin; so his whole life showed. That the reader may be sure to understand this reference the place is added; the region, as I express it, where Benacus, a lake of CisalpineGaul, produces a son that closely resembles himself. This son is the Mincius, a river that we associate with Mantua, which is Virgil's native town.

On the other hand, the shepherd of noble blood who has been brought here from another land signifies Homer. In that passage almost every word has a meaning. Even theinde, which is put fordeinde,is used not without a certain mysteriousness, seeing that I came in contact with Virgil when I was a boy, but with Homerafterwards, when I was somewhat advanced in years....[3]The epithetnobleis of course Homer's by right, for what is more truly noble than his language or mind? Again,I know not from what valley he has comewas added because there are varying opinions as to the place of his birth, no one of which have I accepted in that place in the eclogue. Finally, that Virgildrank at the Homeric springis a fact which is known to everyone who has to do with poetry. Themistressof whom they both are said to be worthy is Fame, for whose sakes they are poets. Except for their mistresses lovers would not sing. Thebristling forestand themountains that rise into the air, at which Silvius is amazed because they do not follow after these sweet singers, are the uncultivated multitude and the persons who occupy high stations. Thedescent from the mountain-topsto the bottom ofthe valleys, and the ascent from the valleys into the mountains again, which Silvius refers to in speaking of himself, are the transition from the heights of theory to the low and level ground of practice, and, conversely, the movement in the opposite direction, when our attitude changes. Thefountainwhich praises the singer is the chorus of scholars. Thedry and barren cragsare the ignorant and illiterate, who, like the rocks where echo dwells, possess mere voice and power of agreement, without any power of discrimination. Thenymphs, the goddesses of the fountains, are the divine minds of scholars. Thethresholdover which Monicus invites Silvius to pass is that of the Carthusian order, into which assuredly no one has ever been lured by deception, or against his will, as many persons have been into other religious bodies. Theshepherdwhose singing Monicus prefers to Homer and Virgil is no other than David. The mention ofsinging to the psalteryis peculiarly appropriate in his case, because of the psalms, which are his work.In the middle of the night, on account of the singing of the psalms in your churches at early dawn. Thetwo rivers from a single source, as Monicus puts it first by mistake, are the Tigris and the Euphrates, well-known streams of Armenia. Then thesingle river from a double sourceis the Jordan, in Judæa. For this fact we have many authorities, among them Jerome, who was a diligent student of those regions and lived there for a long time. The names of the two sources are Jor and Dan. By their union both the stream and its name are formed. The Jordanempties, it is said, into the Sea of Sodom, where we are told that the fields are strewn with ashes from the burning of the cities. In this river Christ, we learn, was baptised by John. So thehairy youthis John the Baptist, who was but a youth, virgin, pure, innocent, clad in hairy raiment, unkempt, wearing the skin of a goat, with locks uncombed, with face blackened by the suns. Then byApollo,whom I describe as son of Jupiter and god of intellect, I mean Christ, who is the son of God, and very God himself, and moreover, as I suggest, our god of intellect and wisdom. For, as all theologians know, among the attributes of the persons that constitute the Holy Trinity, one and indivisible, wisdom belongs to the Son; he is the wisdom of the Father.

Again, thehoarse voiceandnever-ceasing tearsandoft-repeated name of Jerusalemare intended as a reference to David, because of his style, which at first seems rough and full of lamentation, and furthermore because there really is frequent mention of that city in the psalms, sometimes historical, sometimes allegorical. Now there follows a brief enumeration of the subjects which the poets whom Silvius is striving to exalt are wont to sing. To explain all this would take a long time. Besides it is sufficiently clear already to those who are proficient in such matters. And then Monicus replies, excusing this harshness of David, and running with like brevity over the list of subjects which he has treated.

The youth about whose deeds Silvius has begun to weave his song is Scipio Africanus, who laidPolyphemus low upon the African shore. The reference there is to Hannibal, the Carthaginian leader. Hannibal and Polyphemus were both one-eyed, after Hannibal's loss of an eye in Italy. TheLibyan lions, in which we know that Africa abounds, are the other Carthaginian leaders, who were hurled from power by the same conqueror. Thesacrificesthat were consumed are the ships which he burned, the ships upon which all the hopes of the Carthaginians had hung. He destroyed five hundred of them before their very eyes, so Roman history tells us. The designation ofstarry youthis partly because of the heroic valour which he possessed above all other men, and which Virgil characterises as 'burning,' Lucan as 'fiery'; and partly because the Romans of his day were led by their admiration of him to credit him with divine origin. The Italians are said to praise himfrom the opposite shorebecause of the fact that the shore of Italy really was opposed to that of Africa, not alone in temper and feeling but in situation too. Rome itself is directly across from Carthage.

However, although this youth is praised so widely, nobody has sung of him; by which I meant to suggest that although all history is full of his deeds and his renown, and Ennius has written a great deal about him, in his rude and unpolished style, as Valerius calls it, there still is no carefully finished metrical treatment of his achievements as yet. So I decided long ago to sing of him myself, as best I could. My poem ofAfricais about him. I began it in my youth, with a high heart. God grant thatI may be permitted in my old age to bring it to the happy conclusion which I then dreamed of. The danger which always inheres in such postponement of a well-considered plan, and the mutability and uncertainty of this life of ours, Monicus bids us ponder upon, in his concluding remarks, which scarcely call for further explanation. And you will also understand the few sentences at the close, if you will reflect a little. Farewell.

Written at Padua, on the second day of December, toward evening.

Back to Index Next