THE FIRST BOOK OF THE COURTIER
causes those primal words to decay, and use makes others to be born again and gives them grace and dignity, until they in their turn meet their death, consumed by the envious gnawing of time; for in the end both we and all our concerns are mortal. Consider that we no longer have any knowledge of the Oscan tongue.93 The Provençal, although it may be said to have been but lately celebrated by noble writers, is not now understood by the inhabitants of that country. Hence I think, as my lord Magnifico has well said, that if Petrarch and Boccaccio were alive at this time, they would not use many words that we find in their writings: therefore it does not seem to me well for us to copy these words. I applaud very highly those who know how to imitate that which ought to be imitated, but I do not at all believe that it is impossible to write well without imitating,— and particularly in this language of ours, wherein we may be aided by usage: which I should not dare say of Latin."
37.— The messer Federico said:
"Why would you have usage more esteemed in the vernacular than in Latin?"
"Nay," replied the Count, "I esteem usage as mistress of both the one and the other. But since those men to whom the Latin tongue was as natural as the vernacular now is to us, are no longer on earth, we must needs learn from their writings that which they learned from usage. Nor does ancient speech mean anything more than ancient usage of speech, and it would be a silly business to like ancient speech for no other reason than a wish to speak as men used to speak rather than as they now speak."
"Then," replied messer Federico, "the ancients did not imitate?"
"I believe," said the Count, "that many of them did, but not in everything. And if Virgil had imitated Hesiod in everything, he would not have surpassed his master; nor Cicero, Crassus; nor Ennius, his predecessors. You know Homer is so ancient that many believe he is the first heroic poet in time as he is also in excellence of diction: and whom would you think he imitated?"
"Some other poet," replied messer Federico, "more ancient
