by George Eliot
CHAPTER SEVEN.
A LEARNED SQUABBLE.
Bartolommeo Scala, secretary of the Florentine Republic, on whom TitoMelema had been thus led to anchor his hopes, lived in a handsome palaceclose to the Porta Pinti, now known as the Casa Gherardesca. His arms--an azure ladder transverse on a golden field, with the motto _Gradatim_placed over the entrance--told all comers that the miller's son held hisascent to honours by his own efforts a fact to be proclaimed withoutwincing. The secretary was a vain and pompous man, but he was also anhonest one: he was sincerely convinced of his own merit, and could seeno reason for feigning. The topmost round of his azure ladder had beenreached by this time: he had held his secretaryship these twenty years--had long since made his orations on the _ringhiera_, or platform of theOld Palace, as the custom was, in the presence of princely visitors,while Marzocco, the republican lion, wore his gold crown on theoccasion, and all the people cried, "Viva Messer Bartolommeo!"--had beenon an embassy to Rome, and had there been made titular Senator,Apostolical Secretary, Knight of the Golden Spur; and had, eight yearsago, been Gonfaloniere--last goal of the Florentine citizen's ambition.Meantime he had got richer and richer, and more and more gouty, afterthe manner of successful mortality; and the Knight of the Golden Spurhad often to sit with helpless cushioned heel under the handsome loggiahe had built for himself, overlooking the spacious gardens and lawn atthe back of his palace.
He was in this position on the day when he had granted the desiredinterview to Tito Melema. The May afternoon sun was on the flowers andthe grass beyond the pleasant shade of the loggia; the too stately silklucco was cast aside, and the light loose mantle was thrown over histunic; his beautiful daughter Alessandra and her husband, the Greeksoldier-poet Marullo, were seated on one side of him: on the other, twofriends not oppressively illustrious, and therefore the betterlisteners. Yet, to say nothing of the gout, Messer Bartolommeo'sfelicity was far from perfect: it was embittered by the contents ofcertain papers that lay before him, consisting chiefly of acorrespondence between himself and Politian. It was a human foible atthat period (incredible as it may seem) to recite quarrels, and favourscholarly visitors with the communication of an entire and lengthycorrespondence; and this was neither the first nor the second, time thatScala had asked the candid opinion of his friends as to the balance ofright and wrong in some half-score Latin letters between himself andPolitian, all springing out of certain epigrams written in the mostplayful tone in the world. It was the story of a very typical andpretty quarrel, in which we are interested, because it suppliedprecisely that thistle of hatred necessary, according to Nello, as astimulus to the sluggish paces of the cautious steed, Friendship.Politian, having been a rejected pretender to the love and the hand ofScala's daughter, kept a very sharp and learned tooth in readinessagainst the too prosperous and presumptuous secretary, who had declinedthe greatest scholar of the age for a son-in-law. Scala was ameritorious public servant, and, moreover, a lucky man--naturallyexasperating to an offended scholar; but then--O beautiful balance ofthings!--he had an itch for authorship, and was a bad writer--one ofthose excellent people who, sitting in gouty slippers, "penned poeticaltrifles" entirely for their own amusement, without any view to anaudience, and, consequently, sent them to their friends in letters,which were the literary periodicals of the fifteenth century. Now Scalahad abundance of friends who were ready to praise his writings: friendslike Ficino and Landino--amiable browsers in the Medicean park alongwith himself--who found his Latin prose style elegant and masculine; andthe terrible Joseph Scaliger, who was to pronounce him totally ignorantof Latinity, was at a comfortable distance in the next century. Butwhen was the fatal coquetry inherent in superfluous authorship everquite contented with the ready praise of friends? That criticalsupercilious Politian--a fellow-browser, who was far from amiable--mustbe made aware that the solid secretary showed, in his leisure hours, apleasant fertility in verses, which indicated pretty clearly how much hemight do in that way if he were not a man of affairs.
Ineffable moment! when the man you secretly hate sends you a Latinepigram with a false gender--hendecasyllables with a questionableelision, at least a toe too much--attempts at poetic figures which aremanifest solecisms. That moment had come to Politian: the secretary hadput forth his soft head from the official shell, and the terriblelurking crab was down upon him. Politian had used the freedom of afriend, and pleasantly, in the form of a Latin epigram, corrected themistake of Scala in making the _culex_ (an insect too well-known on thebanks of the Arno) of the inferior or feminine gender. Scala replied bya bad joke, in suitable Latin verses, referring to Politian'sunsuccessful suit. Better and better. Politian found the verses verypretty and highly facetious: the more was the pity that they wereseriously incorrect, and inasmuch as Scala had alleged that he hadwritten them in imitation of a Greek epigram, Politian, being on suchfriendly terms, would enclose a Greek epigram of his own, on the sameinteresting insect--not, we may presume, out of any wish to humbleScala, but rather to instruct him; said epigram containing a livelyconceit about Venus, Cupid, and the _culex_, of a kind much tasted atthat period, founded partly on the zoological fact that the gnat, likeVenus, was born from the waters. Scala, in reply, begged to say thathis verses were never intended for a scholar with such delicateolfactories as Politian, nearest of all living men to the perfection ofthe ancients, and of a taste so fastidious that sturgeon itself mustseem insipid to him; defended his own verses, nevertheless, thoughindeed they were written hastily, without correction, and intended as anagreeable distraction during the summer heat to himself and such friendsas were satisfied with mediocrity, he, Scala, not being like some otherpeople, who courted publicity through the booksellers. For the rest, hehad barely enough Greek to make out the sense of the epigram sograciously sent him, to say nothing of tasting its elegances; but--theepigram was Politian's: what more need be said? Still, by way ofpostscript, he feared that his incomparable friend's comparison of thegnat to Venus, on account of its origin from the waters, was in manyways ticklish. On the one hand, Venus might be offended; and on theother, unless the poet intended an allusion to the doctrine of Thales,that cold and damp origin seemed doubtful to Scala in the case of acreature so fond of warmth; a fish were perhaps the better comparison,or, when the power of flying was in question, an eagle, or indeed, whenthe darkness was taken into consideration, a bat or an owl were a lessobscure and more apposite parallel, etcetera, etcetera. Here was agreat opportunity for Politian. He was not aware, he wrote, that whenhe had Scala's verses placed before him, there was any question ofsturgeon, but rather of frogs and gudgeons: made short work with Scala'sdefence of his own Latin, and mangled him terribly on the score of thestupid criticisms he had ventured on the Greek epigram kindly forwardedto him as a model. Wretched cavils, indeed! for as to the damp originof the gnat, there was the authority of Virgil himself, who had calledit the "_alumnus_ of the waters;" and as to what his dear dull friendhad to say about the fish, the eagle, and the rest, it was "nihil adrem;" for because the eagle could fly higher, it by no means followedthat the gnat could not fly at all, etcetera, etcetera. He was ashamed,however, to dwell on such trivialities, and thus to swell a gnat into anelephant; but, for his own part, would only add that he had nothingdeceitful or double about him, neither was he to be caught when presentby the false blandishments of those who slandered him in his absence,agreeing rather with a Homeric sentiment on that head--which furnished aGreek quotation to serve as powder to his bullet.
The quarrel could not end there. The logic could hardly get worse, butthe secretary got more pompously self-asserting, and the scholarlypoet's temper more and more venomous. Politian had been generouslywilling to hold up a mirror, by which the too-inflated secretary,beholding his own likeness, might be induced to cease setting up hisignorant defences of bad Latin against ancient authorities whom theconsent of centuries had placed beyond question,--unless, indeed, he haddesigned to sink in literature in proportion as he rose in honours, thatby a sor
t of compensation men of letters might feel themselves hisequals. In return, Politian was begged to examine Scala's writings:nowhere would he find a more devout admiration of antiquity. Thesecretary was ashamed of the age in which he lived, and blushed for it._Some_, indeed, there were who wanted to have their own works praisedand exalted to a level with the divine monuments of antiquity; but he,Scala, could not oblige them. And as to the honours which wereoffensive to the envious, they had been well earned: witness his wholelife since he came in penury to Florence. The elegant scholar, inreply, was not surprised that Scala found the Age distasteful to him,since he himself was so distasteful to the Age; nay, it was with perfectaccuracy that he, the elegant scholar, had called Scala a brannymonster, inasmuch as he was formed from the off-scourings of monsters,born amidst the refuse of a mill, and eminently worthy the long-earedoffice of turning the paternal millstones (_in pistrini sordibus natuset quidem pistrino dignissimus_)!
It was not without reference to Tito's appointed visit that the paperscontaining this correspondence were brought out to-day. Here was a newGreek scholar whose accomplishments were to be tested, and on nothingdid Scala more desire a dispassionate opinion from persons of superiorknowledge than on that Greek epigram of Politian's. After sufficientintroductory talk concerning Tito's travels, after a survey anddiscussion of the gems, and an easy passage from the mention of thelamented Lorenzo's eagerness in collecting such specimens of ancient artto the subject of classical tastes and studies in general and theirpresent condition in Florence, it was inevitable to mention Politian, aman of eminent ability indeed, but a little too arrogant--assuming to bea Hercules, whose office it was to destroy all the literarymonstrosities of the age, and writing letters to his elders withoutsigning them, as if they were miraculous revelations that could onlyhave one source. And after all, were not his own criticisms oftenquestionable and his tastes perverse? He was fond of saying pungentthings about the men who thought they wrote like Cicero because theyended every sentence with "esse videtur:" but while he was boasting ofhis freedom from servile imitation, did he not fall into the otherextreme, running after strange words and affected phrases? Even in hismuch-belauded `Miscellanea' was every point tenable? And Tito, who hadjust been looking into the `Miscellanea,' found so much to say that wasagreeable to the secretary--he would have done so from the meredisposition to please, without further motive--that he showed himselfquite worthy to be made a judge in the notable correspondence concerningthe _culex_. Here was the Greek epigram which Politian had doubtlessthought the finest in the world, though he had pretended to believe thatthe "transmarini," the Greeks themselves, would make light of it: had henot been unintentionally speaking the truth in his false modesty?
Tito was ready, and scarified the epigram to Scala's content. O wiseyoung judge! He could doubtless appreciate satire even in the vulgartongue, and Scala--who, excellent man, not seeking publicity through thebooksellers, was never unprovided with "hasty uncorrected trifles," as asort of sherbet for a visitor on a hot day, or, if the weather werecold, why then as a cordial--had a few little matters in the shape ofSonnets, turning on well-known foibles of Politian's, which he would notlike to go any farther, but which would, perhaps, amuse the company.
Enough: Tito took his leave under an urgent invitation to come again.His gems were interesting; especially the agate, with the _lususnaturae_ in it--a most wonderful semblance of Cupid riding on the lion;and the "Jew's stone," with the lion-headed serpent enchased in it; bothof which the secretary agreed to buy--the latter as a reinforcement ofhis preventives against the gout, which gave him such severe twingesthat it was plain enough how intolerable it would be if he were not wellsupplied with rings of rare virtue, and with an amulet worn close underthe right breast. But Tito was assured that he himself was moreinteresting than his gems. He had won his way to the Scala Palace bythe recommendation of Bardo de' Bardi, who, to be sure, was Scala's oldacquaintance and a worthy scholar, in spite of his overvaluing himself alittle (a frequent foible in the secretary's friends); but he must comeagain on the ground of his own manifest accomplishments.
The interview could hardly have ended more auspiciously for Tito, and ashe walked out at the Porta Pinti that he might laugh a little at hisease over the affair of the _culex_, he felt that fortune could hardlymean to turn her back on him again at present, since she had taken himby the hand in this decided way.