and if it were appropriate to the Greek language: which neither Latin nor Tuscan can do. But let this be said without envy. Consider how often Petrarch rises, and how he soars like a swan. Consider how copious he is in his maxims, and how they harmonize in every part. He is sharp in his invective and in his reproof, and with that same vehemence with which Alcaeus Alcaeus of Mytilene was a Greek lyric poet known for his political verses against tyrants. strikes the tyrants in his verses, he pursues his enemies. And in his expressions of love, he is now happy, now sad, and gives form to all his feelings such that I do not rank him behind Ovid or Propertius. But that in which he holds the palm above all others is in every amorous matter; though he is most joyful, he nevertheless observes a modest propriety, and never becomes obscene. And no one among the most eloquent will deny finding in him not only expressed, but vividly painted, many things which previously were judged impossible to say with any elegance in this language. Boccaccio followed him, much inferior to him, but by nature endowed with a poetic genius and very refined in his inventions. Fazio degli Uberti The text reads "Bonifacio," but refers to Fazio degli Uberti, author of the Dittamondo. could have been numbered among the poets if his nature and practice had been aided by art and doctrine. Leon Battista Alberti has greatly expanded this language, and in prose he has surpassed and conquered all his predecessors; the eclogues in Tuscan verse written by him demonstrate how learned he is in poetics and with what judgment he abounds.

But already one flourishes who, if my judgment is worth anything, will be among the first of the rarest. Your genius is certainly wonderful, and so much—as the Greeks say—an Eutrapele original: "Eutrapele," from the Greek 'eutrapelos', meaning witty, versatile, or well-turned. This is a direct address to Lorenzo de' Medici, Landino’s patron., meaning adapted to every thing, that wherever he turns, he seems born for that thing alone. And without doubt, every species of poetry proceeds from him by celestial influence. He is most wise in invention and most rich in elocution, in a way that provides majesty to great things, dignity to mediocre things, and in the lowest things, his style is such that although it seems common to the folk, it cannot be imitated by the learned without difficulty; for in that style, art competes with nature, and each defends its parts excellently. How truly marvelous he would be even among those who have spent a long time in literary leisure and study. Therefore, what shall we say of him, who in his youthful years has been able to do so much, especially amidst so many and such varied and great occupations in public government—which, not without his own gravest perils, have distracted him day and night, not allowing him a single moment of time to depart from them. I do not deny how much natural genius can do in this; nevertheless, if from his tender years he had not been given with most ardent study to Latin letters and the faculty of oratory, and if he had not obeyed my most faithful precepts with the highest industry, let no one believe that the force of nature alone would have raised him to such an excessive degree. My tongue cannot express in this man what my mind feels, but whoever reads the things written by him will know me to be stingy in praise rather than prodigal in flattery.

But returning to the language, I affirm that just as in ancient centuries first the Greek language and then the Latin, through a great abundance of writers who from time to time polished them, became elegant from being rough and poor; so our own has already now, through the virtue of the writers named by me, become abundant and elegant. And every day, if studies do not fail, it will become more so. But let no one believe they are not only eloquent, but even a tolerable speaker in our language, if they do not first have a true and perfect knowledge of Latin letters. Because no one doubts that every discourse is composed of words and of sentiments. Words are always inept without oratorical precepts, and sentiments are frivolous without varied doctrine. But neither theoretical art nor any doctrine can be known to us without language, either Greek or Latin. Therefore, at the very least, Latin is necessary to us. Because many of our writers, void of Latin letters and doctrine—even though genius and practice sometimes sustain them—nevertheless often fall into ruin because they proceed like the blind if the light of art is not held out. Nor can a writer ever have juice or muscle in his style when he is not at least somewhat introduced to philosophy, if not entirely learned. Add to these two reasons a third: everyone understands how the Latin language became abundant by deriving many Greek words into it; thus it is necessary that ours becomes most rich from being rich, if every day we transfer into it new words taken from the Romans and make them common among our own. For which reason, let the Florentine youth exercise themselves in the studies of the good arts and in their native language, and make that eloquent language most eloquent; because nothing is found that, in a free and well-instituted republic, brings more utility and ornament with it than eloquence, whether oratory or poetic, provided it is accompanied by true virtue and the highest probity. This can put the wickedness and fraud of the wicked into the hatred of men and lead them to punishment; this can liberate the innocence of the powerful from the penalty of false judgments; this can incite the people, who are by nature happy and slow, to those things where public honor lies, or recall them from errors, or inflame them against pestilential citizens, or mitigate them when they have been incited against good men. This, in Athens, Demosthenes, and in Rome, Cicero—although both were of humble condition—placed them ahead and made them superior in every dignity to all the most noble. Knowing this, our poet [Dante], being already exalted in every doctrine, judged it a most excellent thing to be able to adorn every grave sentiment with eloquence. Therefore, exercising himself for a long time in prose and in verse, he became so eloquent that at last, adorned with wisdom and eloquence, he set himself to write the Comedy which we presently have in our hands; of whose magnificence and ornaments we shall speak in the proper place, after we first report with the utmost brevity some things necessary for the knowledge of the poet and of poetry.

WHAT POETRY AND A POET ARE; AND OF THEIR DIVINE AND MOST ANCIENT ORIGIN.

A large decorative initial letter 'E' is adorned with leaf and vine patterns, colored in blue ink, marking the start of the section on the nature of poetry.

If we revolve in our minds, most illustrious lords, what a poet is, and how ancient their origin, and how divine and how ample and varied their doctrine, we will certainly know what is approved by the consensus of all the most grave philosophers: that no generation of writers is found to have been equal to poets at any time, either for the greatness of eloquence or for the divinity of wisdom. This thing, I believe, induced Aristotle—a man of great genius and doctrine, singular after Plato—to believe that in the first centuries the same men were both theologians and poets. And he esteemed these so much that he wrote two books on the poetic faculty and three on poets. And he easily recognized that poetry is not one of those arts which the ancients, for their excellence, named "liberal." In any one of those, if someone has become excellent, they have always been held in great prize; but poetry is a certain thing much more divine than the liberal disciplines. For, embracing all of them, bound with definite numbers and circumscribed with distinct feet A reference to poetic meter and rhythm., and adorned with various lights and flowers, it adorns with wonderful fictions and translates into other forms everything men have ever known or contemplated. And it demonstrates that it narrates another thing much lower and more abject; or it writes some fable to delight the ears of the idle with songs, while secretly writing of sublime things drawn from the fountain of divinity. Wherefore the listener, recognizing his error, not only comes to the knowledge of the greatest things which shortly before were hidden under a divine veil, but also takes wonderful pleasure from such a fiction. Whoever considers this art to be human and not divine deserves to be esteemed by the learned as much less than a man.

But that the origin of poetics is more excellent than the origin of human arts is manifest because the divine frenzy original: "divio furore", referring to the Platonic concept of furor divinus. from which poetry has its origin is more excellent than the human excellence from which the arts have their origin. And Plato effectively proves that the poetic faculty proceeds from divine frenzy in the book he titles Ion, using three signs. First, because men do not learn any of the other arts except after a long time without the divine frenzy. But the true poets—whom he affirms to be Orpheus, Homer, Hesiod, and Pindar—place in their poems certain traces of all the arts and signs that they understood them. The second is that in their frenzy they say many stupendous things which, after the frenzy has ceased, they themselves hardly understand, as if they had not pronounced them, but God through their mouths. Third, that it is not the most prudent men, nor those most erudite from their tender years, who become the best poets; but those who are driven by frenzy, as Plato writes happened to Ion and Tynnichus of Chalcis and to Hesiod. And the philosopher adds that the Muses sometimes inspire this divine spirit into the most inept men, because divine providence wants to show us that illustrious poems are not the invention of philosophers, but are gifts of God. Furthermore, he affirms in the Phaedrus that no one, however diligent, however supremely erudite, can become a poet if they are not incited by divine frenzy. Whence that saying: "When God is in us, we catch fire at his stirring." original: "Cum deus in nobis agitante calescimus," from Ovid's Fasti. Landino uses this to support the concept of divine inspiration.