Elegantiarum Linguae Latinae Libri Sex

LORENZO VALLA TO GIOVANNI TORTELLI OF AREZZO, APOSTOLIC CHAMBERLAIN, MOST ELOQUENT OF THEOLOGIANS, GREETINGS.

Decorative initial LI at last present to you, my Giovanni—sole exemplar of friendship and ornament of all knowledge—the books on the elegance of the Latin language, which have long been owed to you, so often demanded by you, and sought again as if by a creditor. I dedicate them to your name, and pay them out like a debt; and, that I might pay the penalty for my long delay, I pay them with interest, and interest so great that it is equal to the principal. For whereas there were six books which I had promised to you (to whom I owe all things), now as many again are added to them, of the same kindred subject matter; and just as if a half were added to a half, it completes the whole of the profit. You have therefore endured a long period of waiting. Yet, the cause of this expectation was not my negligence, but my plan. For I do not wish to defraud my own kindness of its due gratitude. Indeed, I could devise no other method by which to dedicate to you those books which, as you know, were published without my command and transcribed into many copies, unless I both corrected them more diligently and—what is more important—testified that I was sending them forth as perfected by the addition of the others, as if by the rest of the body; so that no one might think that the waters of our "elegances" were to be drawn for himself from anywhere but this fountain and its streams—a source not only more abundant, but also clearer. On this account I both hope and desire the more that these books will be placed by you in the library of the Supreme Pontiff, and that you will take care that he, whose companion you are and whose intimate associate in studies, might sometimes peruse them and, just as he has already done regarding a part, praise the whole work—truly an excellent and greatest fruit and reward of my labor. For what more abundant fruit or what more rich reward can fall to a noble spirit than to be praised by a praised man? As the character says in Naevius: "I rejoice, father, to be praised by you, a praised man." For indeed, who has been more worthy of praise in many centuries, or who is more justly to be praised, than the father of us all, the Supreme Pontiff Nicholas V? He who seems not so much to have been chosen by the judgment of the most prudent men, as to have been born for that dignity; whom, by providing him to us, God has favored this age with a certain singular beneficence, and under whose protection—as is the opinion of men—human affairs shall be happy.