Complete Works of Angelo Poliziano

...we have fallen into a kind of legal dispute over claims (as I see it), while you strive to maintain for me that possession from which I am trying to withdraw. What case of the Rhetoricians ever had a plaintiff or defendant of this kind? I, my dear Pico, will never "proffer the grass" of surrender to you in this fight, unless we first settle on good terms—since you will not succumb otherwise—that each of us be judged as both teacher and disciple to the other. But jokes aside, let us deal with serious matters: both your Heptaplus and you yourself may rightly be pleased with your work, since you have won all the "votes" of learned men so thoroughly that no envy appears even in the secrecy of the voting-tablet. It is to be hoped that the same will be more easily granted in your remaining writings, once experience is also added, which is usually held to be the best master in writing. As for what Experience is the master in writing. pertains to me, I rejoice greatly to be on the lips of Lorenzo—a man praised by all, and to be praised everywhere—especially with the addition of Poliziano’s judgment: whose abundant and secret reading of manifold disciplines I so embrace that I admire it, and so admire it that I do not cease to commend it. Thus it happens that I consider it a triumph to be placed by him beyond the hazards of learning. As for your request for an index of my books, that is both laborious and useless for me. It will be enough if you satisfy my requests as the occasion arises. For now, I desire Martianus Capella and Seneca’s Natural Questions, provided the manuscripts are cleansed of errors; for those in our possession need the work of a Sibyl. If I can buy them in printed form, it will be more pleasing to me; if not, they will return to you after a brief "postliminy." Farewell, you exemplar of good learning, and continue to love me. Ferrara, the Nones of December, 1489.

Ornamental woodcut initial O featuring a human face/mask within foliage.Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, a prince most heaped with every praise, recently showed me your letter to him. In it, while you attributed much to me regarding the recent offspring of my Miscellanea, you also separately noted on a slip of paper certain syllables in which you required somewhat more diligence from me. Yet you did this latter part so hesitantly and so tentatively, as if you finally feared lest I think myself too gravely offended if I were corrected by you—who are not only a most learned man, but also a most excellent one. I, therefore, although I cannot hide that your praise was entirely most welcome to me, as was proper, nevertheless had a primary reason to receive it even more favorably: the fact that the frankness—not to say correction—added as a companion gave abundant credibility to those flatteries of yours. Indeed, I shall not refute more eagerly than I allow myself to be refuted, and I would much more willingly be free of the fallacies of opinions (as if they were the primary diseases of the mind) than free others from them. Your judgment ought indeed to be to me entirely like a Lydian stone. Lydian stone. For as pure gold is distinguished from the counterfeit by that stone, so it seems to me that truth and falsehood can easily be discerned by your opinion. Nor is there anything in which I can so well guarantee my own studies as the fact that I am accustomed to dispute about ambiguities in such a way that I rejoice more in the truth found than in victory. Although, however, there is no appeal from a man of such great authority as yourself, nevertheless, for the sake of your singular humanity, I ask that you hear kindly what I may respond to those points. You say that you do not approve that I scanned the first syllable of immolare as short, or that I likewise pronounced matutinus with the first syllables shortened. But I, although exceedingly unrefined, am yet not of so dull a spirit, especially in the composing of verses, that I do not perceive those spaces and delays. But since I had to translate very ancient poems from the Greek almost word for word, I confess that I indeed affected a certain "obsolete antiquity" in the words, and likewise a certain pleasing novelty (as I hoped) in the measure and rhythm itself. For I did not think it would happen that, since Virgil, a man of the sharpest judgment, sometimes fashioned verses "trailing a tail" after the example of the poet Homer, he would not also grant me some such thing, especially when translating Greek. Wherefore I intentionally made the verses as if with a slightly protruding belly,