Complete Works of Angelo Poliziano

...are brought forth without any colored pretense. That deeper and more refined erudition of yours is admired by everyone who is even slightly more civilized, and by me it is both admired and loved. Let this be so for the present; the same will be so in the future: I am and shall be a herald of your praises—if not a sufficient one, at least a well-wishing one. Long ago, in that place, we laid the foundations of a mutual friendship between us; and since at that time they were cemented by us with a literary glue, it remains that, with the same cement applied thereafter, they be raised to the very roof. This will be done exactly to the rule if letters fly back and forth between us, if there be between us—if not a daily—at least a weekly exchange of letters. These, in the stabilizing of future friendships, undoubtedly take the place of bricks or lime. The doors of friendship have been opened, and I promise that I shall henceforth be a frequent guest within them. Farewell, glory of letters, and pay back to Pico the Polyhistor in my name what you owe him in my name. Farewell.

NICCOLÒ LEONICENO TO HIS FRIEND ANGELO POLIZIANO, GREETINGS.

Ornamental woodcut initial 'M' featuring a landscape with a building and foliage.

The gift of your Miscellanea, which Battista Guarino recently delivered to me in your name, affected me with immense pleasure. For even if I have long been at leisure from the studies of more refined humanity, I nonetheless rejoice that an opportunity is occasionally provided to me by most learned and most friendly men to return to those studies which delighted me most in my youth. Although (to tell the truth) after I read that work through, I seemed to be engaged not in the fields of others at a loss, but on my own soil with great profit. I found in it not only those things which contribute greatly to literature and the knowledge of poets and orators, but also the opinions of physicians and philosophers explained by you with learning and elegance, and brought forth into a truer light than they may be read in the books of others. This matter brings me no small hope that one day universal philosophy, which has for a long time now become barbaric among the barbarians, may begin to speak Latin through the works of Angelo Poliziano. You have had (as you write) from your tender years the most excellent teachers, under whom you were able to imbibe both Platonic and Aristotelian discipline; but now, as I have learned from your writings, you enjoy the companionship of our Pico, a prince never sufficiently praised: by the imitation of whose learning you will soon be able to reach the highest peak of wisdom, just as you already hold the most eminent place in the faculty of oratory and poetry. Unless I loved you both, and owed very much to both, I would envy your good fortune—you who have had the chance to philosophize nobly in total leisure in the most illustrious city of Italy, under Lorenzo de' Medici and his son Piero, the exceptional patrons of virtue and genius in our age. Would that I were he whom you might judge not unworthy to join as a third companion in such great matters. If the opportunity were given to live with you, I would wish to die with you. For what can be sweeter, what more beneficial in life, than to live with the dearest friends, who are at the same time most upright and most learned in every respect, as you are? But it will be (as I hope) that I shall spend the remainder of my now-advancing age with you, not only for the sweetness of the companionship, but also that we may deliberate in what way we may provide for the perishing doctrine—or rather for the lives of men, whom I see perishing through the ignorance of many. Farewell. To your Magnificent Piero—into whose favor you once introduced me while he was a boy and I was in Florence, but who is now already a young man, and increased (as I hear) in virtues and dignity along with his age—you will commend me most highly, if it seems good to you. From Ferrara, the 5th day before the Kalends of February.

Ang. Polit.