XXV.
It may be that some person, entitled to have every doubt cleared away, may here be perplexed at my speaking of Love as if it were a thing in itself, and not only an intellectual substance, but as if it were a corporeal substance. The which thing, in truth, is false, for Love exists not in itself as substance, but is an accident in substance. And that I speak of it as if it were a body, and, further, as if it were a man, appears from three things which I say of it. I say that I saw it come from far off; wherefore, since coming implies a local motion, and, according to the Philosopher, only a body is locally movable in itself, it appears that I assume Love to be a body. I say further of it, that it laughed, and also that it spoke, which things appear to be properties of man, especially the faculty of laughing, and thus it appears that I assume that it is a man.
To explain this matter so far as is meet for the present occasion, it must first be understood that formerly there were no rhymers of Love in the vulgar tongue, but certain poets in the Latin tongue were rhymers of Love; among us, I mean, although perchance among other people it happened, and still happens that, as in Greece, not the vulgar, but the lettered poets treated of these things. And no great number of years have passed since these poets in the vulgar tongue first appeared; for to write in rhyme in the vulgar is, after a manner, the same thing as to write in verse in Latin. And the proof that it is but a short time is, that, if we undertake to search in the tongue of the oco, and in the tongue of the sì, we do not find anything written more than a hundred and fifty years before the present time. And the reason why some illiterate persons acquired the fame of skill in writing verse is, that they were, so to speak, the first who wrote in the tongue of the sì. And the first who began to write as a poet in the vulgar tongue was moved to do so because he wished to make his words intelligible to a lady who could not easily understand Latin verses. And this is against those who rhyme on any other them than Love, since this mode of speech was from the beginning invented in order to speak of Love.
It follows that, since a greater license of speech is granted to poets than to writers of prose, and these writers in rhyme are no other than poets using the vulgar tongue, it is fitting and reasonable that greater license of speech should be permitted to them than to the other writers in the vulgar tongue; hence, if any figure or rhetorical coloring is allowed to poets, it is allowed also to the rhymers. Therefore, if we see that the poets have spoken of inanimate things as if they had sense and reason, and have made them speak together, and not only real things, but also things not real (that is, that they have said of things which have no existence that they speak, and have often made contingent things speak as if they were substances and human beings), it is fitting that the writer in rhyme should do the like, not, indeed, without some reason, but with a reason which it may be possible afterwards to explain in prose.
That the poets have thus spoken as has been said, appears from Virgil, who says that Juno, that is, a goddess hostile to the Trojans, spoke to Æolus, lord of the winds, here, in the first of the Æneid: Æole, namque tibi, etc. [Æolus, for to thee, etc.]; and that this lord replied to her, here: Tuus, O regina, quid optes, etc. [Thine, O queen, what thou askest, etc.]. In this same poet the inanimate thing speaks to the animate thing, in the third of the Æneid, here: Dardanidæ duri, etc. [Ye hardy Trojans, etc.]. In Lucan the animate thing speaks to the inanimate, here: Multum, Roma, tamen debes civilibus armis [Much dost thou owe, O Rome, to civic arms]. In Horace a man speaks to his own knowledge as to another person; and not only are they the words of Horace, but he says them as the interpreter of the good Homer, here, in his book on Poetry: Dic mihi, Musa, virum, etc. [Tell to me, Muse, of the man, etc.]. In Ovid, Love speaks as if he were a human person, at the beginning of the book of the Remedy for Love, here: Bella mihi, video, bella parantur, ait [Wars against me, I see, wars are preparing, he says].
And by this the matter may now be clear to any one who is perplexed in any part of this my little book.
And in order that no uncultured person may derive any over-boldness herefrom, I say, that the poets do not speak thus without reason, and that those who rhyme ought not to speak thus, unless they have some reason for what they say; since it would be a great disgrace to him who should rhyme anything under the garb of a figure or of rhetorical coloring, if afterward, being asked, he should not be able to denude his words of this garb, in such wise that they should have a true meaning. And my first friend and I are well acquainted with those who rhyme thus foolishly.