United States or Paraguay ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But although that day was passed without books or lecture, yet was it not spent without profit; for in the said meadows they usually repeated certain pleasant verses of Virgil's agriculture, of Hesiod and of Politian's husbandry, would set a-broach some witty Latin epigrams, then immediately turned them into roundelays and songs for dancing in the French language.
Scala replied by a bad joke, in suitable Latin verses, referring to Politian's unsuccessful suit. Better and better.
Here was a new Greek scholar whose accomplishments were to be tested, and on nothing did Scala more desire a dispassionate opinion from persons of superior knowledge than on that Greek epigram of Politian's.
But the probabilities are in favour of Politian's account being the true one, and the later story a political invention. Lorenzo dead and Piero his son so incapable, Savonarola came to his own.
He could doubtless appreciate satire even in the vulgar tongue, and Scala who, excellent man, not seeking publicity through the booksellers, was never unprovided with "hasty uncorrected trifles," as a sort of sherbet for a visitor on a hot day, or, if the weather were cold, why then as a cordial had a few little matters in the shape of Sonnets, turning on well-known foibles of Politian's, which he would not like to go any farther, but which would, perhaps, amuse the company.
But the eyes of the father had long been silent, and the eyes of the daughter were bent on the Latin pages of Politian's `Miscellanea, from which she was reading aloud at the eightieth chapter, to the following effect: "There was a certain nymph of Thebes named Chariclo, especially dear to Pallas; and this nymph was the mother of Teiresias.
For the rest, he had barely enough Greek to make out the sense of the epigram so graciously sent him, to say nothing of tasting its elegances; but the epigram was Politian's: what more need be said? Still, by way of postscript, he feared that his incomparable friend's comparison of the gnat to Venus, on account of its origin from the waters, was in many ways ticklish.
Word Of The Day