“When I began to learn Latin, the Abbe Lazzarini told me he preferred Livy to Sallust.”

“The Abbe Lazzarini, author of the tragedy, ‘Ulisse il giovine’?  You must have been very young; I wish I had known him.  But I knew the Abbe Conti well; the same that was Newton’s friend, and whose four tragedies contain the whole of Roman history.”

“I also knew and admired him.  I was young, but I congratulated myself on being admitted into the society of these great men.  It seems as if it were yesterday, though it is many years ago; and now in your presence my inferiority does not humiliate me.  I wish to be the younger son of all humanity.”

“Better so than to be the chief and eldest.  May I ask you to what branch of literature you have devoted yourself?”

“To none; but that, perhaps, will come afterwards.  In the meantime I read as much as I can, and try to study character on my travels.”

“That is the way to become learned, but the book of humanity is too vast.  Reading a history is the easier way.”

“Yes, if history did not lie.  One is not sure of the truth of the facts.  It is tiring, while the study of the world is amusing.  Horace, whom I know by heart, is my guide-book.”

“Algarotti, too, is very fond of Horace.  Of course you are fond of poetry?”

“It is my passion.”

“Have you made many sonnets?”

“Ten or twelve I like, and two or three thousand which in all probability I have not read twice.”

“The Italians are mad after sonnets.”

“Yes; if one can call it a madness to desire to put thought into measured harmony.  The sonnet is difficult because the thought has to be fitted exactly into the fourteen lines.”

“It is Procrustes’ bed, and that’s the reason you have so few good ones.  As for us, we have not one; but that is the fault of our language.”

“And of the French genius, which considers that a thought when extended loses all its force.”

“And you do not think so?”

“Pardon me, it depends on the kind of thought.  A witty saying, for example, will not make a sonnet; in French or Italian it belongs to the domain of epigram.”

“What Italian poet do you like best?”

“Ariosto; but I cannot say I love him better than the others, for he is my only love.”

“You know the others, though?”

“I think I have read them all, but all their lights pale before Ariosto’s.  Fifteen years ago I read all you have written against him, and I said that you, would retract when you had read his works.”

“I am obliged to you for thinking that I had not read them.  As a matter of fact I had done so, but I was young.  I knew Italian very imperfectly, and being prejudiced by the learned Italians who adore Tasso I was unfortunate enough to publish a criticism of Ariosto which I thought my own, while it was only the echo of those who had prejudiced me.  I adore your Ariosto!”