Page:Petrach, the first modern scholar and man of letters.djvu/305

Next, prompted by this reference to Cicero and Plato, you discourse—with wonderful eloquence and charm for one who is speaking about things that he does not understand—upon the poets in general, entering into an enthusiastic discussion of the identity of one and another of them, the time when they were born, the characteristics of their style, the particular kind of poetry that they affected, and their place upon the roll of fame. To review all this in detail would be too long a task,—so numerous are the things which none of us had ever heard of before, but you have now disclosed to such of us as are eager to learn, in this eloquent epistle. And yet on second thought, if you will concede to me, or rather not to me but to my calling, the right to offer just one objection, I shall express my wonder at finding the names of Nævius and Plautus so entirely unknown to you that you think me guilty of a solecism in inserting them in my letter, and reprove me indirectly for daring, as Flaccus puts it, to invent characters before unheard of. You do not make this charge in so many words, but your doubts are such and so stated as to amount to nothing less than a condemnation of my temerity in bringing upon the stage names that are strange and foreign. It is true, you did in the end curb your longing to speak plainly, and with your usual courtesy and modesty chose to blame rather your own ignorance. And yet, unless I am greatly mistaken, it is one of those cases where a man's words say one thing but his real convictions loudly proclaim another. I wonder at this, for Terence you