DEDICATORY LETTER
forms of speech from one to the other; and these endure or fail according as custom accepts or rejects them. Besides being attested by the ancients, this is clearly seen in Boccaccio, who used so many French, Spanish, and Provençal words (some of them perhaps not very intelligible to modern Tuscans) that if they were all omitted his work would be far shorter.
And since, in my opinion, we ought not to despise the idiom of the other noble cities of Italy, whither men resort who are wise, witty, and eloquent, wont to discourse on weighty matters of statecraft, letters, war, and commerce, I think that, of the words used in the speech of these places, I could fitly use in writing such as are graceful in themselves, elegant to pronounce, and commonly deemed good and expressive, although they might not be Tuscan or even of Italian origin. Moreover, in Tuscany, many words are used which are plainly corruptions of the Latin, but which in Lombardy and other parts of Italy have remained pure and unchanged, and are so generally employed by everyone that they are accepted by the gentle and easily understood by the vulgar.Hence I think I did not err if in writing I used some of these words, or preferred what is whole and true speech of my own country rather than what is corrupt and mutilated from abroad.
Neither do I regard as sound the maxim laid down by many, that our common speech is the more beautiful the less it is like Latin; nor do I understand why one fashion of speech should be accorded so much greater authority than another, that, if the Tuscan tongue can ennoble debased and mutilated Latin -words and lend them such grace that, mutilated as they are, they may be used by anyone without reproach (which is not denied), the Lombard or any other tongue may not support these same Latin words, pure, whole, precise, and quite unchanged, so that they be tolerable. And truly, just as to undertake, in spite of usage, to coin new words or to preserve old ones may be called bold presumption, so also, besides being difficult, it seems almost impious to undertake, against the force of that same usage, to suppress and bury alive, as it were, words that have already endured for many centuries, protected by the shield of custom against the envy of time, and have maintained their dignity and splendour
