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- Title: Petrarch's Secret
- or the Soul's Conflict with Passion (Three Dialogues Between
- Himself and S. Augustine
- Author: Francesco Petrarca
- Translator: William H. Draper
- Release Date: July 17, 2015 [EBook #49450]
- Language: English
- *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PETRARCH'S SECRET ***
- Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org
- PETRARCH'S SECRET
- OR
- THE SOUL'S CONFLICT WITH
- PASSION
- THREE DIALOGUES BETWEEN HIMSELF
- AND S. AUGUSTINE
- TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN BY
- WILLIAM H. DRAPER
- WITH TWO ILLUSTRATIONS
- LONDON
- CHATTO & WINDUS
- MDCCCCXI
- FRANCIS PETRARCH
- EMILIAE AUGUSTAE
- PER ANNUS XXII
- COLLABORANTI MECUM, COMPATIENTI, COLLAETANTI
- PETRARCAE HOC COLLOQUIUM
- MEMORABILE
- AMORIS DULCEDINE LACRIMISQUE TINCTUM
- IAM DEMUM ANGLICE REDDITUM
- GRATUS DEDICO
- A. S. MDCCCCXI
- CONTENTS
- INTRODUCTION
- AUTHOR'S PREFACE
- DIALOGUE THE FIRST
- DIALOGUE THE SECOND
- DIALOGUE THE THIRD
- INTRODUCTION
- Most modern writers on Petrarch agree in stating that of all his works
- the Dialogues which he calls _Secretum meum_ are the one which throws
- most light upon the man himself.
- Yet no English translation has hitherto been published. A French
- version by M. Victor Develay was issued a few years ago, and received
- the recognition of the French Academy; and, considering the great
- importance of Petrarch in the history of the Renaissance, not merely in
- Italy but in Europe, it is time that a similar opportunity of knowing
- him more fully was offered to English readers; for there are signs on
- both sides of the Atlantic that the number of those interested in him
- is steadily growing. The reason for this is undoubtedly the fact that,
- as the whole work of Petrarch comes to be better known, interest in him
- as a man increases. Mr. Sidney Lee has lately reminded us of his wide
- range and predominating influence in the matter of the sonnet in France
- and in Elizabethan England, as well as in his own country; and yet that
- influence was very far indeed from revealing all that Petrarch was.
- It was largely an influence of style, a triumph of the perfection of
- form, and his imitators did not trouble much about the precise nature
- of the sentiment and spirit informing the style. When this came to
- be weighed in the balances of a later day, the tendency of English
- feeling was to regard his sentiment as a trifle too serious and weak.
- The love-making of the Cavaliers brought in a robuster tone. When once
- the question was raised, "Why so pale and wan, fond lover?" there was
- really no good answer to it on Petrarchan lines, and the consequence
- was that his name and fame suffered something of eclipse among us. But
- eclipses are transient events, and when literary England felt once more
- the attraction of Italy in the end of the eighteenth century it was not
- only Dante who began to resume his sway and to provoke translation, but
- Petrarch also. Then attention was turned chiefly to his Italian poetry,
- but also in some degree to the general body of his Latin works and to
- his Letters, of which it is reported that Fox was among the first to
- perceive the high value. In England the pioneers in this direction were
- Mrs. Susannah Dobson, who published first a Life of Petrarch in two
- volumes in 1775, which had by 1805 reached a sixth edition, and, soon
- after, another volume called _Petrarch's View of Life_, purporting to
- be a translation, but in fact a very loose and attenuated abstract
- of the treatise _De remediis utriusque Fortunæ,_ which nevertheless
- reached a new edition in 1797. Then came a volume of Essays on Petrarch
- (Murray 1823) by the Italian exile Ugo Foscolo, and a little later a
- second Life of the Poet by no less a person than Thomas Campbell, also
- in two volumes.
- Testifying to the re-awakened interest in Petrarch, numerous
- translations also of his poetry were published by Lady Dacre, Hugh
- Boyd, Leigh Hunt, Capel Lofft, and many others, who took up after a
- long interval the tradition begun by Chaucer and handed on by Surrey,
- Wyatt, Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser, Drummond of Hawthornden, and George
- Chapman.
- Then for a while there was a pause, and the main drift of such
- attention in England as could be spared for things Italian in
- mid-Victorian days was concentrated on the greater luminary of the
- _Divine Comedy_ and the exciting political events of the sixties;
- though some attention was drawn to things connected with Petrarch by
- Lytton's novel of _Rienzi_, which was first published in 1835 and had a
- considerable vogue.
- Meanwhile in Italy itself his fame was well served by the excellent
- collection and reprint of his Latin letters by Fracasetti in three
- vols. (1859-63), and since that time there have appeared several
- important works dealing with the larger aspects of his life and
- work, most notable among them being Koerting's _Petrarka's Leben und
- Werke_ (Leipsig 1878), and in France M. P. de Nolhac's _Pétrarque et
- l'Humanisme_ (two vols., 1907, new edition), with other subsidiary
- works, and four small volumes by M. Henri Cochin, elucidating what is
- known of Petrarch's brother Gherardo and some of his many friends.
- Amongst ourselves in late years, following the labours of J. A. Symonds
- in his history of the Renaissance, we have Henry Reeve's small but
- well-planned volume in the "Foreign Classics for English Readers," and,
- more recently still, Mr. Hollway Calthrop's _Petrarch: his Life, Work
- and Times_ (1907), and Mrs. Maud Jerrold's _Francesco Petrarca: Poet
- and Humanist_ (1909).
- It is significant that both the last writers single out the _Secretum_
- for its psychological interest, the former stating that "to those who
- feel the charm of Petrarch's nature and the intense humanity of his
- character, these three Dialogues are the most fascinating of all his
- writings"; and the latter "that this conflict of the dual self is of
- quite peculiar interest."
- Mrs. Jerrold indeed goes so far as to say that Petrarch "plunges into
- the most scathing self-examination that any man ever made. Whether
- the book was intended for the public we may well doubt, both from the
- words of the preface and from the fact that it does not appear to have
- been published till after the author's death. But however this may
- be, it remains one of the world's great monuments of self-revelation
- and ranks with the _Confessions of S. Augustine_"--a verdict which to
- some critics will seem to have a touch of overstatement, though hardly
- beyond the opinion of Petrarch's French students, and not altogether
- unpardonable in so enthusiastic an admirer of her subject, and a
- verdict which at least would not have been displeasing to Petrarch
- himself.
- Among the many points of human interest to be found in the Dialogues
- not the least is the one connected with Accidie, a theme which has
- of itself attracted special study in the present day, particularly
- since attention was called to it by the late Bishop of Oxford in his
- well-known introduction to the _Spirit of Discipline._ Observers of
- mental life incline to the view that the form of depression denoted
- by the mediæval word was not confined to those times or met with only
- in monasteries, and it is curious that he who is sometimes called
- the "first of the moderns" should take us into his confidence as to
- his sufferings from this trouble, and exemplify the truth of the
- observation to which reference has been made. M. P. de Nolhac, in his
- interesting work entitled _Le Frère de Pétrarque,_ calls particular
- attention to this trait in Petrarch's character, and in an appendix on
- the subject writes, "Mais il faut surtout lire l'émouvante discussion
- que Pétrarque, dans le second dialogue du _Secretum_, suppose entre
- Saint Augustin et lui-meme, les aveux entrecoupés de sanglots qu'il
- laisse échapper. Cette torture, dit-il, où il passe des jours et des
- nuits, a pourtant en elle je ne sais quelle atroce volupté tellement
- que parfois il en conte de s'y arracher" (p. 220). It is the remarking
- on this note of self-will, this _voluptas dolendi,_ that M. de Nolhac
- considers is Petrarch's special contribution to the subject and
- furnishes a new point beyond what is in previous definitions.
- The fundamental question raised by these Dialogues is the question
- of what was the real nature and character of Petrarch, and wherein
- lay the secret of his extraordinary charm and influence among his
- contemporaries, and especially among contemporary men? It is difficult
- to convey in few words how great an impression the study of his
- Latin works makes in regard to this influence in his own lifetime.
- Of course, a reader is soon aware of the trait of personal vanity in
- Petrarch and of certain unconscious littlenesses, as in the matter of
- his appreciation of Dante; but the strange thing is how little this
- interfered with the regard and admiration extended to him by many
- sorts and conditions of men. In the ordinary intercourse of life one
- is apt to think such a trait fatal to anything like respect, and it
- must always detract somewhat from the full stature of any mind, but in
- the case of Petrarch it seems evident that he was one to whom much
- was forgiven, and that the reason is to be found in the presence in
- him of so rich an assemblage of other and better qualities that this
- one hardly counted at all, or was looked on with kindly amusement by
- friends large-hearted enough to think it nothing compared with what was
- good and admirable in his mind. We may take it for granted that, as he
- hints in his "Letter to Posterity," he started with the advantage of a
- good presence and a sufficient care of his own person and appearance
- in younger days; and it is evident that he had by nature a certain
- engaging frankness and impulsiveness, which nevertheless were not
- inconsistent with the contrasted qualities of gravity and dignity,
- learned at first from his father and mother and their friends, and
- cultivated by his study of the Law and afterwards by his attendance on
- the Papal court at Avignon. One can discern this in his Letters and
- see it reflected in those that were written to him or about him. But
- beyond these introductory qualities, as they may be called, there were
- other deeper traits, of rarer kind, that must be noted before one can
- understand the position he attained and has held so long. Studying
- his work from the cool distance of six centuries, one is inclined to
- judge that the most fundamental quality of his nature was his love of
- literature, and that every other trait took a subordinate place to
- this.
- It is perhaps doubtful whether this or the life of personal affection,
- or even of devotion in a monastery, would have gained the upper hand if
- the circumstances of his life had been different in the matter of his
- love for Laura; but taking into consideration that she was separated
- from him apparently by temperament and circumstance, the one course
- that remained open to him without let or hindrance was the life of
- literature in the sense of devotion to the great writers of the Past
- and the practice of the art of writing for himself. He loved this for
- its own sake, and at the same time he was quickened by the sense of a
- new learning, which, since his time and largely by the impetus he gave
- it, has taken form and outline in a wonderful way, but was then only
- like the first streak of dawn upon the sky.
- Petrarch was not the first man to find a certain contradiction between
- his desires and the possibilities of life around him, and to pass
- many years under the pain of contrary attractions that could not all
- be followed to fulfilment This conflict is what gives interest to the
- _Secretum._ Some have thought, and the idea was expressed by one of his
- correspondents, that his love for Laura was very much of a literary
- pose. Yet that such a view is an insufficient account of it seems
- pretty clearly established by the work here translated. It is, indeed,
- plain that his feelings ran a course, and not a smooth one, and did
- not continue in one stay; he came to see the whole matter in a changed
- light, and yet not wholly changed; his relation was transfigured, not
- abandoned, and after the death of Laura, which took place when he was
- forty-four, it continued as a memory from which the pain had faded away
- and only what was uplifting remained.
- That which persisted unchanged all through his life and seems most to
- have had the colour and substance of a passion was the love of Letters.
- To this his friendship, his very real patriotism, and (must we not
- add?) his religion also were in a sense second. But the mention of this
- last factor in the life of Petrarch leads one to express the opinion
- that this has not yet been quite sufficiently reckoned with. That it
- should not have been thought worthy of such reckoning has probably
- arisen from the one ugly fact in his life which he himself does not
- conceal, and indeed expressly refers to in his "Letter to Posterity,"
- in the following words:--
- "As for the looser indulgences of appetite, would indeed I could
- say I was a stranger to them altogether; but if I should so say, I
- should lie. This I can safely affirm that, although I was hurried away
- to them by the fervour of my age and temperament, their vileness I
- have always inwardly execrated. As soon as I approached my fortieth
- year I repelled these weaknesses entirely from _my_ thoughts and my
- remembrance, as if I had never known them. And this I count among my
- earliest happy recollections, thanking God, who has freed me, while
- yet my powers were unimpaired and strong, from this so vile and always
- hateful servitude."[1]
- Now, although Petrarch did not, as some other men have done, including
- his own brother, express his repentance by retiring to a monastery, yet
- there is evidence enough that the change of will here referred to, and
- professed in the _Secretum_, was real, and that the older he grew the
- more he lifted up his heart. Among other signs of this there is the
- curious little group of what he calls _Penitential Psalms,_ which were
- translated into English by George Chapman, into whose translation of
- Homer Keats looked and was inspired
- In his Will also there are not a few passages through which one hears
- a note of genuine penitence. Among other curious points in it is the
- mention of the exact spot in which he would wish to be laid to rest
- in some one of seven different places where he might happen to die,
- the last being the city of Parma, of which he says, "At si Parmæ, in
- ecclesiâ majori, ubi per multos annos archidiaconus fui inutilis et
- semper fere absens."
- Petrarch must have fully weighed in his own case the pros and cons
- for such retirement. His treatise _De Otio Religiosorum_ shows that
- he understood what good side that kind of life has, and his whole
- attitude towards his brother--generous, and attached, almost to the
- point of romance--reveals how he could admire it. But in his own case
- he felt that it would cramp his faculties too much to be endurable, and
- hinder more than it would help the kind of work to which he had put
- his hand. There was also another influence that told strongly on this
- father of Humanism. He whose nature was so full of unsatisfied natural
- affection had begun in his latter years to find some rest and blessing
- in the love and tendance of a daughter, the light of whose care and
- companionship for him shines through his declining days like the rays
- of the sun in the evening after a dark and troubled day.
- But if we are right in judging that the love of Letters was the
- dominant factor in the life of Petrarch, it was but the main thread in
- a singularly complex nature. Not much less in substance and strength
- was his genius for friendship. Indeed, his study of the writers of
- past ages partook of the nature of friendship, just as his friendship
- with living men had a deep literary tinge. He loved books and he loved
- men, and he loved them in the same way. This is by no means a frequent
- combination in the degree in which it was shown in Petrarch. More
- often the book-lover becomes a recluse, and the lover of his fellow-men
- loses his ardour for study.
- But not even the love of books and of men took up all the activities
- of this rich nature. He was also a keen traveller and among the first
- to write of natural scenery in the modern spirit. He had that in him
- which, in spite of his love for reading and writing, sent him forth
- into other lands and made him eager to see men and cities. Yet the
- love of the country in him prevailed over the love of cities. His many
- references to his life at Vaucluse, though to readers of to-day they
- may seem sometimes affected, yet show only a superficial affectation, a
- mere mode, which does not seriously lessen the impression of his simple
- taste and his genuine delight in his garden and his fishing, and his
- talk with the charming old farmer-man and that sun-burnt wife for whom
- he had such an unbounded respect.
- In the two recent lives of Petrarch in English a reader may make closer
- acquaintance with this side of his character, and will find much that
- falls in with modern feeling as to simplicity of living and the joys of
- escaping from "the man-stifled town." But what is still a desideratum
- is a good English translation of his Letters to his friends, which will
- add many glimpses of his daily interests and thoughts, and fill up the
- picture of his interior life as it is disclosed to us in the Dialogues
- here presented.
- What the _Secretum gives_ us is the picture of Petrarch as he was
- in the crisis of his middle years. It was written in or about the
- year 1342 when he was thirty-eight, and in these Dialogues we find
- him looking back over his youth and early life--the sap and vigour
- of his mind as strong as ever, the recollection of many sensations
- green and still powerful--but finding that the sheer march of time
- and experience of manhood are forcing him now to see things with more
- mature vision. Five years later he will be seen suddenly kindled into
- surprising excitement in that strange Rienzi episode, but in one of
- his letters to that unhappy politician there is a sentence which might
- have been penned by Bishop Butler, and has in it the accent of grave
- experience:[2] _"Ibunt res quâ sempiterna lex statuit: mutare ista non
- possum, fugere possum"_ (Things will go as the law eternal has decided:
- to alter their course is out of our power; what we can do is to get out
- of their way).
- The interest of the _Secretum_ is heightened by remembering the time
- of life in which it was composed.[3] Some will find most pleasure in
- reading what men have written _De Senectute_, and others prefer the
- charm that belongs to youth; but is there not much to be said for the
- interest of what men write from that high tableland that lies between
- the two, in the full strength of their mind when they have lived long
- enough to know what is hidden from the eyes of youth and not long
- enough to be wearied and broken with the greatness of the way? Such is
- the tone that seems to pervade the Dialogues between S. Augustine and
- Petrarch. In the preface he looks forward to cherishing the little book
- himself in future years, like some flower that keeps alive remembrance
- of past days and yet is not cherished for memory only, but to guard the
- resolution which has been taken to go forward and not back, and, as his
- French translator suggests, "Is it to be wondered at that these pages,
- written with such _abandon_, in which he has laid bare his whole soul,
- should have been his own favourite work? It was the book he kept at his
- bedside, his faithful counsellor and friend, and to which he turned
- ever and again with pleasure in the hours of remembering the time past."
- It is not necessary to tell over again the story of Petrarch's lifelong
- devotion to the study of S. Augustine's _Confessions,_ or to dwell on
- the obvious reasons for that devotion. Every man loves the book which
- tells the history of conflicts like his own, and which has helped to
- give him courage in his warfare and its sorrows and joys.
- "That loss is common would not make
- My own less bitter, rather more;"
- sings the poet, but if one reads the experience of those who have
- suffered and contended and conquered, and is sure that their load was
- as heavy as his own, then there is a spirit which is breathed over
- from one life to another, and which even though it tells us how great
- is the burden of sorrow in the world, yet also tells us that a man
- is not alone, but that there are companions in patience who a little
- strengthen each other and give the sense of fellowship from age to age,
- _donec aspiret dies et inclinentur umbrae._
- Many of the letters of Petrarch's later years show how wistfully he
- waited for that day. But they also show how gallant a heart he kept,
- and how faithful to those friends that remained, including the one so
- lovable and generous and true, Giovanni Boccaccio, who survived him
- little more than a year.
- Petrarch passed the end of his life in a modest house which he built in
- one of the loveliest parts of Italy, that to English readers will be
- for ever dear because of the haunting music that Shelley wove around
- its name.
- It was in the Euganæan Hills at Arqua where Petrarch chose to wait for
- the dawn, and, till it came, to go on working among the books he loved
- as his own soul.
- "Many a green isle needs must be
- In the deep wide sea of misery,"
- and to read the story of his last years there is to think of one of
- those green isles. These were days of calm, and the book of the Secret
- ends with the expression of hope for a deeper calm still. In due time
- it came, but, as the English Poet sang, after more than six centuries--
- The love from Petrarch's urn
- Yet amid yon hills doth burn,
- [1] Translation by H. Reeve.
- [2] _De rebus fam.,_ vii. 7.
- [3] The profile portrait, reproduced by kind permission of Mr. T.
- Fisher Unwin, publisher of Mr. E. J. Mills' book on Petrarch, is from
- Lombardo's copy of the _De viris illustribus,_ finished about five
- years after the death of Petrarch, and is believed to be an authentic
- picture of him in later life.
- A QUENCHLESS LAMP.
- [Illustration]
- [Illustration: S. AUGUSTINE GREETING A FRIEND _From a picture by
- Benozzo Gozzoli at San Gimignano_]
- PETRARCH'S SECRET
- AUTHOR'S PREFACE
- Often have I wondered with much curiosity as to our coming into this
- world and what will follow our departure. When I was ruminating lately
- on this matter, not in any dream as one in sickness and slumber, but
- wide awake and with all my wits about me, I was greatly astonished to
- behold a very beautiful Lady, shining with an indescribable light about
- her. She seemed as one whose beauty is not known, as it might be, to
- mankind. I could not tell how she came there, but from her raiment and
- appearance I judged her a fair Virgin, and her eyes, like the sun,
- seemed to send forth rays of such light that they made me lower my own
- before her, so that I was afraid to look up. When she saw this she
- said, Fear not; and let not the strangeness of my presence affright you
- in any wise. I saw your steps had gone astray; and I had compassion on
- you and have come down from above to bring you timely succour. Hitherto
- your eyes have been darkened and you have looked too much, yes, far
- too much, upon the things of earth. If these so much delight you, what
- shall be your rapture when you lift your gaze to things eternal!
- When I heard her thus speak, though my fear still clung about me with
- trembling voice I made reply in Virgil's words--
- "What name to call thee by, O Virgin fair,
- I know not, for thy looks are not of earth
- And more than mortal seems thy countenance."[1]
- I am that Lady, she answered, whom you have depicted in your poem
- _Africa_ with rare art and skill, and for whom, like another Amphion of
- Thebes, you have with poetic hands built a fair and glorious Palace in
- the far West on Atlas's lofty peak.
- Be not afraid, then, to listen and to look upon the face of her who, as
- your finely-wrought allegory proves, has been well-known to you from of
- old.
- Scarcely had she uttered these words when, as I pondered all these
- things in my mind, it occurred to me this could be none other than
- Truth herself who thus spoke. I remembered how I had described her
- abode on the heights of Atlas; yet was I ignorant from what region
- she had come, save only that I felt assured she could have come from
- none other place than Heaven. Therefore I turned my gaze towards her,
- eagerly desiring to look upon her face; but lo, the eye of man is
- unable to gaze on that ethereal Form, wherefore again was I forced
- to turn them towards the ground. When she took note of this, after a
- short silence, she spoke once more; and, questioning me many times, she
- led me to engage with her in long discourse. From this converse I was
- sensible of gaining a twofold benefit for I won knowledge, and the very
- act of talking with her gave me confidence. I found myself by degrees
- becoming able to look upon the face which at first dismayed me by its
- splendour, and as soon as I was able to bear it without dread, and gaze
- fixedly on her wondrous beauty, I looked to see if she were accompanied
- with any other, or had come upon the retirement of my solitude alone;
- and as I did so I discerned at her side the figure of an aged man, of
- aspect venerable and full of majesty. There was no need to inquire his
- name. His religious bearing, modest brow, his eyes full of dignity, his
- measured step, his African look, but Roman speech, plainly declared
- him to be that most illustrious Father, Augustine. Moreover, he had
- so gracious a mien, and withal so noble, that one could not possibly
- imagine it to belong to any other than to him. Even so I was on the
- point of opening my lips to ask, when at that moment I heard the name
- so dear to me uttered from the lips of Truth herself. Turning herself
- to him, as if to intervene upon his deep meditation, she addressed
- him in these words: "Augustine, dear to me above a thousand others,
- you know how devoted to yourself this man is, and you are aware also
- with how dangerous and long a malady he is stricken, and that he is so
- much nearer to Death as he knows not the gravity of his disease. It is
- needful, then, that one take thought for this man's life forthwith,
- and who so fit to undertake the pious work as yourself? He has ever
- been deeply attached to your name and person; and all good doctrine
- is wont more easily to enter the mind of the disciple when he already
- starts with loving the Master from whom he is to learn. Unless your
- present happiness has made you quite forget your former sorrow, you
- will remember that when you were shut in the prison of the mortal body
- you also were subject to like temptation as his. And if that were so,
- most excellent Physician of those passions yourself experienced, even
- though your silent meditation be full of sweetness to your mind, I beg
- that your sacred voice, which to me is ever a delight, shall break its
- silence, and try whether you are able by some means to bring calm to
- one so deeply distressed."
- Augustine answered her: "You are my guide, my Counsellor, my Sovereign,
- my Ruler; what is it, then, you would have me say in your presence?"
- "I would," she replied, "that some human voice speak to the ears of
- this mortal man. He will better bear to hear truth so. But seeing that
- whatever you shall say to him he will take as said by me, I also will
- be present in person during your discourse."
- Augustine answered her, "The love I bear to this sick man, as well
- as the authority of her who speaks, make it my duty to obey." Then,
- looking kindly at me and pressing me to his heart in fatherly embrace,
- he led me away to the most retired corner he could find, and Truth
- herself went on a few steps in front. There we all three sat down.
- Then while Truth listened as the silent Judge, none other beside her
- being present, we held long converse on one side and the other; and
- because of the greatness of the theme, the discourse between us lasted
- over three days. Though we talked of many things much against the
- manners of this age, and on faults and failings common to mankind, in
- such wise that the reproaches of the Master seemed in a sense more
- directed against men in general than against myself, yet those which
- to me came closest home I have graven with more especial vividness on
- the tablet of my memory. That this discourse, so intimate and deep,
- might not be lost, I have sot it down in writing and made this book;
- not that I wish to class it with my other works, or desire from it any
- credit. My thoughts aim higher. What I desire is that I may be able
- by reading to renew as often as I wish the pleasure I felt from the
- discourse itself. So, little Book, I bid you flee the haunts of men and
- be content to stay with me, true to the title I have given you of "My
- Secret": and when I would think upon deep matters, all that you keep
- in remembrance that was spoken in secret you in secret will tell to me
- over again.
- To avoid the too frequent iteration of the words "said I," "said he,"
- and to bring the personages of the Dialogue, as it were, before one's
- very eyes, I have acted on Cicero's method and merely placed the name
- of each interlocutor before each paragraph.[2] My dear Master learned
- this mode himself from Plato. But to cut short all further digression,
- this is how Augustine opened the discourse.
- [1] _Æneid,_ i. 327-28.
- [2] _De Amicitiâ_, i.
- DIALOGUE THE FIRST
- S. AUGUSTINE--PETRARCH
- _S. Augustine._ What have you to say, O man of little strength? Of what
- are you dreaming? For what are you looking? Remember you not you are
- mortal?
- _Petrarch._ Yes, I remember it right well, and a shudder comes upon me
- every time that remembrance rises in my breast.
- _S. Augustine._ May you, indeed, remember as you say, and take heed for
- yourself. You will spare me much trouble by so doing. For there con
- be no doubt that to recollect one's misery and to practise frequent
- meditation on death is the surest aid in scorning the seductions of
- this world, and in ordering the soul amid its storms and tempests, if
- only such meditation be not superficial, but sink into the bones and
- marrow of the heart. Yet am I greatly afraid lest that happen in your
- case which I have seen in so many others, and you be found deceiving
- your own self.
- _Petrarch_. In what way do you mean? For I do not clearly understand
- the drift of your remarks.
- _S. Augustine._ O race of mortal men, this it is that above all makes
- me astonished and fearful for you, when I behold you, of your own will
- clinging to your miseries; pretending that you do not know the peril
- hanging over your heads and if one bring it under your very eyes, you
- try to thrust it from your sight and put it afar off.
- _Petrarch._ In what way are we so mad?
- _S. Augustine._ Do you suppose there is any living man so unreasonable
- that if he found himself stricken with a dangerous ailment he would not
- anxiously desire to regain the blessing of health?
- _Petrarch._ I do not suppose such a case has ever been heard of.
- _S. Augustine._ And do you think if one wished for a thing with all
- one's soul one would be so idle and careless as not to use all possible
- means to obtain what one desired?
- _Petrarch._ No one, I think, would be so foolish.
- _S. Augustine._ If we are agreed on these two points, so we ought also
- to agree on a third.
- _Petrarch._ What is this third point?
- _S. Augustine._ It is this: that just as he who by deep meditation has
- discovered he is miserable will ardently wish to be so no more; and as
- he who has formed this wish will seek to have it realised, so he who
- seeks will be able to reach what he wishes. It is clear that the third
- step depends on the second as the second on the first. And therefore
- the first should be, as it were, a root of salvation in man's heart.
- Now you mortal men, and you yourself with all your power of mind, keep
- doing your best by all the pleasures of the world to pull up this
- saving root out of your hearts, which, as I said, fills me with horror
- and wonder. With justice, therefore, you are punished by the loss of
- this root of salvation and the consequent loss of all the rest.
- _Petrarch_. I foresee this complaint you bring is likely to be
- lengthy, and take many words to develop it. Would you mind, therefore,
- postponing it to another occasion? And that I may travel more surely to
- your conclusion, may we send a little more time over the premisses?
- _S. Augustine_. I must concede something to, your slowness of mind; so
- please stop me at any point where you wish.
- _Petrarch_. Well, if I must speak for myself, I do not follow your
- chain of reasoning.
- _S. Augustine_. What possible obscurity is there in it? What are you in
- doubt about now?
- _Petrarch_. I believe there is a multitude of things for which we
- ardently long, which we seek for with all our energy, but which
- nevertheless, however diligent we are, we never have obtained and never
- shall.
- _S. Augustine_. That may be true of other desires, but in regard to
- that we have now under discussion the case is wholly different.
- _Petrarch._ What makes you say that?
- _S. Augustine._ Because every man who desires to be delivered from his
- misery, provided only he desires sincerely and with all his heart,
- cannot fail to obtain that which he desires.
- _Petrarch_. O father, what is this I hear? There are few men indeed who
- do not feel they lack many things and who would not confess they were
- so far unhappy. Every one who questions his own heart will acknowledge
- it is so. By natural consequence if the fulness of blessing makes man
- happy, all things he lacks will so far make him unhappy. This burden
- of unhappiness all men would fain lay down, as every one is aware; but
- every one is aware also that very few have been able. How many there
- are who have felt the crushing weight of grief, through bodily disease,
- or the loss of those they loved, or imprisonment, or exile, or hard
- poverty, or other misfortunes it would take too long to tell over; and
- yet they who suffer these things have only too often to lament that it
- is not permitted them, as you suggest, to be set free. To me, then,
- it seems quite beyond dispute that a multitude of men are unhappy by
- compulsion and in spite of themselves.
- _S. Augustine_. I must take you a long way back, and as one does with
- the very young whose wits are slight and slow, I must ask you to
- follow out the thread of my discourse from its very simplest elements.
- I thought your mind was more advanced, and I had no idea you still
- needed lessons so childish. Ah, if only you had kept in mind those true
- and saving maxims of the wise which you have so often read and re-read
- with me; if, I must take leave to say, you had but wrought for yourself
- instead of others; if you had but applied your study of so many volumes
- to the ruling of your own conduct, instead of to vanity and gaining the
- empty praise of men, you would not want to retail such low and absurd
- follies.
- _Petrarch._ I know not where you want to take me, but already I am
- aware of the blush mounting to my brow, and I feel like schoolboys in
- presence of an angry master. Before they know what they are accused of
- they think of many offences of which they are guilty, and at the very
- first word from the master's lips they are filled with confusion. In
- like case I too am conscious of my ignorance and of many other faults,
- and though I perceive not the drift of your admonition, yet as I know
- almost everything bad may be brought against me, I blush even before
- you have done speaking. So pray state more clearly what is this biting
- accusation that you have made.
- _S. Augustine_. I shall have many things to lay to your charge
- presently. Just now what makes me so indignant is to hear you suppose
- that any one can become or can be unhappy against his will.
- _Petrarch_. I might as well spare my blushes. For what more obvious
- truth than this can possibly be imagined? What man exists so ignorant
- or so far removed from all contact with the world as not to know that
- penury, grief, disgrace, illness, death, and other evils too that are
- reckoned among the greatest, often befall us in spite of ourselves,
- and never with our own consent? From which it follows that it is easy
- enough to know and to detest one's own misery, but not to remove it;
- so that if the two first steps depend on ourselves, the third is
- nevertheless in Fortune's hand.
- _S. Augustine._ When I saw you ashamed I was ready to give you pardon,
- but brazen impudence angers me more than error itself. How is it you
- have forgotten all those wise precepts of Philosophy, which declare
- that no man can be made unhappy by those things you rattle off by name?
- Now if it is Virtue only that makes the happiness of man, which is
- demonstrated by Cicero and a whole multitude of weighty reasons, it
- follows of necessity that nothing is opposed to true happiness except
- what is also opposed to Virtue. This truth you can yourself call to
- mind even without a word from me, at least unless your wits are very
- dull.
- _Petrarch._ I remember it quite well. You would have me bear in mind
- the precepts of the Stoics, which contradict the opinions of the crowd
- and are nearer truth than common custom is.
- _S. Augustine._ You would indeed be of all men the most miserable were
- you to try to arrive at the truth through the absurdities of the crowd,
- or to suppose that under the leadership of blind guides you would
- reach the light. You must avoid the common beaten track and set your
- aspirations higher; take the way marked by the steps of very few who
- have gone before, if you would be counted worthy to hear the Poet's
- word--
- "On, brave lad, on! your courage leading you,
- So only Heaven is scaled."[1]
- _Petrarch._ Heaven grant I may hear it ere I die! But I pray you to
- proceed. For I assure you I have by no means become shameless. I do not
- doubt the Stoics' rules are wiser far than the blunders of the crowd. I
- await therefore your further counsel.
- _S. Augustine_. Since we are agreed on this, that no one can become or
- be unhappy except through his own fault, what need of more words is
- there?
- _Petrarch._ Just this need, that I think I have seen very many people,
- and I am one of them, to whom nothing is more distressful than the
- inability to break the yoke of their faults, though all their life long
- they make the greatest efforts so to do. Wherefore, even allowing that
- the maxim of the Stoics holds good, one may yet admit that many people
- are very unhappy in spite of themselves, yes, and although they lament
- it and wish they were not, with their whole heart.
- _S. Augustine_. We have wandered somewhat from our course, but we are
- slowly working back to our starting-point. Or have you quite forgotten
- whence we set out?
- _Petrarch._ I had begun to lose sight of it, but it is coming back to
- me now.
- _S. Augustine._ What I had set out to do with you was to make clear
- that the first step in avoiding the distresses of this mortal life and
- raising the soul to higher things is to practise meditation on death
- and on man's misery; and that the second is to have a vehement desire
- and purpose to rise. When these two things were present, I promised a
- comparatively easy ascent to the goal of our desire. Unless haply to
- you it seems otherwise?
- _Petrarch_. I should certainly never venture to affirm this, for from
- my youth upwards I have had the increasing conviction that if in any
- matter I was inclined to think differently from yourself I was certain
- to be wrong.
- _S. Augustine._ We will please waive all compliments. And as I observe
- you are inclined to admit the truth of my words more out of deference
- than conviction, pray feel at liberty to say whatever your real
- judgment suggests.
- _Petrarch._ I am still afraid to be found differing, but nevertheless
- I will make use of the liberty you grant. Not to speak of other men, I
- call to witness Her who has ever been the ruling spirit of my life; you
- yourself also I call to witness how many times I have pondered over my
- own misery and over the subject of Death; with what floods of tears I
- have sought to wash away my stains, so that I can scarce speak of it
- without weeping; yet hitherto, as you see, all is in vain. This alone
- leads me to doubt the truth of that proposition you seek to establish,
- that no man has ever fallen into misery but of his own free will, or
- remained, miserable except of his own accord; the exact opposite of
- which I have proved in my own sad experience.
- _S. Augustine_. That complaint is an old one and seems likely to prove
- unending. Though I have already several times stated the truth in
- vain, I shall not cease to maintain it yet. No man can become or can
- be unhappy unless he so chooses; but as I said at the beginning, there
- is in men a certain perverse and dangerous inclination to deceive
- themselves, which is the most deadly thing in life. For if it is true
- that we rightly fear being taken in by those with whom we live, because
- our natural habit of trusting them tends to make us unsuspicious, and
- the pleasantly familiar sound of their voice is apt to put us off our
- guard,--how much rather ought you to fear the deceptions you practise
- on yourself, where love, influence, familiarity play so large a part,
- a case wherein every one esteems himself more than he deserves, loves
- himself more than he ought, and where Deceiver and Deceived are one and
- the same person?
- _Petrarch._ You have said this kind of thing pretty often to-day
- already. But I do not recollect ever practising such deception on
- myself; and I hope other people have not deceived me either.
- _S. Augustine._ Now at this very moment you are notably deceiving
- yourself when you boast never to have done such a thing at all; and I
- have a good enough hope of your own wit and talent to make me think
- that if you pay close attention you will see for yourself that no man
- can fall into misery of his own will. For on this point our whole
- discussion rests. I pray you to think well before answering, and
- give your closest attention, and be jealous for truth more than for
- disputation, but then tell me what man in the world was ever forced to
- sin? For the Seers and Wise Men require that sin must be a voluntary
- action, and so rigid is their definition that if this voluntariness is
- absent then the sin also is not there. But without sin no man is made
- unhappy, as you agreed to admit a few minutes ago.
- _Petrarch._ I perceive that by degrees I am getting away from my
- proposition and am being compelled to acknowledge that the beginning
- of my misery did arise from my own will. I feel it is true in myself,
- and I conjecture the same to be true of others. Now I beg you on your
- part to acknowledge a certain truth also.
- _S. Augustine._ What is it you wish me to acknowledge?
- _Petrarch_. That as it is true no man ever fell involuntarily, so this
- also is true that countless numbers of those who thus are voluntarily
- fallen, nevertheless do not voluntarily remain so. I affirm this
- confidently of my own self. And I believe that I have received this for
- my punishment, as I would not stand when I might, so now I cannot rise
- when I would.
- _S. Augustine._ That is indeed a wise and true view to take. Still as
- you now confess you were wrong in your first proposition, so I think
- you should own you are wrong in your second.
- _Petrarch._ Then you would say there is no distinction between falling
- and remaining fallen?
- _S. Augustine._ No, they are indeed different things; that is to say,
- different in time, but in the nature of the action and in the mind of
- the person concerned they are one and the same.
- _Petrarch._ I see in what knots you entangle me. But the wrestler who
- wins his victory by a trick is not necessarily the stronger man, though
- he may be the more practised.
- _S. Augustine._ It is Truth herself in whose presence we are
- discoursing. To her, plain simplicity is ever dear, and cunning is
- hateful. That you may see this beyond all doubt I will go forward from
- this point with all the plainness you can desire.
- _Petrarch._ You could give me no more welcome news. Tell me, then, as
- it is a question concerning myself, by what line of reasoning you mean
- to prove I am unhappy. I do not deny that I am; but I deny that it is
- with my own consent I remain so. For, on the contrary, I feel this to
- be most hateful and the very opposite of what I wish. But yet I can do
- nothing except wish.
- _S. Augustine._ If only the conditions laid down are observed, I will
- prove to you that you are misusing words.
- _Petrarch._ What conditions do you mean, and how would you have me use
- words differently?
- _S. Augustine._ Our conditions were to lay aside all juggling with
- terms and to seek truth in all plain simplicity, and the words I would
- have you use are these: instead of saying you _can_not, you ought to
- say you _will_ not.
- _Petrarch._ There will be no end then to our discussion, for that is
- what I never shall confess. I tell you I know, and you yourself are
- witness, how often I have wished to and yet could not rise. What floods
- of tears have I shed, and all to no purpose?
- _S. Augustine._ O yes, I have witnessed many tears, but very little
- will.
- _Petrarch._ Heaven is witness (for indeed I think no man on this earth
- knows) what I have suffered, and how I have longed earnestly to rise,
- if only I might.
- _S. Augustine_. Hush, hush. Heaven and earth will crash in ruin, the
- stars themselves will fall to hell, and all harmonious Nature be
- divided against itself, sooner than Truth, who is our Judge, can be
- deceived.
- _Petrarch._ And what do you mean by that?
- _S. Augustine_. I mean that your tears have often stung your conscience
- but not changed your will.
- _Petrarch._ I wonder how many times I must tell you that it is just
- this impossibility of change which I bewail.
- _S. Augustine._ And I wonder how many times I must reply that it is
- want of will, not want of power, which is the trouble.
- And yet I wonder not that now you find yourself involved in these
- perplexities; in which in time past I too was tossed about, when I was
- beginning to contemplate entering upon a new way of life.[2] I tore my
- hair; I beat my brow; my fingers I twisted nervously; I bent double and
- held my knees; I filled the air of heaven with most bitter sighs; I
- poured out tears like water on every side: yet nevertheless I remained
- what I was and no other, until a deep meditation at last showed me the
- root of all my misery and made it plain before my eyes. And then my
- will after that became fully changed, and my weakness also was changed
- in that same moment to power, and by a marvellous and most blessed
- alteration I was transformed instantly and made another man, another
- Augustine altogether. The full history of that transformation is known,
- if I mistake not, to you already in my _Confessions._
- _Petrarch._ Yes, in truth I know it well, and never can I forget the
- story of that health-bringing fig-tree, beneath whose shade the miracle
- took place.[3]
- _S. Augustine._ Well indeed may you remember it. And no tree to you
- should be more dear: no, not the myrtle, nor the ivy, nor the laurel
- beloved of Apollo and ever afterwards favoured by all the band of
- Poets, favoured too by you, above all, who alone in your age have been
- counted worthy to be crowned with its leaves; yet dearer than these
- should be to you the memory of that fig-tree, for it greets you like
- some mariner coming into haven after many storms; it holds out to you
- the path of righteousness, and a sure hope which fadeth not away, that
- presently the divine Forgiveness shall be yours.
- _Petrarch_. I would not say one word in contradiction. Go on, I beseech
- you, with what you have begun.
- _S. Augustine._ This is what I undertook and will go on with, to prove
- to you that so far you are like those many others of whom it may be
- said in the words of Virgil--
- "Unchanged their mind while vainly flow their tears."[4]
- Though I might multiply examples, yet I will rather content myself with
- this alone, that we might almost reckon as belonging to ourselves, and
- so all the more likely to come home.
- _Petrarch_. How wisely you have made choice; for indeed it were
- useless to add more, and no other could be so deeply graven in my
- heart. Great as the gulf which parts us may be--I mean between you in
- your safe haven and me in peril of shipwreck, you in felicity, me in
- distress--still amid my winds and tempests I can recognise from time to
- time the traces of, your own storm-tossed passions. So that as often
- as I read the book of your _Confessions_, and am made partaker of your
- conflict between two contrary emotions, between hope and fear, (and
- weep as I read), I seem to be hearing the story of my own self, the
- story not of another's wandering, but of my own. Therefore, since now I
- have put away every inclination to mere dispute, go on, I beg, as you
- desire. For all my heart wishes now is not to hinder but only to follow
- where you lead.
- _S. Augustine_. I make no such demand on you as that. For though a
- certain very wise man[5] has laid it down that "Through overmuch
- contention truth is lost," yet often it happens that a well-ordered
- discussion leads to truth. It is not then expedient to accept
- everything advanced, which is the token of a slack and sleepy mind, any
- more than it is expedient to set oneself to oppose a plain and open
- truth, which indicates only the mind of one who likes fighting for
- fighting's sake.
- _Petrarch_. I understand and agree with you and will act on your
- advice. Now, pray go on.
- _S. Augustine_. You admit, therefore, that the argument is just and the
- chain of reasoning valid, when we say that a perfect knowledge of one's
- misery will beget a perfect desire to be rid of it, if only the power
- to be rid may follow the desire.
- _Petrarch_. I have professed that I will believe you in everything.
- _S. Augustine._ I feel there is still something you would like to urge,
- even now. Do, please, confess it, no matter what it may be.
- _Petrarch._ Nothing, only that I am much amazed I to think I should
- never yet have wished what I have believed I always wished.
- _S. Augustine._ You still stick at that point. O well, to put an end to
- this kind of talk I will agree that you have wished sometimes.
- _Petrarch._ What then?
- _S. Augustine._ Do you not remember the phrase of Ovid--
- "To wish for what you want is not enough;
- With ardent longing you must strive for it."[6]
- _Petrarch._ I understand, but thought that was just what I had been
- doing.
- _S. Augustine._ You were mistaken.
- _Petrarch._ Well, I will believe so.
- _S. Augustine._ To make your belief certain, examine your own
- conscience. Conscience is the best judge of virtue. It is a guide, true
- and unerring, that weighs every thought and deed. It will tell you that
- you have never longed for spiritual health as you ought, but that,
- considering what great dangers beset you, your wishes were but feeble
- and ineffective.
- _Petrarch._ I have been examining my conscience, as you suggested.
- _S. Augustine._ What do you find?
- _Petrarch._ That what you say is true.
- _S. Augustine._ We have made a little progress, if you are beginning to
- be awake. It will soon be better with you now you acknowledge it was
- not well hitherto.
- _Petrarch._ If it is enough to acknowledge, I hope to be able to be
- not only well but quite well, for never have I understood more clearly
- that my wishes for liberty and for an end to my misery have been too
- lukewarm. But can it be enough to desire only?
- _S. Augustine._ Why do you ask?
- _Petrarch._ I mean, to desire without doing anything.
- _S. Augustine._ What you propose is an impossibility. No one desires
- ardently and goes to sleep.
- _Petrarch._ Of what use is desire, then?
- _S. Augustine._ Doubtless the path leads through many difficulties, but
- the desire of virtue is itself a great part of virtue.
- _Petrarch._ There you give me ground for good hope.
- _S. Augustine._ All my discourse is just to teach you how to hope and
- to fear.
- _Petrarch._ Why to fear?
- _S. Augustine._ Then tell me why to hope?
- _Petrarch._ Because whereas so far I have striven, and with much
- tribulation, merely not to become worse, you now open a way to me
- whereby I may become better and better, even to perfection.
- _S. Augustine._ But maybe you do not think how toilsome that way is.
- _Petrarch._ Have you some now terror in store for me?
- _S. Augustine._ To desire is but one word, but how many things go to
- make it up!
- _Petrarch._ Your words make me tremble.
- _S. Augustine._ Not to mention the positive elements in desire, it
- involves the destruction of many other objects.
- _Petrarch._ I do not quite take in your meaning.
- _S. Augustine._ The desire of all good cannot exist without thrusting
- out every lower wish. You know how many different objects one longs for
- in life. All these you must first learn to count as nothing before you
- can rise to the desire for the chief good; which a man loves less when
- along with it he loves something else that does not minister to it.
- _Petrarch_. I recognise the thought.
- _S. Augustine_. How many men are there who have extinguished all their
- passions, or, not to speak of extinguishing, tell me how many are there
- who have subdued their spirit to the control of Reason, and will dare
- to say, "I have no more in common with my body; all that once seemed
- so pleasing to me is become poor in my sight. I aspire now to joys of
- nobler nature"?
- _Petrarch_. Such men are rare indeed. And now I understand what those
- difficulties are with which you threatened me.
- _S. Augustine_. When all these passions are extinguished, then, and not
- till then, will desire be full and free. For when the soul is uplifted
- on one side to heaven by its own nobility, and on the other dragged
- down to earth by the weight of the flesh and the seductions of the
- world, so that it both desires to rise and also to sink at one and the
- same time, then, drawn contrary ways, you find you arrive nowhither.
- _Petrarch._ What, then, would you say a man must do for his soul to
- break the fetters of the world, and mount up perfect and entire to the
- realms above?
- _S. Augustine._ What leads to this goal is, as I said in the first
- instance, the practice of meditation on death and the perpetual
- recollection of our mortal nature.
- _Petrarch._ Unless I am deceived, there is no man alive who is more
- often revolving this thought in his heart than I.
- _S. Augustine._ Ah, here is another delusion, a fresh obstacle in your
- way!
- _Petrarch._ What! Do you mean to say I am once more lying?
- _Augustine._ I would sooner hear you use more civil language.
- _Petrarch._ But to say the same thing?
- _S. Augustine._ Yes, to say nothing else.
- _Petrarch._ So then you mean I care nothing at all about death?
- _S. Augustine._ To tell the truth you think very seldom of it, and
- in so feeble a way that your thought never touches the root of your
- trouble.
- _Petrarch._ I supposed just the opposite.
- _S. Augustine._ I am not concerned with what you suppose, but with what
- you ought to suppose.
- _Petrarch._ Well, I may tell you that in spite of that I will suppose
- it no more, if you prove to me that my supposition was a false one.
- _S. Augustine._ That I will do easily enough, provided you are willing
- to admit the truth in good faith. For this end I will call in a
- witness who is not far away.
- _Petrarch_. And who may that be, pray?
- _S. Augustine._ Your conscience.
- _Petrarch_. She testifies just the contrary.
- _S. Augustine._ When you make an obscure, confused demand no witness
- can give precise or clear answers.
- _Petrarch._ What has that to do with the subject, I would like to know?
- _S. Augustine._ Much, every way. To see dearly, listen well. No man is
- so senseless (unless he be altogether out of his mind) as never once
- to remember his own weak nature, or who, if asked the question whether
- he were mortal and dwelt in a frail body, would not answer that he
- was. The pains of the body, the onsets of fever, attest the fact; and
- whom has the favour of Heaven made exempt? Moreover, your friends are
- carried out to their burial before your eyes; and this fills the soul
- with dread. When one goes to the graveside of some friend of one's own
- age one is forced to tremble at another's fall and to begin feeling
- uneasy for oneself; just as when you see your neighbour's roof on fire,
- you cannot fool quite happy for your own, because, as Horace puts it--
- "On your own head you see the stroke will fall."[7]
- The impression will be more strong in case you see some sudden death
- carry off one younger, more vigorous, finer looking than yourself. In
- such an event a man will say, "This one seemed to live secure, and yet
- he is snatched off. His youth, his beauty, his strength have brought
- him no help. What God or what magician has promised me any surer
- warrant of security? Verily, I too am mortal."
- When the like fate befalls kings and rulers of the earth, people of
- great might and such as are regarded with awe, those who see it are
- struck with more dread, are more shaken with alarm; they are amazed
- when they behold a sudden terror, or perchance hours of intense agony
- seize on one who was wont to strike terror into others. From what
- other cause proceed the doings of people who seem beside themselves
- upon the death of men in highest place, such as, to take an instance
- from history, the many things of this kind that, as you have related,
- were done at the funeral of Julius Cæsar? A public spectacle like this
- strikes the attention and touches the heart of mortal men; and what
- then they see in the case of another is brought home as pertaining
- also to themselves. Beside all these, are there not the rage of savage
- boasts, and of men, and the furious madness of war? Are there not
- the falls of those great buildings which, as some one neatly says,
- are first the safeguards, then the sepulchres of men? Are there not
- malignant motions of the air beneath some evil star and pestilential
- sky? And so many perils on sea and land that, look wheresoever you
- will, you cannot turn your gaze anywhither but you will meet the
- visible image and memento of your own mortality.
- _Petrarch_. I beg your pardon, but I cannot wait any longer, for, as
- for having my reason fortified, I do not think any more powerful aid
- can be brought than the many arguments you have adduced. As I listened
- I wondered what end you were aiming at, and when your discourse would
- finish.
- _S. Augustine._ As a matter of fact, you have interrupted me, and it
- has not yet reached its end. However, here is the conclusion--although
- a host of little pin-pricks play upon the surface of your mind, nothing
- yet has penetrated the centre. The miserable heart is hardened by long
- habit, and becomes like some indurated stone; impervious to warnings,
- however salutary, you will find few people considering with any
- seriousness the fact that they will die.
- _Petrarch_. Then few people are aware of the very definition of man,
- which nevertheless is so hackneyed in the schools, that it ought not
- merely to weary the ears of those who hear it, but is now long since
- scrawled upon the walls and pillars of every room. This prattling of
- the Dialecticians will never come to an end; it throws up summaries and
- definitions like bubbles, matter indeed for endless controversies, but
- for the most part they know nothing of the real truth of the things
- they talk about. So, if you ask one of this set of men for a definition
- of a man or of anything else, they have their answer quite pat, as the
- saying goes; if you press him further, he will lie low, or if by sheer
- practice in arguing he has acquired a certain boldness and power of
- speech, the very tone of the man will tell you he possesses no real
- knowledge of the thing he sets out to define. The best way of dealing
- with this brood, with their studied air of carelessness and empty
- curiosity, is to launch at their head some such invective as this,
- "You wretched creatures, why this everlasting labour for nothing; this
- expense of wit on silly subtleties? Why in total oblivion of the real
- basis of things will you grow old simply conversant with words, and
- with whitening hair and wrinkled brow, spend all your time in babyish
- babble? Heaven grant that your foolishness hurt no one but yourselves,
- and do as little harm as possible to the excellent minds and capacities
- of the young."
- _S. Augustine._ I agree that nothing half severe enough can be said of
- this monstrous perversion of learning. But let me remind you that your
- zeal of denunciation has so carried you away that you have omitted to
- finish your definition of man.
- _Petrarch_. I thought I had explained sufficiently, but I will be more
- explicit still. Man is an animal, or rather the chief of all animals.
- The veriest rustic knows that much. Every schoolboy could tell you
- also, if you asked him, that man is, moreover, a rational animal
- and that he is mortal. This definition, then, is a matter of common
- knowledge.
- _S. Augustine._ No, it is not. Those who are acquainted with it are
- very few in number.
- _Petrarch._ How so?
- _S. Augustine._ When you can find a man so governed by Reason that
- all his conduct is regulated by her, all his appetites subject to
- her alone, a man who has so mastered every motion of his spirit by
- Reason's curb that he knows it is she alone who distinguishes him from
- the savagery of the brute, and that it is only by submission to her
- guidance that he deserves the name of man at all; when you have found
- one so convinced of his own mortality as to have that always before his
- eyes, always to be ruling himself by it, and holding perishable things
- in such light esteem that he ever sighs after that life, which Reason
- always foresaw, wherein mortality shall be cast away; when you have
- found such a man, then you may say that he has some true and fruitful
- idea of what the definition of man is. This definition, of which we
- were speaking, I said it was given to few men to know, and to reflect
- upon as the nature of the truth requires.
- _Petrarch._ Hitherto I had believed I was of that number.
- _S. Augustine_. I have no doubt that when you turn over in your mind
- the many things you have learned, whether in the school of experience
- or in your reading of books, the thought of death has several times
- entered your head. But still it has not sunk down into your heart as
- deeply as it ought, nor is it lodged there as firmly as it should be.
- _Petrarch_. What do you call sinking down into my heart? Though I think
- I understand, I would like you to explain more clearly.
- _S. Augustine._ This is what I mean. Every one knows, and the greatest
- philosophers are of the same opinion, that of all tremendous realities
- Death is the most tremendous. So true is this, that from ever of old
- its very name is terrible and dreadful to hear. Yet though so it
- is, it will not do that we hear that name but lightly, or allow the
- remembrance of it to slip quickly from our mind. No, we must take time
- to realise it. We must meditate with attention thereon. We must picture
- to ourselves the effect of death on each several part of our bodily
- frame, the cold extremities, the breast in the sweat of fever, the side
- throbbing with pain, the vital spirits running slower and slower as
- death draws near, the eyes sunken and weeping, every look filled with
- tears, the forehead pale and drawn, the cheeks hanging and hollow,
- the teeth staring and discoloured, the nostrils shrunk and sharpened,
- the lips foaming, the tongue foul and motionless, the palate parched
- and dry, the languid head and panting breast, the hoarse murmur and
- sorrowful sigh, the evil smell of the whole body, the horror of seeing
- the face utterly unlike itself--all these things will come to mind and,
- so to speak, be ready to one's hand, if one recalls what one has seen
- in any close observation of some deathbed where it has fallen to our
- lot to attend. For things seen cling closer to our remembrance than
- things heard.
- And, moreover, it is not without a profound instinct of wisdom that
- in certain Religious Orders, of the stricter kind, the custom has
- survived, even down to our own time (though I do not think it makes
- for good character altogether), of allowing the members to watch the
- bodies of the dead being washed and put in shrouds for their burial;
- while the stern professors of the Rule stand by, in order that this sad
- and pitiful spectacle, thrust forsooth beneath their very eyes, may
- admonish their remembrance continually, and affright the minds of those
- who survive from every hope of this transitory world.
- This, then, is what I meant by sinking down deeply into the soul.
- Perchance you never name the name of Death, that so you may fall in
- with the custom of the time, although nothing is more certain than the
- fact or more uncertain than the hour. Yet in daily converse you must
- often speak of things connected with it, only they soon fly out of mind
- and leave no trace.
- _Petrarch._ I follow your counsel the more readily because now I
- recognise much in your words that I have myself revolved in my own
- breast. But please, if you think it well, will you impress some mark
- on my memory which will act as a warning to me and prevent me from
- this time henceforth from telling lies to myself and fondling my own
- mistakes. For this, it seems to me, is what turns men from the right
- way, that they dream they have already reached the goal, and make
- therefore no effort any more.
- _S. Augustine._ I like to hear you speak so. Your words are those of
- a man alert and watchful, who will not bear to be idle and trust to
- chance. So here is a test which will never play you false: every time
- you meditate on death without the least sign of motion, know that you
- have meditated in vain, as about any ordinary topic. But if in the act
- of meditation you find yourself suddenly grow stiff, if you tremble,
- turn pale, and feel as if already you endured its pains; if at the same
- time you seem to yourself as if you were leaving your body behind,
- and were forced to render up your account before the bar of eternal
- judgment, of all the words and deeds of your past life, nothing omitted
- or passed over; that nothing any more is to be hoped for from good
- looks or worldly position, nothing from eloquence, or riches, or power:
- if you realise that this Judge takes no bribe and that all things are
- naked and open in His sight; that death itself will not turn aside for
- any plea; that it is not the end of sufferings, but only a passage: if
- you picture to yourself a thousand forms of punishment and pain, the
- noise and wailing of Hell, the sulphurous rivers, the thick darkness,
- and avenging Furies,--in a word, the fierce malignity everywhere of
- that dark abode; and, what is the climax of its horror, that the misery
- knows no end, and despair thereof itself is everlasting, since the
- time of God's mercy is passed by; if, I say, all these things rise up
- before your eyes at once, not as fictions but as truth, not as being
- possible, but inevitable, and of a surety bound to come, yes, and even
- now at the door; and if you think on these things, not lightly, nor
- with desperation, but full of hope in God, and that His strong right
- hand is able and ready to pluck you out of so great calamities; if you
- but show yourself willing to be healed and wishful to be raised up; if
- you cleave to your purpose and persist in your endeavour, then you may
- be assured you have not meditated in vain.
- _Petrarch_. I will not deny you have terrified me greatly by putting
- so huge a mass of suffering before my eyes. But may God give me such
- plenteous mercy as that I may steep my thought in meditations like
- these; not only day by day, but more especially at night, when the
- mind, with all its daily interests laid aside, relaxes and is wont to
- return upon itself. When I lay my body down, as those who die, and
- my shrinking mind imagines the hour itself with all its horrors is
- at hand: so intently do I conceive it all, as though I were in the
- very agony of dying, that I shall seem to be already in the place of
- torment, beholding what you speak of and every kind of anguish. And
- so stricken shall I be at that sight, so terrified and affrighted,
- that I shall rise up (I know it) before my horrified household and cry
- aloud, "What am I doing? What suffering is this? For what miserable
- destruction is Fate keeping me alive? Jesu, by Thy mercy,
- "Thou whom none yet hath conquered, succour me,"[8]
- "Give Thy right hand to me in misery
- Through the dark waves, O bear me up with Thee,
- That dying I may rest and be in peace."[9]
- Many other things shall I say to myself, as one in a fever whose mind
- every chance impression carries hither and thither in his fear; and
- then I go talking strangely to my friends, weeping and making them
- weep, and then presently after this we shall return to what we were
- before. And since these things are so, what is it, I ask, which holds
- me back? What little hidden obstacle is there which makes it come to
- pass that hitherto all these meditations avail nothing but to bring
- me troubles and terrors: and I continue the same man that I have ever
- been; the same, it may be, as men to whom no reflections like these
- have ever come? Yet am I more miserable than they, for they, whatever
- may be their latter end, enjoy at least the pleasures of the present
- time; but as for me, I know not either what my end will be, and I taste
- no pleasure that is not poisoned with these embittering thoughts.
- _S. Augustine._ Vex not yourself, I pray you, when you ought rather
- to rejoice. The more the sinner feels pleasure in his sin, the more
- unhappy should we think him and the more in need of pity.
- _Petrarch._ I suppose you mean that a man whose pleasures are
- uninterrupted comes to forget himself, and is never led back into
- virtue's path; but that he who amid his carnal delights is sometime
- visited with adversity will come to the recollection of his true
- condition just in proportion as he finds fickle and wayward Pleasure
- desert him.
- If both kind of life had one and the same end, I do not see why he
- should not be counted the happier who enjoys the present time and puts
- off affliction to another day, rather than the man who neither enjoys
- the present nor looks for any joy hereafter; unless you are perhaps
- moved by this consideration that in the end the laughter of the former
- will be changed to more bitter tears?
- _S. Augustine._ Yes, much more bitter. For I have often noticed that
- if a man throws away the rein of reason altogether (and in the most
- excessive pleasure of all this is commonly the case), his fall is more
- dangerous than that of the man who may come rushing down from the same
- height, but keeps still some hold, though feebly, on the reins. But
- before all else I attach importance to what you said before, that in
- the case of the one there is some hope of his conversion, but in that
- of the other nothing remains but despair.
- _Petrarch._ Yes, that is my view also; in the meanwhile, however, have
- you not forgotten my first question?
- _S. Augustine._ What was it?
- _Petrarch_. Concerning what keeps me back. I asked you why I am the
- only one to whom the profound meditation on Death, that you said was so
- full of benefit, brings no good whatever.
- _S. Augustine._ In the first place it is perhaps because you look on
- death as something remote, whereas when one thinks how very short life
- is and how many divers kinds of accidents befall it, you ought not to
- think death is far away. "What deludes almost all of us," as Cicero
- says, "is that we regard death from afar off." Some correctors--I would
- prefer to call them corruptors--of the text have wished to change the
- reading by inserting a negative before the verb, and have maintained
- that he ought to have said, "We do NOT regard death from afar off." For
- the rest, there is no one in his senses who does not see death one way
- or another, and in reality Cicero's word _prospicere_ means to see from
- afar. The one thing that makes so many people suffer illusion in their
- ideas on death is that they are wont to forecast for their own life
- some limit, which is indeed possible according to nature, but at which,
- nevertheless, very few arrive. Hardly any one, in fact, dies of whom
- the poet's line might not be quoted--
- "Grey hairs and length of years he for himself
- Expected."[10]
- The fault may touch you nearly, for your age, your vigorous
- constitution and temperate way of life perchance have fostered a like
- hope in your heart.
- _Petrarch._ Please do not suspect that of me. God keep me from such
- madness--
- "As in that monster false to put my trust!"[11]
- If I may borrow the words Virgil puts in the mouth of his famous pilot
- Palinurus. For I too am cast upon a wide ocean, cruel and full of
- storms. I sail across its angry waves and struggle with the wind; and
- the little boat I steer shivers and seems to be letting in the water
- in every part. I know well she cannot hold out for long, and I see I
- have no hope at all of safety unless the Almighty Pity put forth His
- strong right hand and guide my vessel rightly ere it be too late, and
- bring me to shore--
- "So that I who have lived upon the waters may die
- in port."[12]
- Of this I think I should have a good hope, because it has never been
- my lot to put any confidence in those riches and power on which I see
- so many of my contemporaries, yes, and older men as well, relying. For
- what folly would it be to pass all one's life in toil and poverty and
- care, heaping up riches, just to die at last and have no time to enjoy
- them? So, then, in truth, I regard this dark shadow of death, not as
- something afar off, but very nigh and ever at the doors. And I have not
- forgotten a certain little verse I wrote in my youth at the end of a
- letter to a friend--
- "E'en while we speak, along a thousand ways
- With stealthy steps up to our very door
- Death creeps."
- If I could say words like these at that time of life, what shall I
- say now that I am more advanced in age and more experienced in what
- life is? For everything I see or hear or feel or think seems, unless I
- deceive myself, connected in my mind with that last end. And yet the
- question still remains, what is it that holds me back?
- _S. Augustine._ Give humble thanks to God who so regards you and guides
- you with his merciful rein, and so pricks you with his spur. It is not
- surely possible, that he who thus has the thought of death before him
- day by day should ever be doomed to death eternal.
- But since you feel, and rightly so, that something still is wanting, I
- will try and unfold to you what it is, and, if God so please, remove it
- also; to the end that you may arise and with free, uplifted mind shake
- off that old bondage that so long has kept you down.
- _Petrarch_. O would that indeed you may prove able so to help me, and I
- on my part be capable of receiving such a boon!
- _S. Augustine._ It shall be yours if you wish. The thing is not
- impossible. But in the nature of man's actions two things are required,
- and if either be wanting, the action will come to nought. There must be
- will, and that will must be so strong and earnest that it can deserve
- the name of purpose.
- _Petrarch._ So let it be.
- _S. Augustine_. Do you know what stands in the way of your purpose of
- heart?
- _Petrarch._ That is what I want to know; what for so long I have
- earnestly desired to understand.
- _S. Augustine_. Then listen. It was from Heaven your soul came forth:
- never will I assert a lower origin than that. But in its contact with
- the flesh, wherein it is imprisoned, it has lost much of its first
- splendour. Have no doubt of this in your mind. And not only is it so,
- but by reason of the length of time it has in a manner fallen asleep;
- and, if one may so express it, forgotten its own beginning and its
- heavenly Creator.
- And these passions that are born in the soul through its connection
- with the body, and that forgetfulness of its nobler nature, seem to me
- to have been touched by Virgil with pen almost inspired when he writes--
- "The souls of men still shine with heavenly fire,
- That tells from whence they come, save that the flesh
- And limbs of earth breed dullness, hence spring fears,
- Desire, and grief and pleasures of the world,
- And so, in darkness prisoned, they no more
- Look upward to heaven's face."[13]
- Do you not in the poet's words discern that monster with four heads so
- deadly to the nature of man?
- _Petrarch_. I discern very clearly the fourfold passion of our nature,
- which, first of all, we divide in two as it has respect to past and
- future, and then subdivide again in respect of good and evil. And so,
- by these four winds distraught, the rest and quietness of man's soul is
- perished and gone.
- _S. Augustine._ You discern rightly, and the words of the Apostle are
- fulfilled in us, which say, "The corruptible body presseth down the
- soul, and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth
- upon many things."[14] Of a truth the countless forms and images of
- things visible, that one by one are brought into the soul by the senses
- of the body, gather there in the inner centre in a mass, and the soul,
- not being akin to these or capable of learning them, they weigh it
- down and overwhelm it with their contrariety. Hence that plague of too
- many impressions tears apart and wounds the thinking faculty of the
- soul, and with its fatal, distracting complexity bars the way of clear
- meditation, whereby it would mount up to the threshold of the One Chief
- Good.
- _Petrarch_. You have spoken admirably of that plague in many places,
- and especially in your book on _True Religion_ (with which it is,
- indeed, quite incompatible). It was but the other day that I lighted
- on that work of yours in one of my digressions from the study of
- philosophy and poetry, and it was with very great eagerness that I
- began to peruse it. Indeed, I was like a man setting out from his own
- country to see the world, and coming to the gate of some famous city
- quite new to him, where, charmed by the novelty of all around, he stops
- now here, now there, and looks intently on all that meets his gaze.
- _S. Augustine._ And yet in that book, allowing for a difference of
- phraseology such as becomes a teacher of catholic truth, you will
- find a large part of its doctrine is drawn from philosophers, more
- especially from those of the Platonist and Socratic school. And, to
- keep nothing from you, I may say that what especially moved me to
- undertake that work was a word of your favourite Cicero. God blessed
- that work of mine so that from a few seeds there came an abundant
- harvest. But let us come back to the matter in hand.
- _Petrarch._ As you wish; but, O best of Fathers, do not hide from me
- what that word was which gave you the starting-point of so excellent a
- work.
- _S. Augustine._ It was the passage where in a certain book Cicero
- says, by way of expressing his detestation of the errors of his time:
- "They could look at nothing with their mind, but judged everything by
- the sight of their eyes; yet a man of any greatness of understanding
- is known by his detaching his thought from objects of sense, and his
- meditations from the ordinary track in which others move."[15] This,
- then, I took as my foundation, and built upon it the work which you say
- has given you pleasure.
- _Petrarch._ I remember the place; it is in the _Tusculan Orations._
- I have been delighted to notice what a habit it is of yours to quote
- those words here and elsewhere in your works; and they deserve it, for
- they are words that seem to blend in one phrase truth and dignity and
- grace. Now, since it seems good to you, pray return to our subject.
- _S. Augustine._ This, then, is that plague that has hurt you, this
- is what will quickly drive you to destruction, unless you take
- care. Overwhelmed with too many divers impressions made on it, and
- everlastingly fighting with its own cares, your weak spirit is crushed
- so that it has not strength to judge what it should first attack
- or to discern what to cherish, what to destroy, what to repel; all
- its strength and what time the niggard hand of Fate allows are not
- sufficient for so many demands. So it suffers that same evil which
- befalls those who sow too many seeds in one small space of ground.
- As they spring up they choke each other. So in your overcrowded
- mind what there is sown can make no root and bear no fruit. With
- no considered plan, you are tossed now here now there in strange
- fluctuation, and can never put your whole strength to anything. Hence
- it happens that whenever the generous mind approaches (if it is
- allowed) the contemplation of death, or some other meditation that
- might help it in the path of life, and penetrates by its own acumen to
- the depths of its own nature, it is unable to stand there, and, driven
- by hosts of various cares, it starts back. And then the work, that
- promised so well and seemed so good, flags and grows unsteady; and
- there comes to pass that inward discord of which we have said so much,
- and that worrying torment of a mind angry with itself; when it loathes
- its own defilements, yet cleanses them not away; sees the crooked
- paths, yet does not forsake them; dreads the impending danger, yet
- stirs not a step to avoid it.
- _Petrarch._ Ah, woe is me! Now you have probed my wound to the quick.
- There is the seat of my pain, from there I fear my death will come.
- _S. Augustine._ It is well. You are awakening to life. But as we have
- now prolonged our discussion enough for to-day, let us, if you will,
- defer the rest until to-morrow, and let us take a breathing space in
- silence.
- _Petrarch._ Yes, I am tired somewhat, and most gladly shall I welcome
- quiet and rest.
- [1] _Æneid,_ ix. 641.
- [2] _S. Augustine Confessions_, viii. 8.
- [3] _S. Augustine Confessions,_ viii. 12.
- [4] _Æneid_, iv. 449.
- [5] Publius Cyrus.
- [6] Ovid, _Pontic._, III i. 35.
- [7] Horace, _Epist.,_ I. 18, 83.
- [8] _Æneid,_ vi 365.
- [9] _Ibid.,_ vi 370.
- [10] _Æneid,_ x. 649.
- [11] _Ibid.,_ v. 849.
- [12] Seneca, _Letters,_ xix.
- [13] _Æneid,_ vi. 730-34.
- [14] Book of wisdom, ix. 15
- [15] _Tusculan Orations,_ i. 16.
- DIALOGUE THE SECOND
- S. AUGUSTINE--PETRARCH
- _S. Augustine_. Well, have we rested long enough?
- _Petrarch._ Certainly, if it so please you.
- _S. Augustine._ Let me hear if you feel now in good heart and
- confidence. For when a man has been ill, a hopeful spirit in him is no
- small sign of returning health.
- _Petrarch._ What hope I have is no whit in myself: God is my hope.
- _S. Augustine._ It is wisely spoken. And now I return to our theme.
- Many things are against you, many temptations assail, but you yourself
- still seem ignorant both of their numbers and their strength. And what
- in warfare generally happens to one who, from a distance, sees some
- closely marshalled battalion, has happened to you. Such a man is often
- deceived into thinking his foes fewer in number than they are. But when
- they draw nearer, when they have deployed their serried ranks before
- his eyes in all their martial pomp, then his fears soon increase, and
- he repents him of his boldness. So likewise will it be with you when I
- shall display before your eyes, on this side and on that, all the evils
- that are pressing upon you and hemming you in from every quarter. You
- will be ashamed of your own boldness, you will be sorry you were so
- light-hearted, and begin to bewail that in its sore straits your soul
- has been unable to break through the wedged phalanx of your foes. You
- will discover presently how many foolish fancies of too easy victory
- you have let come into your mind, excluding that wholesome dread to
- which I am endeavouring to bring you.
- _Petrarch_. Indeed, you make me horribly afraid. That my danger was
- great I have always been aware; and now, in spite of this, you tell me
- I have very much under-estimated it, and indeed that, compared with
- what they should be, my fears have been nothing at all. What hope have
- I then left?
- _S. Augustine_. It is never time to despair. Be sure of that. Despair
- is the very last and worst of evils, and therefore I would have you
- make it a first principle to put it away wholly.
- _Petrarch_. I knew the truth of the maxim, but in my dread forgot it at
- the moment.
- _S. Augustine_. Now give me all your attention, look and listen while I
- recall words of your favourite seer.
- "Behold what foemen gather round your walls
- And at your gates make sharp their gleaming sword
- To murder you and yours."[1]
- Look what snares the world spreads for you; what vanities it dangles
- before your eyes; what vain cares it has to weigh you down. To begin
- at the beginning, consider what made those most noble spirits among
- all creatures fall into the abyss of ruin; and take heed lest in like
- manner you also fall after them. All your forethought, all your care
- will be needed to save you from this danger. Think how many temptations
- urge your mind to perilous and soaring flights. They make you dream
- of nobleness and forget your frailty; they choke your faculties with
- fumes of self-esteem, until you think of nothing else; they lead you
- to wax so proud and confident in your own strength that at length you
- hate your Creator. So you live for self-pleasing and imagine that great
- things are what you deserve. Whereas if you had a truer remembrance,
- great blessings ought to make you not proud but humble, when you
- realise that they came to you for no merit of your own. What need for
- me to speak of the Eternal Lord God when even to earthly lords men
- feel their minds more humbly bound if they experience any bounty of
- theirs which they are conscious of being undeserved. Do we not see them
- striving to merit afterwards what they feel they should have earned
- before?
- Now let your mind realise, as it easily can, on what paltry grounds
- your pride is set up. You trust in your intellect; you boast of what
- eloquence much reading has given you; you take pleasure in the beauty
- of your mortal body. Yet do you not feel that in many things your
- intellect fails you? Are there not many things in which you cannot
- rival the skill of the humblest of mankind? Nay, might I not go further
- and, without mentioning mankind, may I not say that with all your
- labour and study you will find yourself no match in skill for some of
- the meanest and smallest of God's creatures? Will you boast, then, of
- intellect after that? And as for reading, what has it profited you? Of
- the multitude of things you have perused how many have remained in your
- mind? How many have struck root and borne fruit in due season? Search
- well your heart and you will find that the whole of what you know is
- but like a little shrunken stream dried by the summer heat compared to
- the mighty ocean.
- And of what relevance is it to know a multitude of things? Suppose
- you shall have learned all the circuits of the heavens and the earth,
- the spaces of the sea, the courses of the stars, the virtues of herbs
- and stones, the secrets of nature, and then be ignorant of yourself?
- Of what profit is it? If by the help of Scripture you shall have
- discovered the right and upward path, what use is it if wrath and
- passion make you swerve aside into the crooked, downward way? Supposing
- you shall have learned by heart the deeds of illustrious men of all the
- ages, of what profit will it be if you yourself day by day care not
- what you do?
- What need for me to speak of eloquence? Will not you yourself readily
- confess how often the putting any confidence in this has proved vain?
- And, moreover, what boots it that others shall approve what you have
- said if in the court of your own conscience it stands condemned? For
- though the applause of those who hear you may seem to yield a certain
- fruit which is not to be despised, yet of what worth is it after all
- if in his heart the speaker himself is not able to applaud? How petty
- is the pleasure that comes from the plaudits of the multitude! And
- how can a man soothe and flatter others unless he first soothe and
- flatter himself? Therefore you will easily understand how often you
- are deluded by that glory you hope for from your eloquence, and how
- your pride therein rests but upon a foundation of wind. For what can
- be more childish, nay, might I not say more insane, than to waste time
- and trouble over matters where all the things themselves are worthless
- and the words about them vain? What worse folly than to go on blind
- to one's real defects, and be infatuated with words and the pleasure
- of hearing one's own voice, like those little birds they tell of
- who are so ravished with the sweetness of their own song that they
- sing themselves to death? And furthermore, in the common affairs of
- every-day life does it not often happen to you to find yourself put to
- the blush to discover that in the use of words you are no match even
- for some whom you think are very inferior men? Consider also how in
- Nature there are many things for which names are altogether wanting,
- and many more to which names have indeed been given, but to express
- the beauty of them--as you know by experience--words are altogether
- inadequate. How often have I heard you lament, how often seen you
- dumb and dissatisfied, because neither your tongue nor your pen could
- sufficiently utter ideas, which nevertheless to your reflecting mind
- were very clear and intelligible?
- What, then, is this Eloquence, so limited and so weak, which is neither
- able to compass and bring within its scope all the things that it
- would, nor yet to hold fast even those things that it has compassed?
- The Greeks reproach you, and you in turn the Greeks, with having
- a paucity of words. Seneca, it is true, accounts their vocabulary
- the richer, but Cicero at the beginning of his treatise _On the
- Distinctions of Good and Evil_ makes the following declaration, "I
- cannot enough marvel whence should arise that insolent scorn of our
- national literature. Though this is not the place to discuss it, yet
- I will express my conviction, which I have often maintained, not only
- that the Latin tongue is not poor, as it is the fashion to assert, but
- that it is, in fact, richer than the Greek;"[2] and as he frequently
- repeats elsewhere the same opinion, so, especially in the _Tusculan
- Orations_, he exclaims, "Thou Greek that countest thyself rich in
- words, how poor art thou in phrases."[3]
- This is the saying, mark you, of one who know quite well that he was
- the prince of Latin oratory, and had already shown that he was not
- afraid to challenge Greece for the palm of literary glory. Let me add
- that Seneca, so notable an admirer of the Greek tongue, says in his
- _Declamations_, "All that Roman eloquence can bring forward to rival or
- excel the pride of Greece is connected with the name of Cicero."[4] A
- magnificent tribute, but unquestionably true!
- There is, then, as you see, on the subject of the primacy in Eloquence
- a very great controversy, not only between you and the Greeks, but
- among our own most learned writers themselves. There are in our camp
- those who hold for the Greeks, and it may be among them there are some
- who hold for us, if at least we may judge from what is reported of the
- illustrious philosopher Plutarch. In a word, Seneca, who is ours,
- while doing all justice to Cicero, gives his final verdict for the
- Greeks, notwithstanding that Cicero is of the contrary opinion.
- As to my own opinion on the question in debate, I consider that both
- parties to the controversy have some truth on their side when they
- accuse both Latin and Greek of poverty of words: and if this judgment
- be correct in regard to two such famous languages, what hope is there
- for any other?
- Bethink you therefore what sort of confidence you can have in your own
- simple powers when the whole resources of that people of which you are
- but a little part are adjudged poor, and how ashamed you should be to
- have spent so much time in pursuing something which cannot be attained,
- and which, if it could be, would prove after all but vanity itself.
- I will pass on to other points. Are you perhaps inclined to plume
- yourself on your physical advantages? But think what a thread they hang
- upon! What is it you are most pleased with in this way? Is it your good
- health and strength? But truly nothing is more frail. It is proved by
- the fatigue you suffer from even little things. The various maladies to
- which the body is liable; the stings of insects; a slight draught of
- air, and a thousand other such small vexations all tell the same tale.
- Will you perchance be taken in by your own good-looking face, and when
- you behold in the glass your smooth complexion and comely features are
- you minded to be smitten, entranced, charmed? The story of Narcissus
- has no warning for you, and, content with gazing only at the outward
- envelope of the body, you consider not that the eyes of the mind tell
- you how vile and plain it is within. Moreover, if you had no other
- warning, the stormy course of life itself, which every day robs you of
- something, ought to show you how transient and perishing that flower
- of beauty is. And if, perhaps, which you will hardly dare affirm, you
- fancy yourself invincible by age, by illness, and whatever else may
- change the grace of bodily form, you have at least not forgotten that
- Last Enemy which destroys all, and you will do well to engrave in your
- inmost heart and mind this word of the satirist--
- "'Tis death alone compels us all to see
- What little things we are."[5]
- Here, unless I am mistaken, are the causes that inflate your mind with
- pride, forbid you to recognise your low estate, and keep you from the
- recollection of death. But others there still are that I now propose to
- pass in review.
- _Petrarch._ Stop a little, I beg you, lest, overwhelmed by the weight
- of so many reproaches, I have no strength or spirit to reply.
- _S. Augustine._ By all means say on. Gladly will I hold my peace.
- _Petrarch._ You have astonished me not a little by casting in my
- teeth a multitude of things of which I am perfectly sure they have
- never entered my head at all. You allege that I trusted in my own
- intelligence. But surely the one sign I have given of possessing some
- little intelligence is that never have I counted on that faculty
- at all. Shall I pride myself on much reading of books, which with
- a little wisdom has brought me a thousand anxieties? How can you
- say I have sought the glory of eloquence, I, who, as you yourself
- acknowledged a moment ago, am wont above all things to complain that
- speech is inadequate to my thoughts? Unless you wish to try and prove
- the contrary, I may say that you know I am always conscious of my own
- littleness, and that if by chance I have ever thought myself to be
- anything, such a thought has come but rarely and then only from seeing
- the ignorance of other men; for, as I often remark, we are reduced to
- acknowledge, according to Cicero's celebrated phrase, that "what powers
- we may possess come rather from the feebleness of others than from any
- merit in ourselves."
- But even were I endowed as richly as you imagine with those advantages
- of which you speak, what is there so magnificent about them that
- I should be vain? I am surely not so forgetful of myself nor so
- feather-brained as to let myself trouble about cares of that sort. For
- what use in the world are intellect, knowledge, eloquence, if they can
- bring no healing to a soul diseased? I remember having given expression
- already in one of my letters to my sad sense of this truth.
- As to what you remarked with an air of quasi gravity about my physical
- advantages, I must confess it makes me smile. That I of all men should
- be thought to have plumed myself on my mortal and perishing body, when
- every day of my life I feel in it the ravages of time at work! Heaven
- save me from such folly!
- I will not deny that in the days of my youth I took some care to trim
- my head and to adorn my face; but the taste for that kind of thing has
- gone with my early years, and I recognise now the truth of that saying
- of the Emperor Domitian who, writing of himself in a letter to a lady
- friend, and complaining of the too swift decay of the goodliness of
- man, said, "Know you that nothing is so sweet, but nothing also is so
- fleeting, as the beauty of the body."[6]
- _S. Augustine._ It would be an easy task to refute all you have
- advanced, but I prefer that your own conscience should send the shaft
- of shame to your heart rather than words of mine. I will not labour
- the point or draw the truth from you by torture; but as those who take
- revenge magnanimously, I will merely prefer a simple request that you
- will continue to avoid what you profess you have hitherto avoided.
- If by any chance the fashion of your countenance should at any time
- have stirred the least motion of conceit, then I beg you to reflect
- what soon those bodily members must become, though now they please
- your eye: think how their destiny is to be foul and hideous, and what
- repulsion they would cause even in yourself were you able to see them
- then. Then call often to mind this maxim of the Philosopher: "I was
- born for some higher destiny than to be the slave of my body."[7]
- Assuredly it is the very climax of folly to see men neglect their real
- selves in order to cosset the body and limbs in which they dwell. If a
- man is imprisoned for a little while in some dungeon, dark, damp, and
- dirty, would he not seem to have lost his senses if he did not shield
- himself as far as he was able from any contact with the walls and soil?
- And with the expectation of freedom would he not eagerly listen for the
- footsteps of his deliverer? But if giving up that expectation, covered
- with filth and plunged in darkness, he dreads to leave his prison; if
- he turns all his attention to painting and adorning the walls which
- shut him in, in a vain endeavour to counteract the nature of his
- dripping prison-house, will he not rightly be counted a wretched fool?
- Well, you yourself know and love your prison-house, wretched that you
- are! And on the very eve of your issuing or being dragged therefrom you
- chain yourself more firmly in it, labouring to adorn what you ought to
- despise, if you would follow the advice you yourself had tendered to
- the father of the great Scipio in your poem called _Africa._
- "The bonds and fetters known and suffered long,
- The clogs on liberty are hateful to us,
- And the new freedom now attained we love."[8]
- Wonderful is it if you made others give the counsel which you yourself
- refuse! But I cannot disguise from you one word in your discourse
- which to you may seem very humble, but to me seems full of pride and
- arrogance.
- _Petrarch._ I am sorry if I have in any way expressed myself
- arrogantly, but if the spirit is the true rule of one's deeds and
- words, then my own bears me witness that I intended nothing in that
- sense.
- _S. Augustine._ To depreciate others is a kind of pride more
- intolerable than to exalt oneself above one's due measure; I would
- much rather see you exalt others and then put yourself above them than
- degrade all the world in a heap at your feet, and by a refinement of
- pride fashion for yourself a shield of humanity out of scorn for your
- neighbour.
- _Petrarch._ Take it how you will, I profess but small esteem either for
- others or myself. I am ashamed to tell you what experience has made me
- think of the majority of mankind.
- _S. Augustine_. It is very prudent to despise oneself; but it is very
- dangerous and very useless to despise others. However, let us proceed.
- Are you aware of what still makes you turn from the right way?
- _Petrarch._ Pray say anything you like, only do not accuse me of envy.
- _S. Augustine_. Please God may pride have done you as little hurt as
- envy! So far as I judge, you have escaped this sin, but I have others
- whereof to accuse you.
- _Petrarch_. Still you will not vex me whatever reproaches you may
- bring. Tell me freely everything that leads me astray.
- _S. Augustine._ The desire of things temporal.
- _Petrarch._ Come, come! I truly have never heard anything so absurd.
- _S. Augustine._ There! you see everything vexes you. You have forgotten
- your promise. This is not, however, any question of envy.
- _Petrarch._ No, but of cupidity, and I do not believe there is a man in
- the world more free of this fault than myself.
- _S. Augustine._ You are great at self-justification, but, believe me,
- you are not so clear of this fault as you think you are.
- _Petrarch._ What? do you mean to say that I, I am not free from the
- reproach of cupidity?
- _S. Augustine._ I do, and that you are likewise guilty of ambition.
- _Petrarch._ Go on, ill-treat me more still, double your reproaches,
- make full proof of your work of an accuser. I wonder what fresh blow
- you have in store for me.
- _S. Augustine._ What is mere truth and right testimony you call
- accusation and ill-treatment. The satirist was quite right who wrote--
- "To speak the truth to men is to accuse."[9]
- And the saying of the comic poet is equally true--
- "'Tis flattery makes friends and candour foes."[10]
- But tell me, pray, what is the use of this irritation and anger that
- makes you so on edge? Was it necessary in a life so short to weave such
- long hopes?
- "Have no long hopes! life's shortness cries to man."[11]
- You read that often enough but take no count of it. You will reply, I
- suppose, that you do this from a tender solicitude for your friends,
- and so find a fair pretext for your error; but what madness it is,
- under pretext of friendship to others, to declare war on yourself and
- treat yourself as an enemy.
- _Petrarch._ I am neither covetous nor inhuman enough to be without
- solicitude for my friends, especially for those whose virtue or deserts
- attach me to them, for it is those whom I admire, revere, love, and
- compassionate; but, on the other hand, I do not pretend to be generous
- enough to court my own ruin for the sake of my friends. What I desire
- is so to manage my affairs as to have a decent subsistence while I
- live; and as you have delivered a shot at me from Horace, let me also
- from the same poet put up a shield in self-defence and profess my
- desire is the same as his,--
- "Let me have books and stores for one year hence, Nor make my life one
- flutter of suspense!"[12]
- And further how I shape my course so that I may in the same poet's
- words--
- "Pass my old age and not my honour lose, And, if I may, still serve the
- lyric Muse."[13]
- Let me own also that I dread very much the rocks ahead if life should
- be prolonged, and so would provide beforehand for this double wish of
- mine to blend with my work for the Muses some simpler occupation in
- household affairs. But this I do with such indifference that it is
- plain enough I only descend to such necessities because I am so obliged.
- _Augustine._ I see clearly how these pretexts texts which serve as an
- excuse for your folly have penetrated deeply into your very spirit. How
- is it, then, you have not engraved equally deeply in your heart the
- words of the satirist--
- "Why keep such hoarded gold to vex the mind?
- Why should such madness still delude mankind?
- To scrape through life on water and dry bread
- That you may have a fortune when you're dead?"[14]
- Undoubtedly it is more because you think that it is a fine thing to
- die in a winding-sheet of purple, and rest in a marble tomb, and leave
- to your heirs the business of disputing over a great succession, than
- that you yourself care for the money which wins such advantages. It is
- a futile trouble, believe me, and quite devoid of good sense. If you
- will steadily observe human nature, you will discover that in a general
- way it is content with very little, and, in your case particularly,
- there is hardly a man who needs less for his satisfaction, unless you
- had been blinded by prejudices. Doubtless the poet was thinking of the
- average run of men, or possibly his own actual self, when he said--
- "My sorry fare is dogwood fruit; I pluck
- Wild herbs and roots that in the fields do grow,
- And a few berries."[15]
- But, unlike him, you will acknowledge yourself that such a mode of life
- is far from sorry, and that in fact nothing would be pleasanter if you
- were to consult only your own taste and not the customs of a deluded
- world. Why, then, continue to torment yourself? If you order your life
- as your nature dictates, you were rich long ago, but you never will
- be able to be rich if you follow the standard of the world; you will
- always think something wanting, and in 'rushing after it you will find
- yourself swept away by your passion.
- Do you remember with what delight you used to wander in the depth of
- the country? Sometimes, laying yourself down on a bed of turf, you
- would listen to the water of a brook murmuring over the stones; at
- another time, seated on some open hill, you would let your eye wander
- freely over the plain stretched at your feet; at others, again, you
- enjoyed a sweet slumber beneath the shady trees of some valley in the
- noontide heat, and revelled in the delicious silence. Never idle, in
- your soul you would ponder over some high meditation, with only the
- Muses for your friends--you were never less alone than when in their
- company, and then, like the old man in Virgil who reckoned himself
- "As rich askings, when, at the close of day,
- Home to his cot he took his happy way,
- And on his table spread his simple fare,
- Fresh from the meadow without cost or care,"[16]
- you would come at sunset back to your humble roof; and, contented with
- your good things, did you not find yourself the richest and happiest
- of mortal men?
- _Petrarch._ Ah, well-a-day! I recall it all now, and the remembrance of
- that time makes me sigh with regret.
- _S. Augustine._ Why--why do you speak of sighing? And who, pray, is
- the author of your woes? It is, indeed, your own spirit and none other
- which too long has not dared to follow the true law of its nature,
- and has thought itself a prisoner only because it would not break its
- chain. Even now it is dragging you along like a runaway horse, and
- unless you tighten the rein it will rush you to destruction. Ever since
- you grew tired of your leafy trees, of your simple way of life, and
- society of country people, egged on by cupidity, you have plunged once
- more into the midst of the tumultuous life of cities. I read in your
- face and speech what a happy and peaceful life you lived; for what
- miseries have you not endured since then? Too rebellious against the
- teachings of experience, you still hesitate!
- It is without a doubt the bonds of your own sins that keep you back,
- and God allows that, as you passed your childhood under a harsh muster,
- so, though you once became free, you have again fallen into bondage,
- and there will end your miserable old age. Verily, I was at your side
- once, when, quite young, unstained by avarice or ambition, you gave
- promise of becoming a great man; now, alas, having quite changed your
- character, the nearer you get to the end of your journey the more you
- trouble yourself about provisions for the way. What remains then but
- that you will be found, when the day comes for you to die--and it may
- be even now at hand, and certainly cannot be any great way off--you
- will be found, I say, still hungering after gold, poring half-dead over
- the calendar?
- For those anxious cares, which increase day after day, must by
- necessity at last have grown to a huge figure and a prodigious amount.
- _Petrarch_. Well, after all, if I foresee the poverty of old age, and
- gather some provision against that time of weariness, what is there so
- much to find fault with?
- _S. Augustine._ Ah! ludicrous anxiety and tragic neglect, to worry and
- trouble yourself about a time at which you may never arrive and in
- which you assuredly will not have long to stay, and yet to be quite
- oblivious of that end at which you cannot help arriving, and of which
- there is no remedy when you once have reached it. But such is your
- execrable habit--to care for what's temporal, and be careless for all
- that's eternal. As for this delusion of providing a shield against old
- age, no doubt what put it into your head was the verse in Virgil which
- speaks of
- "The ant who dreads a destitute old age."[17]
- And so you have made an ant your mentor and you are as excusable as the
- satiric poet who wrote--
- "Some people, like the ant, fear hunger and cold,"[18]
- but if you are going to put no limit to the following of ants, you will
- discover that there is nothing more melancholy and nothing more absurd
- than to ward off poverty one day by loading yourself with it all your
- days.
- _Petrarch._ What will you say next! Do you counsel me to court Poverty?
- I have no longing for it, but I will bear it with courage if Fortune,
- who delights to overturn human affairs, reduces me to it.
- _S. Augustine._ My opinion is that in every condition man should aim at
- the golden mean. I would not then restrict you to the rules of those
- who say, "All that is needed for man's life is bread and water; with
- these none is poor; whosoever desires no more than these will rival
- in felicity the Father of the Gods."[19] No, I do not tie man's life
- down to dry bread and water; such maxims are as extreme as they are
- troublesome and odious to listen to. Also, in regard to your infirmity,
- what I enjoin is not to over-indulge natural appetite, but to control
- it. What you already have would be sufficient for your wants if you had
- known how to be sufficient to yourself. But as it is you are yourself
- the cause of your own poverty. To heap up riches is to heap up cares
- and anxieties. This truth has been proved so continually that there
- is no need to bring more arguments. What a strange delusion, what a
- melancholy blindness of the soul of man, whose nature is so noble,
- whose birth is from above, that it will neglect all that is lofty and
- debase itself to care for the metals of the earth. Every time you have
- been drawn by these hooks of cupidity you come down from your high
- meditations to these grovelling thoughts, and do you not feel each time
- as if hurled from heaven to earth, from the bosom of the stars to a
- bottomless pit of blackness?
- _Petrarch_. Yes; in truth, I feel it, and one knows not how to express
- what I have suffered in my fall.
- _S. Augustine_. Why, then, are you not afraid of a danger you have so
- often experienced? And when you were raised up to the higher life, why
- did you not attach yourself to it more firmly?
- _Petrarch_. I make all the efforts I can to do so; but inasmuch as the
- various exigencies of our human lot shake and unsettle me, I am torn
- away in spite of myself. It is not without reason, I imagine, that
- the poets of antiquity dedicated the double peaks of Parnassus to two
- different divinities. They desired to beg from Apollo, whom they called
- the god of Genius, the interior resources of the mind, and from Bacchus
- a plentiful supply of external goods, way of regarding it is suggested
- to me not only by the teaching of experience, but by the frequent
- testimony of wise men whom I need not quote to you. Moreover, although
- the plurality of deities may be ridiculous, this opinion of the
- Poets is not devoid of common sense. And in referring a like twofold
- supplication to the one God from whom all good comes down, I do not
- think I can be called unreasonable, unless indeed you hold otherwise.
- _S. Augustine_. I deny not you are right in your view, but the poor
- way you divide your time stirs my indignation. You had already devoted
- your whole life to honourable work; if anything compelled you to spend
- any of your time on other occupations, you regarded it as lost. But I
- now you only concede to what is Good and Beautiful the moments you can
- spare from avarice.
- Any man in the world would desire to reach old age on such terms as
- that; but what limit or check would be to such a state of mind? Choose
- for yourself some defined goal, and when you have attained it, then
- stay there and breathe awhile. Doubtless you know that the saying I am
- about to quote is from lips of man, but has all the force of a divine
- oracle--
- "The miser's voice for ever cries, Give, give;
- Then curb your lusts if you would wisely live."[20]
- _Petrarch._ Neither to want nor to abound, neither to command others or
- obey them--there you have my heart's wish.
- _S. Augustine_. Then you must drop your humanity and become God, if you
- would want nothing. Can you be ignorant that of all the creatures Man
- is the one that has most wants?
- _Petrarch_. Many a time have I heard that said, but I would still like
- to hear it afresh from your lips and lodge it in my remembrance.
- _S. Augustine._ Behold him naked and unformed, born in wailings and
- tears, comforted with a few drops of milk, trembling and crawling,
- needing the hand of another, fed and clothed from the beasts of the
- field, his body feeble, his spirit restless, subject to all kinds of
- sickness, the prey of passions innumerable, devoid of reason, joyful
- to-day, to-morrow sorrowful, in both full of agitation, incapable of
- mastering himself, unable to restrain his appetite, ignorant of what
- things are useful to him and in what proportion, knowing not how to
- control himself in meat or drink, forced with great labour to gain
- the food that other creatures find ready at their need, made dull
- with sleep, swollen with food, stupefied with drink, emaciated with
- watching, famished with hunger, parched with thirst, at once greedy
- and timid, disgusted with what he has, longing after what he has lost,
- discontented alike with past, present and future, full of pride in his
- misery, and aware of his frailty, baser than the vilest worms, his life
- is short, his days uncertain, his fate inevitable, since Death in a
- thousand forms is waiting for him at last.
- _Petrarch._ You have so piled up his miseries and beggary that I feel
- it were good if I had never been born.
- _S. Augustine._ Yet, in the midst of such wretchedness and such deep
- destitution of good in man's estate, you go on dreaming of riches and
- power such as neither emperors nor kings have ever fully enjoyed.
- _Petrarch_. Kindly tell me who ever made use of those words? Who spoke
- either of riches or of power?
- _S. Augustine._ You imply both, for what greater riches can there be
- than to lack nothing? What greater power than to be independent of
- every one else in the world? Certainly those kings and masters of the
- earth whom you think so rich have wanted a multitude of things. The
- generals of great armies depend on those whom they seem to command,
- and, kept in check by their armed legions, they find the very soldiers
- who render them invincible also render them in turn helpless. Give up,
- therefore, your dreams of the impossible, and be content to accept the
- lot of humanity; learn to live in want and in abundance, to command
- and to obey, without desiring, with those ideas of yours, to shake off
- the yoke of fortune that presses even on kings. You will only be free
- from this yoke when, caring not a straw for human passions, you bend
- your neck wholly to the rule of Virtue. Then you will be free, wanting
- nothing, then. you will be independent; in a word, then you will be a
- king, truly powerful and perfectly happy.
- _Petrarch_. Now I do indeed repent for all that is past, and I desire
- nothing. But I am still in bondage to one evil habit and am conscious
- always of a certain need at the bottom of my heart.
- _S. Augustine._ Well, to come back to our subject, there is the very
- thing which keeps you back from the contemplation of death. It is that
- which makes you harassed with earthly anxieties; you do not lift up
- your heart at all to higher things. If you will take my counsel you
- will utterly cast away these anxieties, which are as so many dead
- weights upon the spirit, and you will find that it is not so hard after
- all to order your life by your nature, and let that rule and govern you
- more than the foolish opinions of the crowd.
- _Petrarch_. I will do so very willingly, but may I ask you to finish
- what you were beginning to say about ambition, which I have long
- desired to hear?
- _S. Augustine_. Why ask me to do what you can quite well do for
- yourself? Examine your own heart; you will see that among its other
- faults it is not ambition which holds the least place there.
- _Petrarch._ It has profited me nothing then to have fled from towns
- whenever I could, to have thought scorn of the world and public
- affairs, to have gone into the recesses of the woods and silence of the
- fields, to have proved my aversion from empty honours, if still I am to
- be accused of ambition.
- _S. Augustine._ You renounce many things well,--all you mortal men; but
- not so much; because you despise them as because you despair of getting
- them. Hope and desire inflame each other by the mutual stings of those
- passions, so that when the one grows cold the other dies away, and when
- one gets warm the other boils over.
- _Petrarch._ Why, then, should I not hope? Was I quite destitute of any
- accomplishment?
- _S. Augustine._ I am not now speaking of your accomplishments, but
- certainly you had not those by help of which, especially in the present
- day, men mount to high places; I mean the art of ingratiating yourself
- in the palaces of the great, the trick of flattery, deceit, promising,
- lying, pretending, dissembling, and putting up with all kinds of
- slights and indignities. Devoid of these accomplishments and others of
- the kind, and seeing clearly that you could not overcome nature, you
- turned your steps elsewhere. And you acted wisely and with prudence,
- for, as Cicero expresses it, "to contend against the gods as did the
- giants, what is it but to make war with nature itself."[21]
- _Petrarch_. Farewell such honours as these, if they have to be sought
- by such means!
- _S. Augustine._ Your words are golden, but you have not convinced me
- of your innocence, for you do not assert your indifference to honours
- so much as to the vexations their pursuit involves, like the man who
- pretended he did not want to see Rome because he really would not
- endure the trouble of the journey thither. Observe, you have not yet
- desisted from the pursuit of honour, as you seem to believe and as you
- try to persuade me. But leave off trying to hide behind your finger, as
- the saying goes; all your thoughts, all your actions are plain before
- my eyes: and when you boast of having fled from cities and become
- enamoured of the woods, I see no real excuse, but only a shifting of
- your culpability.
- We travel many ways to the same end, and, believe me, though you have
- left the road worn by feet of the crowd, you still direct your feet by
- a side-path towards this same ambition that you say you have thought
- scorn of; it is repose, solitude, a total disregard of human affairs,
- yes, and your own activities also, which just at present take you along
- that chosen path, but the end and object is glory.
- _Petrarch_. You drive me into a corner whence I think, however,
- I could manage to escape; but, as the time is short and we must
- discriminate between many things, let us proceed, if you have no
- objection.
- _S. Augustine_. Follow me, then, as I go forward. We will say nothing
- of gourmandising, for which you have no more inclination than a
- harmless pleasure in an occasional meeting with a few friends at the
- hospitable board. But I have no fear for you on this score, for when
- the country has regained its denizen, now snatched away to the towns,
- these temptations will disappear in a moment; and I have noticed,
- and have pleasure in acknowledging, that when you are alone you live
- in such a simple way as to surpass your friends and neighbours in
- frugality and temperance. I leave on one side anger also, though you
- often get carried away by it more than is reasonable, yet at the same
- time, thanks to your sweet natural temperament, you commonly control
- the motions of your spirit, and recall the advice of Horace--
- "Anger's a kind of madness, though not long;
- Master the passion, since it's very strong;
- And, if you rule it not, it will rule you,
- So put the curb on quickly."[22]
- _Petrarch._ That saying of the poet, and other words of philosophy
- like it, have helped me a little, I own; but what has helped me above
- all is the thought of the shortness of life. What insensate folly
- to spend in hating and hurting our fellow-men the few days we pass
- among them! Soon enough the last day of all will arrive, which will
- quite extinguish this flame in human breasts and put an end to all
- our hatred, and if we have desired for any of them nothing worse than
- death, our evil wish will soon be fulfilled. Why, then, seek to take
- one's life or that of others? Why let pass unused the better part of
- a time so short? When the days are hardly long enough for honest joys
- of this life, and for meditating on that which is to come, no matter
- what economy of time we practise, what good is there in robbing any of
- them of their right and needful use, and turning them to instruments
- of sorrow and death for ourselves and others? This reflection has
- helped me, when I found myself under any temptation to anger, not to
- fall utterly under its dominion, or if I fell has helped me quickly to
- recover; but hitherto I have not been able quite to arm myself at all
- points from some little gusts of irritation.
- _S. Augustine._ As I am not afraid that this wind of anger will cause
- you to make shipwreck of yourself or others, I agree willingly that
- without paying attention to the promises of the Stoics, who set out to
- extirpate root and branch all the maladies of the soul, you content
- yourself with the milder treatment of the Peripatetics. Leaving, then,
- on one side for the moment these particular failings, I hasten to treat
- of others more dangerous than these and against which you will need to
- be on guard with more care.
- _Petrarch_. Gracious Heaven, what is yet to come that is more dangerous
- still?
- _S. Augustine._ Well, has the sin of lust never touched you with its
- flames?
- _Petrarch_. Yes, indeed, at times so fiercely us to make me mourn
- sorely that I was not born without feelings. I would sooner have been a
- senseless stone than be tormented by so many stings of the flesh.
- _S. Augustine_. Ah, there is that which turns you most aside from the
- thought of things divine. For what does the doctrine of the heavenly
- Plato show but that the soul must separate itself far from the passion
- of the flesh and tread down its imaginings before it can rise pure and
- free to the contemplation of the mystery of the Divine; for otherwise
- the thought of its mortality will make it cling to those seducing
- charms. You know what I mean, and you have learned this truth in
- Plato's writings, to the study of which you said not long ago you had
- given yourself up with ardour.
- _Petrarch_. Yes, I own I had given myself to studying him with great
- hopefulness and desire, but the novelty of a strange language and the
- sudden departure of my teacher cut short my purpose.[23] For the rest
- this doctrine of which you speak is very well known to me from your own
- writings and those of the Platonists.
- _S. Augustine._ It matters little from whom you learned the truth,
- though it is a fact that the authority of a great master will often
- have a profound influence.
- _Petrarch._ Yes, in my own case I must confess I feel profoundly the
- influence of a man of whom Cicero in his _Tusculan Orations_ made this
- remark, which has remained graven in the bottom of my heart: "When
- Plato vouchsafes not to bring forward any proof (you see what deference
- I pay him), his mere authority would make me yield consent."[24]
- Often in reflecting on this heavenly genius it has appeared to me an
- injustice when the disciples of Pythagoras dispense their chief from
- submitting proofs, that Plato should be supposed to have less liberty
- than he. But, not to be carried away from our subject, authority,
- reason and experience alike have for a long time so much commended this
- axiom of Plato to me that I do not believe anything more true or more
- truly holy could be said by any man. Every time I have raised myself
- up, thanks to the hand of God stretched out to me, I have recognised
- with infinite joy, beyond belief, who it was that then preserved me
- and who had cast me down in times of old. Now that I am once more
- fallen into my old misery, I feel with a keen sense of bitterness that
- failing which again has undone me. And this I tell you, that you may
- see nothing strange in my saying I had put Plato's maxim to the proof.
- _S. Augustine._ Indeed, I think it not strange, for I have been witness
- of your conflicts; I have seen you fall and then once again rise up,
- and now that you are down once more I determined from pity to bring you
- my succour.
- _Petrarch._ I am grateful for your compassionate feeling, but of what
- avail is any human succour?
- _S. Augustine._ It avails nothing, but the succour of God is much every
- way. None can be chaste except God give him the grace of chastity.[25]
- You must therefore implore this grace from Him above all, with
- humbleness, and often it may be with tears. He is wont never to deny
- him who asks as he should.
- _Petrarch_. So often have I done it that I fear I am as one too
- importunate.
- _S. Augustine_. But you have not asked with due humbleness or
- singleness of heart. You have ever kept a corner for your passions
- to creep in; you have always asked that your prayers may be granted
- presently. I speak from experience, for I did likewise in my old life.
- I said, "Give me chastity, but not now. Put it off a little while; the
- time will soon come. My life is still in all its vigour; let it follow
- its own course, obey its natural laws; it will feel it more of a shame
- later, to return to its youthful folly. I will give up this failing
- when the course of time itself shall have rendered me less inclined
- that way, and when satiety will have delivered me from the fear of
- going back."[26] In talking thus do you not perceive that you prayed
- for one thing but wished another in your heart?
- _Petrarch_. How so?
- _S. Augustine._ Because to ask for a thing to-morrow is to put it aside
- for to-day.
- _Petrarch._ With tears have I often asked for it to-day. My hope was
- that after breaking the chain of my passions and casting away the
- misery of life, I should escape safe and sound, and after so many
- storms of vain anxieties, I might swim ashore in some haven of safety;
- but you see, alas, how many shipwrecks I have suffered among the same
- rocks and shoals, and how I shall still suffer more if I am left to
- myself.
- _S. Augustine._ Trust me, there has always been something wanting in
- your prayer; otherwise the Supreme Giver would have granted it or, as
- in the case of the Apostle, would have only denied you to make you more
- perfect in virtue and convince you entirely of your own frailty.[27]
- _Petrarch._ That is my conviction also; and I will go on praying
- constantly, unwearied, unashamed, undespairing. The Almighty, taking
- pity on my sorrows, will perchance lend an ear to my prayer, sent up
- daily to His throne, and even as He would not have denied His grace if
- my prayers had been pure, so He will also purify them.
- _S. Augustine._ You are quite right, but redouble your efforts; and, as
- men wounded and fallen in battle raise themselves on their elbow, so do
- you keep a look out on all sides for the dangers that beset you, for
- fear that some foe; unseen come near and do you hurt yet more, where
- you lie on the ground. In the mean time, pray instantly for the aid of
- Him who is able to raise you up again. He will perchance be nearer to
- you just then when you think Him furthest off. Keep ever in mind that
- saying of Plato we were speaking of just now, "Nothing so much hinders
- the knowledge of the Divine as lust and the burning desire of carnal
- passion." Ponder well, therefore, this doctrine; it is the very basis
- of our purpose that we have in hand.
- _Petrarch._ To let you see how much I welcome this teaching, I have
- treasured it with earnest care, not only when it dwells in the court of
- Plato's royal demesne, but also where it lurks hidden in the forests
- of other writers, and I have kept note in my memory of the very place
- where it was first perceived by my mind.
- _S. Augustine._ I wonder what is your meaning. Do you mind being more
- explicit?
- _Petrarch._ You know Virgil: you remember through what dangers he makes
- his hero pass in that last awful night of the sack of Troy?
- _S. Augustine._ Yes, it is a topic repeated over and over again in all
- the schools. He makes him recount his adventures thus--
- "What tongue could tell the horrors of that night,
- Paint all the forms of death, or who have tears
- Enough to weep so many wretched wights?
- Hath the great city that so long was queen
- Fallen at last? Behold in all the streets
- The bodies of the dead by thousands strewn,
- And in their homes and on the temple's steps!
- Yet is there other blood than that of Troy,
- What time her vanquished heroes gathering up
- Their quenchless courage smite anon their foes,
- They, though triumphant, fall. Everywhere grief,
- Dread everywhere, and in all places Death!"[28]
- _Petrarch._ Now wherever he wandered accompanied by the goddess of
- Love, through crowding foes, through burning fire, he could not
- discern, though his eyes were open, the wrath of the angered gods,
- and so long as Venus was speaking to him he only had understanding
- for things of earth. But as soon as she left him you remember what
- happened; he immediately beheld the frowning faces of the deities, and
- recognised what dangers beset him round about.
- "Then I beheld the awe-inspiring form
- Of gods in anger for the fall of Troy."[29]
- From which my conclusion is that commerce with Venus takes away the
- vision of the Divine.
- _S. Augustine._ Among the clouds themselves you have clearly discerned
- the light of truth. It is in this way that truth abides in the fictions
- of the poets, and one perceives it shining out through the crevices of
- their thought. But, as we shall have to return to this question later
- on, let us reserve what we have to say for the end of our discourse.
- _Petrarch._ That I may not get lost in tracks unknown to me, may I ask
- when you propose to return to this point?
- _S. Augustine._ I have not yet probed the deepest wounds of your soul,
- and I have purposely deferred to do so, in order that, coming at the
- end, my counsels may be more deeply graven in your remembrance. In
- another dialogue we will treat more fully of the subject of the desires
- of the flesh, on which we have just now lightly touched.
- _Petrarch._ Go on, then, now as you proposed.
- _S. Augustine._ Yes, there need be nothing to hinder me, unless you are
- obstinately bent on stopping me.
- _Petrarch._ Indeed, nothing will please me better than to banish for
- ever every cause of dispute from the earth. I have never engaged in
- disputation, even on things perfectly familiar, without regretting it;
- for the contentions that arise, even between friends, have a certain
- character of sharpness and hostility contrary to the laws of friendship.
- But pass on to those matters in which you think I shall welcome your
- good counsel.
- _S. Augustine._ You are the victim of a terrible plague of the
- soul--melancholy; which the moderns call _accidie_, but which in old
- days used to be called _ægritudo._
- _Petrarch._ The very name of this complaint makes me shudder.
- _S. Augustine._ Nor do I wonder, for you have endured its burden long
- enough.
- _Petrarch._ Yes, and though in almost all other diseases which torment
- me there is mingled a certain false delight, in this wretched state
- everything is harsh, gloomy, frightful. The way to despair is for ever
- open, and everything goads one's miserable soul to self-destruction.
- Moreover, while other passions attack me only in bouts, which, though
- frequent, are but short and for a moment, this one usually has invested
- me so closely that it clings to and tortures me for whole days and
- nights together. In such times I take no pleasure in the light of day,
- I see nothing, I am as one plunged in the darkness of hell itself, and
- seem to endure death in its most cruel form. But what one may call the
- climax of the misery is, that I so feed upon my tears and sufferings
- with a morbid attraction that I can only be rescued from it by main
- force and in despite of myself.
- _S. Augustine._ So well do you know your symptoms, so familiar are you
- become with their cause, that I beg you will tell me what is it that
- depresses you most at the present hour? Is it the general course of
- human affairs? Is it some physical trouble, or some disgrace of fortune
- in men's eyes?
- _Petrarch._ It is no one of these separately. Had I only been
- challenged to single combat, I would certainly have come off
- victorious; but now, as it is, I am besieged by a whole host of enemies.
- _S. Augustine_. I pray you will tell me fully all that torments you.
- _Petrarch._ Every time that fortune pushes me back one step, I stand
- firm and courageous, recalling to myself that often before I have been
- struck in the same way and yet have come off conqueror; if, after that,
- she presently deals me a sterner blow, I begin to stagger somewhat;
- if then she returns to the charge a third and fourth time, driven by
- force, I retreat, not hurriedly but step by step, to the citadel of
- Reason.
- If fortune still lays siege to me there with all her troops, and if,
- to reduce me to surrender, she piles up the sorrows of our human lot,
- the remembrance of my old miseries and the dread of evils yet to come,
- then, at lost, hemmed in on all sides, seized with terror at these
- heaped-up calamities, I bemoan my wretched fate, and feel rising in my
- very soul this bitter disdain of life. Picture to yourself some one
- beset with countless enemies, with no hope of escape or of pity, with
- no comfort anywhere, with every one and everything against him; his
- foes bring up their batteries, they mine the very ground beneath his
- feet, the towers are already falling, the ladders are at the gates, the
- grappling-hooks are fastened to the walls, the fire is seen crackling
- through the roofs, and, at sight of those gleaming swords on every
- side, those fierce faces of his foes, and that utter ruin that is upon
- him, how should he not be utterly dismayed and overwhelmed, since, even
- if life itself should be left, yet to men not quite bereft of every
- feeling the loss of liberty alone is a mortal stroke?
- _S. Augustine._ Although your confession is a little confused, I
- make out that your misfortunes all proceed from a single false
- conception which has in the past claimed and in futuro will still claim
- innumerable victims. You have a bad conceit of yourself.
- _Petrarch._ Yes, truly, a very bad one.
- _S. Augustine._ And why?
- _Petrarch._ Not for one, but a thousand reasons.
- _S. Augustine._ You are like people who on the slightest offence rake
- up all the old grounds of quarrel they ever had.
- _Petrarch._ In my case there is no wound old enough for it to have
- been effaced and forgotten: my sufferings are all quite fresh, and if
- anything by chance were made better through time, Fortune has so soon
- redoubled her strokes that the open wound has never been perfectly
- healed over. I cannot, moreover, rid myself of that hate and disdain of
- our life which I spoke of. Oppressed with that, I cannot but be grieved
- and sorrowful exceedingly. That you call this grief _accidie_ or
- _ægritudo_ makes no difference; in substance we mean one and the same
- thing.
- _S. Augustine._ As from what I can understand the evil is so
- deep-seated, it will do no good to heal it slightly, for it will soon
- throw out more shoots. It must be entirely rooted up. Yet I know not
- where to begin, so many complications alarm me. But to make the task of
- dividing the matter easier, I will examine each point in detail. Tell
- me, then, what is it that has hurt you most?
- _Petrarch_. Whatever I see, or hear, or feel.
- _S. Augustine._ Come, come, does nothing please you?
- _Petrarch_. Nothing, or almost nothing.
- _S. Augustine._ Would to God that at least the better things in your
- life might be dear, to you. But tell me what is it that is to you the
- most displeasing of all? I beg you give me an answer.
- _Petrarch._ I have already answered.
- _S. Augustine._ It is this melancholy I spoke of which is the true
- cause of all your displeasure with yourself.
- _Petrarch._ I am just as displeased with what I see in others as with
- what I see in myself.
- _S. Augustine._ That too comes from the same source. But to get a
- little order into our discourse, does what you see in yourself truly
- displease you as much as you say?
- _Petrarch._ Stop worrying me with your petty questions, that are more
- than I know how to reply to.
- _S. Augustine._ I see, then, that those things which make many other
- people envy you are nevertheless in your own eyes of no account at all?
- _Petrarch._ Any one who envies a wretch like me must indeed himself be
- wretched.
- _S. Augustine._ But now please tell me what is it that most displeases
- you?
- _Petrarch._ I am sure I do not know.
- _S. Augustine._ If I guess right will you acknowledge it?
- _Petrarch._ Yes, I will, quite freely.
- _S. Augustine._ You are vexed with Fortune.
- _Petrarch._ And am I not right to hate her? Proud, violent, blind, she
- makes a mock of mankind.
- _S. Augustine._ It is an idle complaint. Let us look now at your own
- troubles. If I prove you have complained unjustly, will you consent to
- retract?
- _Petrarch._ You will find it very hard to convince me. If, however, you
- prove me in the wrong, I will give in.
- _S. Augustine._ You find that Fortune is to you too unkind.
- _Petrarch_. Not too unkind; too unjust, too proud, too cruel.
- _S. Augustine_. The comic poets have more than one comedy called "The
- Grumbler." There are scores of them. And now you are making yourself
- one of the crowd. I should rather find you in more select company. But
- as this subject is so very threadbare that no one can add anything
- new on it, will you allow me to offer you an old remedy for an old
- complaint?
- _Petrarch_. As you wish.
- _S. Augustine_. Well then, has poverty yet made you endure hunger and
- thirst and cold?
- _Petrarch_. No, Fortune has not yet brought me to this pass.
- _S. Augustine._ Yet such is the hard lot of a great many people every
- day of their lives. Is it not?
- _Petrarch_. Use some other remedy than this if you can, for this brings
- me no relief. I am not one of those who in their own misfortunes
- rejoice to behold the crowd of other wretched ones who sob around them;
- and not seldom I mourn as much for the griefs of others as for my own.
- _S. Augustine_. I wish no man to rejoice in witnessing the misfortunes
- of others, but they ought at any rate to give him some consolation,
- and teach him not to complain of his own lot. All the world cannot
- possibly occupy the first and best place. How could there be any first
- unless there was also a second following after? Only be thankful, you
- mortal men, if you are not reduced to the last of all; and that of so
- many blows of outrageous Fortune you only bear her milder strokes. For
- the rest, to those who are doomed to endure the extremes of misery,
- one must offer more potent remedies than you have need of whom Fortune
- has wounded but a little. That which casts men down into these doleful
- moods is that each one, forgetting his own condition, dreams of the
- highest place, and, like every one else, as I just now pointed out,
- cannot possibly attain it; then when he fails he is discontented. If
- they only knew the sorrows that attend on greatness they would recoil
- from that which they now pursue. Let me call as witnesses those who by
- dint of toil have reached the pinnacle, and who no sooner have arrived
- than they forthwith bewail the too easy accomplishment of their wish.
- This truth should be familiar to every one, and especially to you, to
- whom long experience has shown that the summit of rank, surrounded as
- it is with trouble and anxieties, is only deserving of pity. It follows
- that no earthly lot of man is free from complaint, since those who have
- attained what they desire and those who have missed it alike show some
- reason for discontent. The first allege they have been cheated, and the
- second that they have suffered neglect.
- Take Seneca's advice then, "When you see how many people are in front
- of you, think also how many are behind. If you would be reconciled
- with Providence and your own lot in life, think of all those you have
- surpassed;" and as the same wise man says in the same place, "Set a
- goal to your desires such as you cannot overleap, even if you wish."
- _Petrarch._ I have long ago set such a goal to my desires, and, unless
- I am mistaken, a very modest one; but in the pushing and shameless
- manners of my time, what place is left for modesty, which men now call
- slackness or sloth?
- _S. Augustine._ Can your peace of mind be disturbed by the opinion of
- the crowd, whose judgment is never true, who never call anything by its
- right name? But unless my recollection is at fault, you used to look
- down on their opinion.
- _Petrarch._ Never, believe me, did I despise it more than I do now.
- I care as much for what the crowd thinks of me as I care what I am
- thought of by the beasts of the field.
- _S. Augustine._ Well, then?
- _Petrarch._ What raises my spleen is that having, of all my
- contemporaries whom I know, the least exalted ambitions, not one
- of them has encountered so many difficulties as I have in the
- accomplishment of my desires. Most assuredly I never aspired to the
- highest place; I call the spirit of Truth as witness who judges us,
- who sees all, and who has always read my most secret thoughts. She
- knows very well that whenever after the manner of men I have gone over
- in my mind all the degrees and conditions of our human lot. I have
- never found in the highest place that tranquillity and serenity of soul
- which I place above all other goods; and for that matter, having a
- horror of a life full of disquiet and care, I have ever chosen, in my
- modest judgment, some middle position, and given, not lip-service, but
- the homage of my heart to that truth expressed by Horace--
- "Whoso with little wealth will live content,
- Easy and free his days shall all be spent;
- His well-built house keeps out the winter wind,
- Too modest to excite an envious mind."[30]
- And I admire the reasons he gives in the same Ode not less than the
- sentiment itself.
- "The tallest trees most fear the tempest's might,
- The highest towers come down with most affright,
- The loftiest hills feel first the thunder smite."
- Alas! it is just the middle place that it has never been my lot to
- enjoy.
- _S. Augustine._ And what if that which you think is a middle position
- is in truth below you? What if as a matter of fact you have for a long
- while enjoyed a really middle place, enjoyed it abundantly? Nay, what
- if you have in truth left the middle far behind, and are become to a
- great many people a man more to be envied than despised?
- _Petrarch._ Well, if they think my lot one to be envied, I think the
- contrary.
- _S. Augustine._ Yes, your false opinion is precisely the cause of all
- your miseries, and especially of this last. As Cicero puts it, "You
- must flee Charybdis, with all hands to the oars, and sails as well!"[31]
- _Petrarch._ Whither can I flee? where direct my ship? In a word, what
- am I to think except what I see before my eyes?
- _S. Augustine._ You only see from side to side where your view is
- limited. If you look behind you will discover a countless throng coming
- after, and that you are somewhat nearer to the front rank than to that
- in the rear, but pride and stubbornness suffer you not to turn your
- gaze behind you.
- _Petrarch._ Nevertheless from time to time I have done so, and have
- noticed many people coming along behind. I have no cause to blush at my
- condition, but I complain of having so many cares. I deplore, if I may
- yet again make use of a phrase of Horace, that I must live "only from
- day to day."[32] As to this restlessness of which I have suffered more
- than enough, I gladly subscribe to what the same poet says in the same
- place.
- "What prayers are mine? O may I yet possess
- The goods I have, or, if heaven pleases, less!
- Let the few years that Fate may grant me still
- Be all my own, not held at others' will."[33]
- Always in a state of suspense, always uncertain of the future,
- Fortune's favours have no attraction for me. Up to now, as you see, I
- have lived always in dependence on others; it is the bitterest cup of
- all. May heaven grant me some peace in what is left of my old age, and
- that the mariner who has lived so long amid the stormy waves may die in
- port!
- _S. Augustine._ So then in this great whirlpool of human affairs, amid
- so many vicissitudes, with the future all dark before you; in a word,
- placed as you are at the caprice of Fortune, you will be the only one
- of so many millions of mankind who shall live a life exempt from care!
- Look what you are asking for, O mortal man! look what you demand! As
- for that complaint you have brought forward of never having lived a
- life of your own, what it really amounts to is not that you have lived
- in poverty, but more or less in subservience. I admit, as you say, that
- it is a thing very troublesome. However, if you look around you will
- find very few men who have lived a life of their own. Those whom one
- counts most happy, and for whom numbers of others live their lives,
- bear witness by the constancy of their vigils and their toils that they
- themselves are living for others. To quote you a striking instance,
- Julius Cæsar, of whom some one has reported this true but arrogant
- saying, "The human race only lives for a small number,"[34] Julius
- Cæsar, after he had subdued the human race to live for himself alone,
- did himself live for other people. Perhaps you will ask me for whom did
- he live? and I reply, for those who slew him--for Brutus, Cimber, and
- other traitorous heads of that conspiracy, for whom his inexhaustible
- munificence proved too small to satisfy their rapacity.
- _Petrarch_. I must admit you have brought me to my senses, and I will
- never any more complain either of my obligations to others or of my
- poverty.
- _S. Augustine._ Complain rather of your want of wisdom, for it is this
- alone that can obtain for you liberty and true riches. For the rest,
- the man who quietly endures to go without the cause of those good
- effects, and then makes complaint of not having them, cannot truly be
- said to have any intelligent understanding of either the cause or the
- effects. But now tell me what is it that makes you suffer, apart from
- what we have been speaking of? Is it any weakness of health or any
- secret trouble?
- _Petrarch_. I confess that my body has always been a burden every time
- I think of myself; but when I cast my eyes on the unwieldiness of other
- people's bodies, I acknowledge that I have a fairly obedient slave. I
- would to Heaven I could say as much of my soul, but I am afraid that in
- it there is what is more than a match for me.
- _S. Augustine_. May it please God to bring that also under the rule of
- reason. But to come back to your body, of what do you complain?
- _Petrarch._ Of that of which most other people also complain. I charge
- it with being mortal, with implicating me in its sufferings, loading
- me with its burdens, asking me to sleep when my soul is awake, and
- subjecting me to other human necessities which it would be tedious to
- go through.
- _S. Augustine._ Calm yourself, I entreat you, and remember you are a
- man. Presently your agitation will cease. If any other thing troubles
- you, tell me.
- _Petrarch._ Have you never heard how cruelly Fortune used me? This
- stepdame, who in a single day with her ruthless hand laid low all my
- hopes, all my resources, my family and home?[35]
- _S. Augustine._ I see your tears are running down, and I pass on. The
- present is not the time for instruction, but only for giving warning;
- let, then, this simple one suffice. If you consider, in truth, not the
- disasters of private families only, but the ruins also of empires from
- the beginning of history, with which; you are so well acquainted; and
- if you call to mind the tragedies you have read, you will not perhaps
- be so sorely offended when you see your own humble roof brought to
- nought along with so many palaces of kings. Now pray go on, for these
- few warning words will open to you a field for long meditation.
- _Petrarch._ Who shall find words to utter my daily disgust for this
- place where I live, in the most melancholy and disorderly of towns,[36]
- the narrow and obscure sink of the earth, where all the filth of the
- world is collected? What brush could depict the nauseating spectacle
- --streets full of disease and infection, dirty pigs and snarling
- dogs, the noise of cart-wheels grinding against the walls, four-horse
- chariots coming dashing down at every cross-road, the motley crew
- of people, swarms of vile beggars side by side with the flaunting
- luxury of the wealthy, the one crushed down in sordid misery, the
- others debauched with pleasure and riot; and then the medley of
- characters--such diverse rôles in life--the endless clamour of their
- confused voices, as the passers-by jostle one another in the streets?
- All this destroys the soul accustomed to any better kind of life,
- banishes all serenity from a generous heart, and quite upsets the
- student's habit of mind. So my prayers to God are earnest as well as
- frequent that he would save my barque from imminent wreck, for whenever
- I look around I seem to myself to be going down alive into the pit.
- "Now," I say in mockery, "now betake yourself to noble thoughts "--
- "Now go and meditate the tuneful lyre."[37]
- S. _Augustine._ That line of Horace makes me realise what most afflicts
- you. You lament having lighted on a place so unfavourable for study,
- for as the same poet says--
- "Bards fly from town, and haunt the wood and glade."[38]
- And you yourself have expressed the same truth in other words--
- "The leafy forests charm the sacred Muse,
- And bards the noisy life of towns refuse."[39]
- If, however, the tumult of your mind within should once learn to calm
- itself down, believe me this din and bustle around you, though it will
- strike upon your senses, will not touch your soul. Not to repeat what
- you have been long well aware of, you have Seneca's letter[40] on this
- subject, and it is very much to the point. You have your own work also
- on "Tranquillity of Soul"; you have beside, for combating this mental
- malady, an excellent book of Cicero's which sums up the discussions
- of the third day in his _Tusculan Orations_, and is dedicated to
- Brutus.[41]
- _Petrarch._ You know I have read all that work and with great attention.
- _S. Augustine_. And have you got no help from it?
- _Petrarch._ Well, yes, at the time of reading, much help; but no sooner
- is the book from my hands than all my feeling for it vanishes.
- _S. Augustine._ This way of reading is become common now; there is such
- a mob of lettered men, a detestable herd, who have spread themselves
- everywhere and make long discussions in the schools on the art of life,
- which they put in practice little enough. But if you would only make
- notes of the chief points in what you read you would then gather the
- fruit of your reading.
- _Petrarch._ What kind of notes?
- _S. Augustine._ Whenever you read a book and meet with any wholesome
- maxims by which you feel your spirit stirred or enthralled, do not
- trust merely to the resources of your wits, but make a point of
- learning them by heart and making them quite familiar by meditating
- on them, as the doctors do with their experiments, so that no matter
- when or where some urgent case of illness arises, you have the remedy
- written, so to speak, in your head. For in the maladies of the soul, as
- in those of the body, there are some in which delay is fatal, so that
- if you defer the remedy you take away all hope of a cure. Who is not
- aware, for instance, that certain impulses of the soul are so swift and
- strong that, unless reason checks the passion from which they arise,
- they whelm in destruction the soul and body and the whole man, so that
- a tardy remedy is a useless one? Anger, in my judgment, is a case in
- point. It is not for nothing that, by those who have divided the soul
- into three parts, anger has been placed below the seat of reason, and
- reason set in the head of man as in a citadel, anger in the heart, and
- desire lower still in the loins. They wished to show that reason was
- ever ready to repress instantly the violent outbreaks of the passions
- beneath her, and was empowered in some way from her lofty estate to
- sound the retreat. As this check was more necessary in the case of
- anger, it has been placed directly under reason's control.
- _Petrarch._ Yes, and rightly; and to show you I have found this truth
- not only in the works of Philosophers but also in the Poets, by that
- fury of winds that Virgil describes hidden in deep caves, by his
- mountains piled up, and by his King Æolus sitting above, who rules them
- with his power, I have often thought he may have meant to denote anger
- and the other passions of the soul which seethe at the bottom of our
- heart, and which, unless controlled by the curb of reason, would in
- their furious haste, as he says, drag us in their train and sweep us
- over sea and land and the very sky itself.[42] In effect, he has given
- us to understand he means by the earth our bodily frame; by the sea,
- the water through which it lives; and by the depths of the sky, the
- soul that has its dwelling in a place remote, and of which elsewhere
- he says that its essence is formed out of a divine fire.[43] It is
- as though he said that these passions will hurl body, soul, and man
- himself into the abyss. On the other side, these mountains and this
- King sitting on high--what can they mean but the head placed on high
- where reason is enthroned? These are Virgil's words--
- "There, in a cave profound, King Æolus
- Holds in the tempests and the noisy wind,
- Which there he prisons fast. Those angry thralls
- Rage at their barrier, and the mountain side
- Roars with their dreadful noise, but he on top
- Sits high enthroned, his sceptre in his hand."[44]
- So writes the Poet. As I carefully study every word, I have heard with
- my ears the fury, the rage, the roar of the winds; I have heard the
- trembling of the mountain and the din. Notice how well it all applies
- to the tempest of anger. And, on the other hand, I have heard the
- King, sitting on his high place, his sceptre grasped in his hand,
- subduing, binding in chains, and imprisoning those rebel blasts,--who
- can doubt that with equal appropriateness this applies to the Reason?
- However, lest any one should miss the truth that all this refers to the
- soul and the wrath that vexes it, you see he adds the line--
- "And calms their passion and allays their wrath."[45]
- _S. Augustine_. I cannot but applaud that meaning which I understand
- you find hidden in the poet's story, familiar as it is to you; for
- whether Virgil had this in mind when writing, or whether without any
- such idea he only meant to depict a storm at sea and nothing else, what
- you have said about the rush of anger and the authority of reason seems
- to me expressed with equal wit and truth.
- But to resume the thread of our discourse, take notice in your reading
- if you find anything dealing with anger or other passions of the soul,
- and especially with this plague of melancholy, of which we have been
- speaking at some length. When you come to any passages that seem to you
- useful, put marks against them, which may serve as hooks to hold them
- fast in your remembrance, lest otherwise they might be taking wings to
- flee away.
- By this contrivance you will be able to stand firm against all the
- passions, and not least against sorrow of heart, which, like some
- pestilential cloud utterly destroys the seeds of virtue and all the
- fruits of understanding, and is, in the elegant phrase of Cicero--
- "The fount and head of all miseries."[46]
- Assuredly if you look carefully at the lives of others as well as your
- own, and reflect that there is hardly a man without many causes of
- grief in his life, and if you except that one just and salutary ground,
- the recollection of your own sins--always supposing it is not suffered
- to drive you to despair--then you will come to acknowledge that Heaven
- has assigned to you many gifts that are for you a ground of consolation
- and joy, side by side with that multitude of things of which you murmur
- and complain.
- As for your complaint that you have not had any life of your own and
- the vexation you feel in the tumultuous life of cities, you will find
- no small consolation in reflecting that the same complaint has been
- made by greater men than yourself, and that if you have of your own
- free will fallen into this labyrinth, so you can of your own free will
- make your escape. If not, yet in time your ears will grow so used to
- the noise of the crowd that it will seem to you as pleasant as the
- murmur of a falling stream. Or, as I have already hinted, you will
- find the same result easily if you will but first calm down the tumult
- of your imagination, for a soul serene and tranquil in itself fears not
- the coming of any shadow from without and is deaf to all the thunder of
- the world.
- And so, like a man on dry land and out of danger, you will look upon
- the shipwreck of others, and from your quiet haven hear the cries of
- those wrestling, with the waves, and though you will be moved with
- tender compassion by that sight, yet even that will be the measure
- also of your own thankfulness and joy at being in safety. And ere long
- I am sure you will banish and drive away all the melancholy that has
- oppressed your soul.
- _Petrarch_. Although not a few things rather give me a twinge, and
- especially your notion that it is quite easy and depends only on
- myself to get away from towns, yet, as you have on many points got the
- better of me in reasoning, I will here lay down my arms ere I am quite
- overthrown.
- _S. Augustine_. Do you feel able, then, now to cast off your sorrow and
- be more reconciled to your fortune?
- _Petrarch_. Yes, I am able, supposing always that there is any such
- thing as fortune at all. For I notice the two Greek and Latin Poets
- are so little of one mind on this point that the one has not deigned
- to mention the word even once in all his works, whereas the other
- mentions the name of fortune often and even reckons her Almighty.[47]
- And this opinion is shared by a celebrated historian and famous
- orator. Sallust has said of fortune that "all things are under her
- dominion."[48] And Cicero has not scrupled to affirm that "she is the
- mistress; of human affairs."[49] For myself, perhaps I will declare
- what I think on the subject at some other time and place. But so far as
- concerns the matter of our discussion, your admonitions have been of
- such service to me, that when I compare my lot with that of most other
- men it no longer seems so unhappy to me as once it did.
- _S. Augustine_. I am glad indeed to have been of any service to you,
- and my desire is to do everything I can. But as our converse to-day has
- lasted a long while, are you willing that we should defer the rest for
- a third day, when we will bring it to a conclusion?
- _Petrarch._ With my whole heart I adore the very number three
- itself, not so much because the three Graces are contained in it,
- as because it is held to be nearest of kin to the Deity; which is
- not only the persuasion of yourself and other professors of the true
- faith, who place all your faith in the Trinity, but also that of
- Gentile philosophers who have a traditional use of the same number in
- worshipping their own deities. And my beloved Virgil seems to have
- been conversant with this when he wrote--
- "Uneven number to the gods is dear."[50]
- For what goes before makes it clear that three is the number to which
- he alludes. I will therefore presently await from your hands the third
- part of this your threefold gift.
- [1] _Æneid_, viii. 385-86.
- [2] _De bonis et malis_, i. 3.
- [3] _Tusculan Orations_, ii. 15. But Cicero's words are more guarded,
- "_inops interdum._"
- [4] _Declamations_, i.
- [5] Juvenal, _Sat._ x. 172-73.
- [6] Suetonius Domitian, xviii.
- [7] Seneca, _Epist.,_ 65.
- [8] Scipio is speaking of the souls admitted to heaven, freed from the
- body. _Africa,_ i. 329.
- [9] Juvenal, i. 161 (not correctly quoted).
- [10] Terence L'Audrienne, 68.
- [11] Horace, _Odes_, i. 4, 15.
- [12] Horace, _Epist._ i. 18, 109. Conington's translation.
- [13] Horace, _Odes_, I. xxxi. 19, 20.
- [14] Juvenal, _Sat.,_ xiv. 135.
- [15] _Æneid,_ iii. 629.
- [16] _Georgics,_ iv. 132.
- [17] _Georgics_, i. 106.
- [18] Juvenal, vi. 361.
- [19] Seneca, _Epist.,_ xxv.
- [20] Horace, _Epist.,_ i. 2, 56.
- [21] _De Senectute,_ xi.
- [22] Horace, _Epist._ i. 2, 62-3.
- [23] Petrarch refers to a Calabrian monk who had begun giving him
- lessons in Greek, but left him on being appointed to a bishopric.
- [24] _Tusculan Orations,_ i. 21.
- [25] Wisdom, viii. 21.
- [26] _Cor_. xii. 9.
- [27] _Confessions_, viii. 7.
- [28] _Æneid_, ii. 361-9.
- [29] _Æneid_, ii. 622.
- [30] Horace, _Odes,_ xi. 10, 6-8.
- [31] _Tusculan Orations,_ iii. 11.
- [32] Horace, _Epist.,_ i. 18, 110.
- [33] Horace, _Epist.,_ i. 18, 106-8.
- [34] Lucian, 343.
- [35] He refers to the fact that his father was banished from Florence,
- and he himself was born in exile at Arezzo.
- [36] Avignon.
- [37] Horace, _Epist._, ii. 2, 76.
- [38] _Epist.,_ ii. 2, 77 (Conington).
- [39] Petrarch's _Epist.,_ ii. 2, 77.
- [40] Seneca's _Letters,_ lvi.
- [41] _Tusculan Orations,_ cxi.
- [42] _Æneid,_ i. 58.
- [43] _Ibid.,_ vi. 730.
- [44] _Ibid.,_ i. 52-57.
- [45] _Æneid_ i. 57.
- [46] _Tusculan Orations_, iv. 38.
- [47] _Æneid,_ viii. 334.
- [48] _Pro Marcello,_ ii.
- [49] _Catilina_, viii.
- [50] _Eclogue_, vii. 75.
- DIALOGUE THE THIRD
- PETRARCH--S. AUGUSTINE
- _S. Augustine_. Supposing that hitherto you have found some good from
- my words, I beg and implore you in what I have still to say to lend
- me a ready ear, and to put aside altogether the spirit of dispute and
- contradiction.
- _Petrarch._ You may be sure I will so do, for I feel that, owing to
- your good counsels, I have been set free from a large part of my
- distress, and am therefore the better disposed to listen to what you
- may still have to say.
- _S. Augustine._ I have not at all as yet touched upon the deep-seated
- wounds which are within, and I rather dread the task when I remember
- what debate and murmuring were caused by even the lightest allusion
- to them. But, on the other hand, I am not without hope that when you
- have rallied your strength, your spirit will more firmly bear without
- flinching a severer handling of the trouble.
- _Petrarch._ Have no fear on that score. By this time I am used to
- hearing the name of my maladies and to bearing the touch of the
- surgeon's hand.
- _S. Augustine_. Well, you are still held in bondage, on your right
- hand and on your left, by two strong chains which will not suffer
- you to turn your thoughts to meditate on life or on death. I have
- always dreaded these might bring you to destruction; and I am not yet
- at all reassured, and I shall only be so when I have seen you break
- and cast away your bonds and come forth perfectly free. And this I
- think possible but difficult enough to achieve, and that until it is
- accomplished I shall only be moving in a futile round. They say that
- to break a diamond one must use the blood of a goat, and in the same
- way to soften the hardness of these kinds of passions, this blood is
- of strange efficacy. No sooner has it touched even the hardest heart
- but it breaks and penetrates it. But I will tell you what my fear is.
- In this matter I must have your own full assent as we proceed, and I
- am haunted by the fear you will not be able, or perhaps I should say
- will prove unwilling, to give it. I greatly dread lest the glittering
- brilliance of your chains may dazzle your eyes and hinder you, and make
- you like the miser bound in prison with fetters of gold, who wished
- greatly to be set free but was not willing to break his chains.
- Now such are the conditions of your own bondage that you can only gain
- your freedom by breaking your chains.
- _Petrarch_. Alas, alas, I am more wretched than I thought. Do you
- mean to tell me my soul is still bound by two chains of which I am
- unconscious?
- _S. Augustine_. All the same they are plain enough to see; but, dazzled
- by their beauty, you think they are not fetters but treasures; and, to
- keep to the same figure, you are like some one who, with hands and feet
- fast bound in shackles of gold, should look at them with delight and
- not see at all that they are shackles. Yes, you yourself with blinded
- eyes keep looking at your bonds; but, oh strange delusion! you are
- charmed with the very chains that are dragging you to your death, and,
- what is most sad of all, you glory in them!
- _Petrarch._ What may these chains be of which you speak?
- _S. Augustine._ Love and glory.
- _Petrarch._ Great Heavens! what is this I hear? You call these things
- chains? And you would break them from me, if I would let you?
- _S. Augustine._ Yes, I mean to try, but I doubt if I shall succeed.
- All the other things that held you back were less strong and also
- less pleasant to you, so you helped me to break them. These, on the
- contrary, are pleasant though they injure, and they deceive you by a
- false show of beauty; so they will demand greater efforts, for you will
- make resistance as if I were wishing to rob you of some great good.
- Nevertheless I mean to try.
- _Petrarch._ Pray what have I done that you should desire to relieve
- me of the finest passions of my nature, and condemn to everlasting
- darkness the clearest faculties of my soul?
- _S. Augustine._ Ah, unhappy man, have you forgotten quite this axiom of
- philosophy, that the climax of all evils is when a man, rooted in some
- false opinion, by degrees grows fatally persuaded that such and such a
- course is right?
- _Petrarch._ I have by no means forgotten that axiom, but it has nothing
- to do with the subject, for why in the world should I not think that
- the course which I indicated is right? No, I never have thought and
- I never shall think any truth more indisputable than that these two
- passions, which you cast at me as a reproach, are the very noblest of
- all.
- _Augustine._ Let us take them separately for the present, while I
- endeavour to find the remedies, so that I may not blunt the edge of my
- weapon by striking first at one and then the other indiscriminately.
- Tell me then, since we have first mentioned love, do you or do you not
- hold it to be the height of all madness?
- _Petrarch._ To tell you the whole truth as I conceive it, I judge that
- love may be either described as the vilest passion or the noblest
- action of the soul.
- _S. Augustine._ Do you mind giving me some example to confirm the view
- you have put forward?
- _Petrarch._ If my passion is for some low woman of ill fame, my love
- is the height of folly. But if, fascinated by one who is the image of
- virtue, I devote myself to love and honour her, what have you to say
- to that? Do you put no difference between things so entirely opposed?
- Do you wish to banish all remains of honour from the case? To tell you
- my real feeling, just as I regard the first kind of love as a heavy
- and ill-starred burden on the soul, so of the second I think there is
- hardly any greater blessing to it; if it so happen that you hold an
- opposite view, let each one follow his own feeling, for, as you are
- well aware, truth is a large field and every man should have freedom to
- judge for himself.
- _S. Augustine_. In matters directly contradictory opinions also may be
- diverse. But truth itself is one and always the same.
- _Petrarch_. I admit that is so. But what makes us go wrong is that we
- bind ourselves obstinately to old opinions, and will not easily part
- from them.
- _S. Augustine._ Heaven grant you may think as wisely on the whole
- matter of love as you do on this point.
- _Petrarch_. To speak briefly, I think I am so certainly right that
- those who think the opposite I believe to be quite out of their senses.
- _S. Augustine_. I should certainly maintain that to take for truth
- some ancient falsehood, and to take as falsehood some newly-discovered
- truth, as though all authority for truth were a matter of time, is the
- very climax of madness.
- _Petrarch._ You are wasting your labour. Whoever asserts that view of
- love I shall never believe him. And I will rest on Cicero's saying, "If
- I err here I err willingly, and I shall never consent to part with this
- error as long as I live."[1]
- _S. Augustine._ When Cicero uses those words he is speaking of the
- immortality of the soul, and referring to it as the noblest of
- conceptions, and declaring his own belief in it to be so firm that he
- would not endure to listen to any one who maintained the contrary. You,
- however, to urge the ignoblest and most false of all opinions, make
- use of those same terms. Unquestionably, even if the soul were mortal,
- it would be better to think it immortal. For error though it were, yet
- would it inspire the love of virtue, and that is a thing to be desired
- for its own sake alone, even if all hope of future reward were taken
- away from us; and as to which the desire for it will certainly become
- weaker, as men come to think the soul a mortal thing; and, on the
- other hand, the promise of a life to come, even if it were to turn out
- a delusion, is none the less a powerful incentive to the soul, human
- nature being what it is.
- But you see what will be the consequences of that error in which you
- stand; it will precipitate your soul into all manner of folly, when
- shame, and fear, even reason, that now acts as some check on passion,
- and the knowledge of truth itself shall all have disappeared.
- _Petrarch._ I have already told you you were wasting your time. My own
- remembrance tells mo that I have never loved anything to be ashamed of,
- and, on the contrary, have ever loved what is most noble.
- _S. Augustine._ Even noble things may be loved in a shameful way; it is
- beyond doubt.
- _Petrarch._ Neither in the object of love nor in the manner of loving
- am I guilty. So you may as well give up tormenting me.
- _S. Augustine._ Well, well! Do you wish, like those with fever on the
- brain, to die laughing and joking? Or will you rather take some remedy
- for your mind so pitiable and so far from its true health?
- _Petrarch._ I will not refuse a remedy if you will prove to me that
- I am ill, but, when a man is quite well, to begin taking remedies is
- often fatal.
- _S. Augustine._ As soon as you have reached the stage of convalescence
- you will perceive quickly enough, as men generally do, that you have
- been seriously ill.
- _Petrarch._ After all, I cannot but show deference to one who often in
- the past, and especially in these last two days, has given me proof how
- good were his counsels. So please go on.
- _S. Augustine._ In the first place I ask you to forgive me if,
- compelled by the subject, I have to deal severely with what has been
- so delightful to you. For I cannot but foresee that the truth will
- sound bitterly in your ears.
- _Petrarch_. Just one word before you begin. Do you thoroughly know the
- matter you are to touch upon?
- _S. Augustine._ I have gone into it all carefully beforehand. It is
- about a mortal woman, in admiring and celebrating whom you have, alas!
- spent a large part of your life. That a mind like yours should have
- felt such an insensate passion and for so long a time does greatly
- astonish me.
- _Petrarch_. Spare your reproaches, I pray. Thais and Livia were both
- mortal women; but you should be aware that she of whom you have set
- out to speak is a mind that has no care for things of earth, and burns
- only with the love of what is heavenly. In whose face, unless truth is
- an empty word, a certain divine loveliness shines out; whose character
- is the image and picture of perfect honour; whose voice and the living
- expression of whose eyes has nothing mortal in it; whose very form
- and motion is not as that of others. Consider this again and again, I
- entreat you, and I trust you may have understanding in what words to
- speak.
- _S. Augustine._ Ah! out of all reason have you grown! Have you then
- for sixteen long years been feeding: with false joys this flame of
- your heart? Of a truth not longer did Italy once suffer the assaults
- of her most famous enemy, the great Hannibal; nor did she then endure
- more frequent onsets of her would-be lover, nor was consumed with more
- furious fires. You to-day carry within you as hot a flame of passion,
- you endure as fierce stings. Yet was there found one who forced him to
- retreat and, though late, to take his leave! But who shall expel this
- invader from your soul if you yourself forbid him to depart; if you of
- your own will invite him to stay long with you; if you, unhappy as you
- are, delight in your own calamity? Far other will be your thoughts when
- the fatal day shall come that will close for ever those eyes that are
- now so pleasing to you to look upon; when you shall see that face and
- those pale limbs changed by death; then you will be filled with shame
- to have so knit your mortal affections to a perishing body such as
- this, and what now you so obstinately maintain you will then blush to
- remember.
- _Petrarch_. Heaven forbid any such misery. I shall not see your threats
- fulfilled.
- _S. Augustine_. They will inevitably come to pass.
- _Petrarch_. I know it. But the stars in their courses will not so fight
- against me as to prevent the order of Nature by hastening her death
- like that. First came I into this world and I shall be first to depart.
- _S. Augustine._ I think you will not have forgotten that time when you
- feared the contrary event, and made a song of your beloved as if she
- were presently to die, a song full of moving sorrow.
- _Petrarch._ Certainly I remember very well, but the thought that filled
- me then with grief, and the memory of which makes me shiver, was a
- jealous indignation at the bare possibility of my outliving her who is
- the best part of my life and whose presence makes all its sweetness.
- For that is the motive of that song; I remember it well, and how I was
- overcome with tears. Its spirit is still with me, if with you perchance
- are the words.
- _S. Augustine._ I was not complaining how many tears the fear of
- her death made you shed, nor of how much grief you felt. I was only
- concerned that you should realise how this fear of yours in the past
- may certainly return; and more easily, in that every day is a step
- nearer to death, and that that fair form, worn by sicknesses and the
- bearing of many children, has already lost much of its first strength.
- _Petrarch._ I also am borne down with cares and am worn with age, and
- in that onward path towards death I have outrun her whom I love.
- _S. Augustine._ What folly it is to calculate the order of death by
- that of birth! For what are those sad lamentations of the old but
- because of the early deaths of their young children? What is it that
- yonder aged nurse is grieving over but that she sees the loss of her
- little nursling--
- "Whom some dark day
- Has stripped of his sweet life; and cruel fate
- Snatched from his mother's breast and covered him
- In a too early grave."[2]
- In your own case the small number of years by which you have preceded
- her gives you a very uncertain hope that you will be gone before the
- fire of your passion shall be extinguished; and yet you indulge the
- fiction that this order of Nature is unchangeable.
- _Petrarch_. Not exactly unchangeable, but I pray without ceasing that
- it may not be changed, and whenever I think of death I remember Ovid's
- line--
- "Late may her time arrive, and after mine."[3]
- _S. Augustine._ I can listen to these trifles no more; but since you
- now admit that she may possibly die before you, I ask what should you
- say if she really were dead?
- _Petrarch_. What should I say but that such a calamity would be the
- climax of all my miseries? Yet I should try and comfort myself with
- what was past. But may the winds bear away the words from our lips and
- the hurricane scatter such an omen to the ends of the earth!
- _S. Augustine._ Ah, blindfold one! you see not yet what foolishness
- it is so to subject your soul to things of earth, that kindle in it
- the flames of desire, that have no power to give it rest, that cannot
- endure; and, while promising to charm you with their sweetness, torment
- you with perpetual agitations.
- _Petrarch_. If you have any more effectual remedy, I beg you will point
- it out. You will never frighten me with talk like this; for I am not,
- as you suppose, infatuated with any creature that is mortal. You might
- have known that I have loved her physical charm loss than her soul,
- that what has captivated me has been a life above that of ordinary
- lives, the witnessing of which has shown me how the blessed live above.
- Therefore, since you inquire of me (and the mere question is a torture
- to listen to) what I should do supposing she were to leave me and be
- the first to die--well, I should try and console myself in sorrow with
- Lælius, the wisest of the Romans. With him I should say, "It is her
- goodness that I loved and that is not dead;" and I would say to myself
- those other words that he pronounced after the death of him for whom he
- had conceived an affection surpassing all common affection.[4]
- _S. Augustine._ You retire to Error's inaccessible fastness, and it
- will not be easy to dislodge you. But as I notice you are inclined
- to listen much more patiently to the truth about yourself and her,
- sing the praises of your darling lady as much as you will, and I will
- gainsay nothing. Were she a queen, a saint--
- "A very goddess, or to Apollo's self
- Own sister, or a mother of the nymphs,"[5]
- yet all her excellence will in nowise excuse your error.
- _Petrarch_. Let us see what fresh quarrel you seek with me?
- _S. Augustine._ It is unquestionably true that oftentimes the loveliest
- things are loved in a shameful way.
- _Petrarch._ I have already met that insinuation on a previous occasion.
- If any one could see the image of the love that reigns in my heart, he
- would recognise that there is no difference between it and that face
- that I have praised indeed much, but less by far than it deserves to be
- praised. I call to witness the spirit of Truth in whose presence we are
- speaking when I assert that in my love there has never been anything
- dishonourable, never anything of the flesh, never anything that any
- man could blame unless it were its mere intensity. And if you add that
- even so it never passed the line of right, I think a fairer thing could
- never be conceived.
- _S. Augustine._ I might reply to you with a word of Cicero and tell
- you, "You are talking of putting boundary lines in vice itself."[6]
- _Petrarch_. Not in vice, but in love.
- _S. Augustine_. But in that very passage he was speaking of love. Do
- you remember where it occurs?
- _Petrarch._ Do I remember indeed? Of course I have read it in the
- _Tusculans_. But he was speaking of men's common love; mine is one by
- itself.
- _S. Augustine._ Other people, I fancy, might say the same of theirs;
- for true it is that in all the passions, and most of all in this, every
- man interprets his own case favourably, and there is point in the verse
- though from a common poet--
- "To every man his lady,
- Then one to me assign;
- To every man his love affairs,
- And so let me have mine!"[7]
- _Petrarch._ Would you like, if you have time, to hear me tell you a few
- of those many charms of hers that would strike you with astonishment
- and admiration?
- _S. Augustine._ Do you think I am ignorant of all
- "Those pleasant dreams that lovers use to weave"?
- Every schoolboy knows the line, but I confess I am ashamed to hear such
- silliness from the lips of one whose words and thoughts should seek a
- higher range.
- _Petrarch._ One thing I will not keep silence on,--call it silliness,
- call it gratitude, as you please,--namely, that to her I owe whatever I
- am, and I should never have attained such little renown and glory as I
- have unless she by the power of this love had quickened into life the
- feeble germ of virtue that Nature had sown in my heart. It was she who
- turned my youthful soul away from all that was base, who drew me as it
- were by a grappling chain, and forced me to look upwards. Why should
- you not believe it? It is a sure truth that by love we grow like what
- we love. Now there is no backbiter alive, let his tongue be as sharp
- as it may, that has ventured to touch her good name, or dared to say
- he had seen a single fault, I will not say in her conduct, but even in
- any one of her gestures or words. Moreover, those whisperers who leave
- no one's reputation untouched if they can help it, have been obliged in
- her, case to utter only reverence and respect.
- It is no wonder, then, if such a glory as hers should have fostered
- in my heart the longing for more conspicuous glory, and should have
- sweetened those hard toils which I had to endure if I would attain
- that which I desired. What were all the wishes of my youth but solely
- to please her who above all others had pleased me? And you are not
- ignorant that to gain my end I scorned delights a thousand times, I
- gave myself before my time to labour and to cares without number; and
- now you bid me forget or diminish somewhat of my love for her who first
- taught me how to escape the vulgar crowd, who guided all my steps,
- spurred on my lagging mind, and wakened into life my drowsy spirit.
- _S. Augustine._ Poor man! you would have done better to be silent than
- to speak, although even if you had been silent I should have discerned
- what you are within. But such stout words as these stir my indignation
- and anger.
- _Petrarch._ I wonder why?
- _S. Augustine._ To have a false opinion shows ignorance, but to keep on
- boldly proclaiming it shows pride as well as ignorance.
- _Petrarch_. Suppose you try and prove that what I think and say is
- false.
- _S. Augustine._ It is all false; and, first, what you say as to owing
- all you are to her. If you mean that she has made you what you are,
- there you certainly lie; but if you were to say that it is she. who
- has prevented you being any more than you are, you would speak the
- truth. O what long contention would you have been spared if by the
- charm of her beauty she had not held you back. What you are you owe to
- the bounty of Nature; what you might have been she has quite cut off,
- or rather let me say you yourself have cut it off, for she indeed is
- innocent. That beauty which seemed so charming and so sweet, through
- the burning flame of your desire, through the continual rain of your
- tears, has done away all that harvest that should have grown from the
- seeds of virtue in your soul. It is a false boast of yours that she has
- held you back from base things; from some perhaps she may, but only
- to plunge you into evils worse still. For if one leads you from some
- miry path to bring you to a precipice, or in lancing some small abscess
- cuts your throat, he deserves not the name of deliverer but assassin.
- Likewise she whom you hold up as your guide, though she drew you away
- from some base courses, has none the less overwhelmed you in a deep
- gulf of splendid ruin. As for her having taught you to look upwards and
- separate yourself from the vulgar crowd, what else is it than to say
- by sitting at her feet you became so infatuated with the charm of her
- above as to studiously neglect everything else?
- And in the common intercourse of human life what can be more injurious
- than that? when you say she has involved you in toils without number,
- there indeed you speak truth. But what great gain is there in that?
- When there are such varied labours that a man is perforce obliged to
- engage in, what madness is it of one's own accord to go after fresh
- ones! As for your boasting that it is she who has made you thirst for
- glory, I pity your delusion, for I will prove to you that of all the
- burdens of your soul there is none more fatal than this. But the time
- for this is not yet come.
- _Petrarch_. I believe the readiest of warriors first threatens and
- then strikes. I seem, however, to find threat and wound together. And
- already I begin to stagger.
- _S. Augustine_. How much more will you stagger when I deliver my
- sharpest thrust of all? Forsooth that woman to whom you profess you owe
- everything, she, even she, has been your ruin.
- _Petrarch._ Good Heavens! How do you think you will persuade me of that?
- _S. Augustine._ She has detached your mind from the love of heavenly
- things and has inclined your heart to love the creature more than the
- Creator: and that one path alone leads, sooner than any other, to death.
- _Petrarch._ I pray you make no rash judgment. The love which I feel for
- her has most certainly led me to love God.
- _S. Augustine._ But it has inverted the true order.
- _Petrarch._ How so?
- _S. Augustine._ Because 'every creature' should be dear to us because
- of our love for the Creator. But in your case, on the contrary, held
- captive by the charm of the creature, you have not loved the Creator as
- you ought. You have admired the Divine Artificer as though in all His
- works He had made nothing fairer than the object of your love, although
- in truth the beauty of the body should be reckoned last of all.
- _Petrarch._ I call Truth to witness as she stands here between us,
- and I take my conscience to witness also, as I said before, that the
- body. of my lady has been less dear to me than her soul. The proof
- of it is here, that the further she has advanced in age (which for
- the beauty of the body is a fatal thunderstroke) the more firm has
- been my admiration; for albeit the flower of her youth has withered
- visibly with time, the beauty of her soul has grown with the years, and
- as it was the beginning of my love for her, even so has it been its
- sustainer. Otherwise if it had been her bodily form which attracted me,
- it was, ere this, time to make a change.
- _S. Augustine._ Are you mocking me? Do you mean to assert that if the
- same soul had been lodged in a body ill-formed and poor to look upon,
- you would have taken equal delight therein?
- _Petrarch._ I dare not say that. For the soul itself cannot be
- discerned, and the image of a body like that would have given no
- indication of such a soul. But were it possible for the soul to be
- visible to my gaze, I should most certainly have loved its beauty even
- though its dwelling-place were poor.
- _S. Augustine._ You are relying on mere words; for if you are only able
- to love that which is visible to your gaze, then what you love is the
- bodily form. However, I deny not that her soul and her character have
- helped to feed your flame, for (as I will show you before long) her
- name alone has both little and much kindled your mad passion; for, as
- in all the affections of the soul, it happens most of all in this one
- that oftentimes a very little spark will light a great fire.
- _Petrarch._ I see where you would drive me. You want to make me say
- with Ovid--
- "I love at once her body and her soul."[8]
- _S. Augustine._ Yes, and you ought to confess this also, that neither
- in one or the other case has your love been temperate or what it should
- be.
- _Petrarch._ You will have to put me to the torture ere I will make any
- such confession.
- _S. Augustine._ And you will allow that this love has also cast you
- into great miseries.
- _Petrarch._ Though you place me on the block itself, I will not
- acknowledge any such thing.
- _S. Augustine._ If you do not ignore my questions and conclusions, you
- will soon make both those confessions. Tell me, then, can you recall
- the years when you were a little child, or have the crowding cares of
- your present life blotted all that time out?
- _Petrarch._ My childhood and youth are as vividly before my eyes as if
- they were yesterday.
- _S. Augustine._ Do you remember, then, how in those times you had
- the fear of God, how you thought about Death, what love you had for
- Religion, how dear goodness and virtue were to you?
- _Petrarch._ Yes, I remember it all, and I am sorry when I see that as
- my years increased these virtues grew less and less in me.
- _S. Augustine._ For my part I have ever been afraid lest the wind of
- Spring should cut that early blossom off, which, if only it might be
- left whole and unhurt, would have produced a wondrous fruitage.
- _Petrarch._ Pray do not wander from the subject; for what has this to
- do with the question we were discussing?
- _S. Augustine._ I will tell you. Recall each step in your life, since
- your remembrance is so complete and fresh; recall all the course of
- your life, and recollect at what period this great change you speak of
- began.
- _Petrarch._ I have run over in my mind all the course and number of my
- years.
- _S. Augustine._ And what do you find?
- _Petrarch._ I see that the doctrine in the treatise of Pythagoras, of
- which I have heard tell and have read, is by no means void of truth.
- For when travelling the right road, still temperate and modest, I had
- reached the parting of the ways and had been bidden to turn to the
- right hand, whether from carelessness or perversity I know not, behold
- I turned to the left; and what I had read in my boyhood was of no
- profit to me--
- "Here the ways part: the right will thee conduct
- To the walled palace of the mighty King
- And to Elysium, but the left will lead
- Where sin is punished and the malefactor
- Goes to his dreaded doom."[9]
- Although I had read of all this before, yet I understood it not until
- I found it by experience. Afterwards I went wrong, in this foul and
- crooked pathway, and often in mind went back with tears and sorrow, yet
- could not keep the right way; and it was when I left that way, yes,
- that was certainly the time when all this confusion in my life began.
- _S. Augustine_. And in what period of your age did this take place?
- _Petrarch._ About the middle of my growing youth. But if you give me a
- minute or two, I think I can recall the exact year when it took place.
- _S. Augustine_. I do not ask for the precise date, but tell me about
- when was it that you saw the form and feature of this woman for the
- first time?
- _Petrarch._ Never assuredly shall I forget that day.
- _S. Augustine._ Well now, put two and two together; compare the two
- dates.
- _Petrarch._ I must confess in truth they coincide. I first saw her and
- I turned from my right course at one and the same time.
- _S. Augustine._ That is all I wanted. You became infatuated. The
- unwonted dazzle blinded your eyes, so I believe. For they say the first
- effect of love is blindness. So one reads in the poet most conversant
- with Nature--
- "At the first sight was that Sidonian dame
- Blinded,"
- and then he adds presently--
- "With love was Dido burning."[10]
- And though, as you well know, the story is but on ancient fable, yet
- did the Poet in making it follow the order of Nature.
- And when you had been struck blind by this meeting, if you chose the
- left-hand path it was because to you it seemed more broad and easy;
- for that to the right is steep and narrow, and of its hardship you
- were afraid. But that woman so renowned, whom you imagine as your most
- safe guide, wherefore did not she direct you upward, hesitating and
- trembling as you were? Why did she not take you by the hand as one does
- the blind, and set you in the way where you should walk?
- _Petrarch_. She certainly did so, as far as it was in her power. What
- but this was in her heart when, unmoved by my entreaties, unyielding
- to my caress, she safeguarded her woman's honour, and in spite of her
- youth and mine, in spite of a thousand circumstances that would have
- bent a heart of adamant, she stood her ground, resolute and unsubdued?
- Yes, this womanly soul taught me what should be the honour and duty of
- a man; and to preserve her chastity she did, as Seneca expresses it--
- "What was to me at once an example and a reproach."[11]
- And at last, when she saw the reins of my chariot were broken and that
- I was rushing to the abyss, she chose rather to part from me than
- follow where I went.
- _S. Augustine_. Base desires, then, sometimes you felt, though not long
- since you denied it? But it is the common folly of lovers, let me say
- of mad folk. One may say of them all alike--
- "I would not, yet I would; I would, yet would not."[12]
- You know not, any of you, what you want or what you want not.
- _Petrarch_. Without seeing, I fell into the snare. But if in past
- days my feelings were other than they are now, love and youth were
- the cause. Now I know what I wish and what I desire, and I have at
- last made firm my staggering soul. She for her part has ever been firm
- in her mind and always the same. The more I understand this woman's
- constancy, the more I admire it; and if sometimes I regretted her
- resolution, now I rejoice in it and give her thanks.
- _S. Augustine._ It is not easy to believe a man who has once taken you
- in. You may have changed the outside fashion of your life, but have not
- yet persuaded me that your soul is also changed.
- If your flame is calmed and softened somewhat, yet it is not for
- certain quite put out. But you who set such price on her you love,
- do you not see how deeply by absolving her you condemn yourself? You
- delight in seeing in her the model of purity, and you avow yourself to
- be without any feeling and a criminal; and you protest that she is the
- most happy of women, while her love has made you the most unhappy of
- men. If you remember, it is just what I said at the beginning.
- _Petrarch._ Yes, I remember. I cannot deny that what you say is true,
- and I see whither you are gradually leading me.
- _S. Augustine._ To see it better still, lend me all your attention.
- Nothing so much leads a man to forget or despise God as the love of
- things temporal, and most of all this passion that we call love; and
- to which, by the greatest of all desecrations, we even gave the name
- of God, without doubt only that we may throw a heavenly veil over our
- human follies and make a pretext of divine inspiration when we want to
- commit an enormous transgression. In the case of the other passions,
- the sight of the object, the hope of enjoying it, and the ardour of
- the will take us captive. Love also demands all that, but in addition
- it asks also a reciprocal passion, without which it will be forced to
- die away. So, whereas in the other cases one loves singly and alone,
- in this case we must give love for love, and thus man's heart is stung
- and stung again. Therefore, Cicero was right when he wrote that "Of
- all the passions of the soul, assuredly the most violent is love,"[13]
- and he must have been very certain of his ground when he added that
- "assuredly"--he who in four books shows he was aware how Plato's
- Academy doubted everything.[14]
- _Petrarch_. I have often noticed that reference, and wondered that of
- the passions he should call this the most violent of all.
- _S. Augustine._ Your surprise would have vanished if you had not lost
- your powers of memory. But I must recall you by a short admonition to a
- recollection of its many evils. Think what you were when that plague
- seized upon your soul; how suddenly you fell to bemoaning, and came to
- such a pitch of wretchedness that you felt a morbid pleasure in feeding
- on tears and sighs. Passing sleepless nights, and murmuring ever the
- name of your beloved, scorning everything, hating life, desiring death,
- with a melancholy love for being alone, avoiding all your fellow-men,
- one might well apply to you, for they exactly fit your case, the lines
- in which Homer describes Bellerophon--
- "There in the pleasant fields he wandered sad,
- Eating his heart, far from the ways of men."[15]
- What meant that pale face and wasted figure? that flower of your age
- withering before its time, those heavy eyes, ever bathed in tears, your
- mind in a state of agitation, your broken rest and troubled moans,
- even when you were asleep? Why was your voice weak and altered through
- your sorrow of heart, and the very sound of your words, indistinct
- and broken, with whatever other token can be imagined, of a heart
- distressed and in disorder? Do you call these the signs of one in good
- health? Was it not this lady with whom for you every day, whether feast
- or fast, began and ended? Was it not at her coming the sun shone forth,
- and when she left you, night returned? Every change of her countenance
- brought a change in your heart; and if she were sad, you forthwith were
- filled with sadness. In a word, your life became wholly dependent upon
- hers. You know that I say but what is true and what is in every one's
- mouth.
- And what could be more senseless than that, not content with the
- presence of her living face, the cause of all your woes, you must
- needs obtain a painted picture by an artist[16] of high repute, that
- you might carry it everywhere with you, to have an everlasting spring
- of tears, fearing, I suppose, lest otherwise their fountain might dry
- up? Of all such things you were only too vigilant, and you neglected
- everything else. But to come to that which is the very crowning
- instance of your folly, and of which I gave you warning a little while
- ago, who could sufficiently utter his indignation and amazement at this
- sign of a distempered mind, that, infatuated as much by the beauty of
- her name as of her person, you have with perfectly incredible silliness
- paid honour to anything that has the remotest connection with that name
- itself? Had you any liking for the laurel of empire or of poetry, it
- was forsooth because the name they bore was hers; and from this time
- onwards there is hardly a verse from your pen but in it you have made
- mention of the laurel, as if indeed you were a denizen of Peneus'
- stream,[17] or some priest on Cirrha's[18] Mount.
- And finally, discovering that the laurel of empire was beyond your
- reach, you have, with as little self-restraint as you showed in the
- case of your beloved herself, now coveted the laurel of Poetry of which
- the merit of your works seemed to give more promise.
- Although to gain your reward you were borne up on the wings of genius,
- yet will you shudder to remember with what trouble you attained it. I
- clearly divine what excuse you will make, and I see your thought the
- moment you open your lips. You will allege that you were devoted to
- these studies some time before you became a lover at all, and that
- desire for the glory of the poet's crown had kindled your heart from
- childhood. I neither deny it or forget it; but the fact of the usage
- being obsolete for centuries, and this being an epoch very unfavourable
- for studies like yours, the dangers also of long voyages, which would
- have brought you to the threshold of prison and of death itself, not
- to mention other obstacles of fortune no less violent than those--all
- these difficulties, I say, would perhaps have broken your resolve
- entirely, if the remembrance of a name so sweet, always entwining
- itself with your inmost soul, had not banished every other care, and
- drawn you over sea, over land, across mountains of difficulty, to Rome
- and to Naples, where at length you attained what you had longed for
- with such ardour. If all this seems to you the token of but a moderate
- passion, then at least shall be quite certain you are the victim of the
- moderate delusion.
- I purposely leave out what Cicero was not ashamed to imitate from
- Terence when he wrote, "Wrongs, suspicions, fierce quarrels,
- jealousies, war, and then again peace--behold the miseries of love." Do
- you not recognise at once in his words the madness and, above all, the
- madness of jealousy which, as one knows too well, is the ruling power
- in love as love is the ruling passion among all others? Perhaps you
- may reply: "I admit it is so, but reason will be there to temper such
- excess." Terence himself had anticipated your answer when he added--
- "Such fickle things to settle by sane rule
- Is to be sanely insane."[19]
- The phrase, the truth of which you will scarcely question, puts an end,
- unless I am mistaken, to all those subterfuges of yours.
- Such, then, are the miseries of love, the particulars of which it is
- needless to mention to those who have proved them, and which would not
- be believed by those who never tried. But the worst of them all, to
- come back to our subject, is that it engenders a forgetfulness of God
- and of man's real state. For how should the soul thus crushed beneath
- these weights ever arise to that one and only most pure fountain of
- true Good? And since it is so, you may lay aside your wonder that
- Cicero should tell us no passion of man's soul seemed to him more
- violent than love.
- _Petrarch_. I must own myself beaten; for it appears all you have said
- is taken from the very heart of the book of experience. And as you have
- quoted from the play of Terence, let me please myself by bringing from
- there also this sad complaint--
- "O deed of shame! now am I foil of woe.
- Weary I burn with love; with open eyes,
- Brain clear, I am undone; and what to do
- I know not."[20]
- I would also call to mind this counsel from the same poet's words--
- "Think, while there's time, again and yet again."[21]
- _S. Augustine._ And I likewise from the lips of Terence will give you
- my reply--
- "What in itself contains no rule or reason,
- By rule or reason you can never hold."[22]
- _Petrarch._ What is to be done, then? Am I to despair?
- _S. Augustine._ That is the last thing in the world to do. However,
- let me briefly tell you the remedy I propose. You know that on this
- subject there are not only special treatises compiled by philosophers
- of eminence, but that some of the most famous poets have written on it
- whole books.
- It would be almost an insult to point out which they are, above all, to
- you who are a past-master in the whole field, or to offer any advice
- as to reading them; but perhaps I might say a word without offence to
- suggest in what way their study might be applied for your own welfare.
- First, then, notice what is said by Cicero--
- "Some think that an old love can best be driven out by
- a new, as one nail is by another."[23]
- And Ovid agrees, giving this general rule--
- "Old love affairs must always yield to new."[24]
- And without a doubt it is the truth, for the mind thus divided and
- parcelled out between different objects feels itself moved with less
- force towards each one. So the river Ganges, they tell us, was divided
- up by the Persian king into countless channels, and this river, that
- was so deep and formidable, was cut up into a thousand inconsiderable
- streamlets. And so an army, broken up and scattered, becomes vulnerable
- by the enemy; so Fire dispersed dies down; in a word, every power in
- the world, if concentrated, increases, but by dispersion is reduced. On
- the other hand, I think this is not to be overlooked, that there may
- be great danger when you lay aside a passion and, if one may say so,
- a passion of the nobler kind; you may, if you are not watchful, fall
- into dissipation of another sort, run after women and become a loose
- libertine. In my judgment, then, if one must die for certain, there is
- some consolation in dying of a nobler rather than a less noble wound.
- So if you ask my advice, it is this: Take your courage in both hands.
- Fly, if you possibly can; and I would even say, go from one prison to
- another; perchance you might escape by the way or else find a milder
- discipline to be under. Only beware, when your neck is freed from one
- such yoke as this, that you place it not under the weight of a crowd of
- more base and vile oppressions.
- _S. Petrarch._ While the doctor is finishing his advice, will he allow
- the patient, in the throes of his malady, to interrupt him for a minute?
- _Augustine._ Of course. Why not? Many a doctor, guided by the symptoms
- of his patient thus declared, has been able to find the very remedy he
- needed.
- _Petrarch._ Then what I want to say is just this: For me to love
- another is impossible. My mind has grown only to love her; my eyes to
- look only for her; excepting her, all to them is nothing, or is mere
- darkness. And so if your remedy is that in order to be healed of this
- love I should love another, your condition is an impossible one. In
- that case all is over, and I am lost.
- _S. Augustine._ Your senses are dulled, your appetite is lost; since
- then you can take no internal remedy, one must have recourse to other
- treatment and see what can be done by change of scene. Can you bring
- your mind to think of flight or exile and going right away from the
- places that you know?
- _Petrarch_. Though I feel that her attraction draws me to her with
- hooks of steel, nevertheless if I have to go, I can.
- _S. Augustine_. If you can, you will be safe. What else can I say,
- then, but this advice of Virgil's, changing only two little words--
- "Ah! flee this land beloved, and leave behind
- shore to thee so dear."[25]
- For how can you continue in safety in these scenes where there are so
- many memories of your wounds, where things present and the memory of
- things past cling always to you? So that I say, as Cicero also advises,
- "Seek change of scene; take care to do as one does who is recovering
- from some illness."[26]
- _Petrarch_. Think of what you are prescribing. For how often and
- often, longing to get well, and familiar with advice like this, have I
- tried this remedy of flight; and though I have feigned various other
- reasons for it, yet the end and aim of all my peregrinations and all
- my retirement to the country was this one thing--to become free! For
- that I have wandered far away to the West, to the North, to the very
- confines of the ocean. Far and wide have I roamed. You see what good
- it has done me. And so Virgil's simile has many a time come home to my
- heart,--
- "E'en as the stricken deer, that unaware
- Rooming afar in pleasant groves of Crete,
- The hunter pierces with his weapon keen.
- And she unknowing o'er Mount Dicte's side
- Flees wounded, and the fatal arrow cleaves
- To her poor side."[27]
- I am even as that deer. I have fled, but I bear everywhere my wound
- with me.
- _S. Augustine._ Yourself have given me the answer for which you look.
- _Petrarch._ How so?
- _S. Augustine_. Why, do you not see that if a man bears his wound with
- him, change of scone is but an aggravation of his pain and not a means
- of healing it? One might say your case is just that of the young man
- who complained to Socrates that he had been a tour and it had done him
- no good whatever. "You went touring with yourself,"[28] said the Sage.
- You must first break off the old load of your passions; you must
- make your soul ready. _Then_ you must fly. For it is proved to
- demonstration, not only in things physical but in moral also, that
- unless the patient is well disposed, the doctor's help is in vain.
- Otherwise were you to go to the far-off Indies, you will find that
- Horace only spoke truth when he said--
- "Who cross the ocean making peace their goal,
- Change but their sky and cannot change their soul."
- Or thus--
- "We come to this; when o'er the world we range,
- 'Tis but our climate, not our mind, we change."[29]
- _Petrarch_. I must say I cannot follow you. You give me a prescription
- to cure and heal my soul and tell me I must first heal it and then
- flee. Now, my difficulty is I do not know how to heal it. If it is
- cured, what more do I need? But if, again, it is not cured, what good
- will change of scene bring me? The help you offer me is useless. Tell
- me briefly what are the remedies I must use?
- _S. Augustine._ I did not say that you must cure and heal your soul.
- What I said was you must make it ready. As for the rest, either you
- will be cured, and the change of scene will then establish your health
- on a firm footing; or you will not yet be cured, but only made ready,
- and then the change of scene will have the same ultimate result. But,
- if your soul is neither cured nor made ready, this change and frequent
- moving from place to place will only stir up its grief. I will still
- advise you to take a leaf out of Horace's book--
- "For if the cure of mental ills is due
- To sense and wisdom, not a fine sea view,"[30]
- --what he says is true. You will set out full of the hope and the wish
- to return, carrying along with you all that has ensnared your soul.
- In whatever place you are, to whatever side you turn, you will behold
- the face, you will hear the voice of her whom you have left. By that
- sad enchantment that belongs to lovers, you will have power to see her
- though you are absent, and to hear her though she is far away; and
- do you imagine that love is to be extinguished by subterfuges like
- this? Believe me, it will rather burn more fiercely. Those who call
- themselves masters in the art of love enjoin among their other maxims
- short absences one from another on the part of lovers, for fear they
- should become tired of seeing each other face to face or from their
- importunity. Therefore I advise, I recommend, I enjoin upon you that
- you learn to wholly sever your soul from that which weighs it down
- and go away without hope of return. You will discover then, but not
- before, what absence is able to do for the soul's healing. If fate had
- placed your lot in some unhealthy plague-stricken region where you
- were liable to constant illness, should you not flee from it never to
- return? And so I counsel you to do now, unless, as I much fear, men
- care more for their body than their soul.
- _Petrarch_. That is their affair. But undoubtedly if I found myself ill
- on account of the unhealthiness of the place I was in, I should choose
- for my recovery some place with a healthier climate, and I should act
- in the same way, and with stronger reasons still, in case of maladies
- of the soul. Yet, as far as I can see, the cure of these is a more
- difficult matter.
- _S. Augustine_. The united testimony of the greatest philosophers
- proves the falsity of that assertion. It is evident that all the
- maladies of the soul can be healed if only the patient puts no obstacle
- in the way, although many diseases of the body are incurable by any
- known means. For the rest, and not to go too far from our subject, I
- stick to my judgment. You must, as I said, make your soul ready, and
- teach it to renounce the object of its love, never once to turn back,
- never to see that which it was wont to look for. This is the only sure
- road for a lover; and if you wish to preserve your soul from ruin, this
- is what you must do.
- _Petrarch._ That you may see how perfectly I have learned all you have
- said, let me recapitulate that to go for change of scene is useless,
- unless the soul is first made ready; such journeys will cure it when
- made ready, and will establish it when once cured. Is not that the
- conclusion of your threefold precept?
- _S. Augustine._ Yes, it is precisely that, and you sum up very well
- what I have unfolded.
- _Petrarch._ I could have divined your two first truths by myself,
- without you pointing them out; but as for the third, that the soul,
- when it is cured and established in health, still needs absence, I
- do not understand it, unless it is the fear of a relapse that is the
- motive of what you say.
- _S. Augustine._ But you surely do not suppose that to be a slight point
- even in bodily health? And how much more grave a matter ought one to
- think it in regard to the soul, where a relapse is so much more rapid
- and dangerous. So I would say, let us refer once more to what seems one
- of the soundest remarks of Seneca, where in a letter he writes, "If any
- man wishes to have done with love he must avoid all recollection of
- the beloved form," and adds as his reason, "For nothing is so easily
- rekindled to life again as love."[31] O how true a saying is that,
- and from what profound experience of life is he speaking! But it is
- needless to call any other witness of this than your own knowledge will
- supply.
- _Petrarch._ Yes, I agree he speaks truth, but if you notice he is
- speaking not of one who already has done with love, but of one who
- wishes to have done with it.
- _S. Augustine_. He speaks of any man who is in danger. Any kind of
- blow is more dangerous if there is some wound before unhealed, or
- some disease not yet cured; and even afterwards it is not safe. And
- since we remember most, instances that have come home to us in our own
- experience, let me ask how often have you who speak to me not found
- yourself, as you went about these well-known spots, by their mere look,
- though no person met you, reminded of your former vanities; standing
- speechless, full of sighs, as you pace this town that has been, I will
- not say the cause, but at any rate the scene of all your evils; though
- before you came back to it you thought you were cured, and would have
- been to a very great extent if only you had remained away? And then
- with difficulty restraining your tears, half-wounded to death, you have
- fled, and cried to your own heart, "Here in these places I see at every
- turn the ambush of my ancient foe. The signs of death are ever about
- me!" So, then, were you healed already, if you would take counsel of
- me, I should say, "Do not stay long in this place. It is not wise for
- the prisoner who has broken his chains to go wandering round the prison
- gates, ever ready to take him in again, before which the jailer is ever
- on guard, laying his traps with special care to recapture those whose
- escape he regrets.
- "The downward path to hell is ever smooth,
- Its dismal gate is open night and day."[32]
- If precautions like these are needful for men in health, how much
- more are they in the case of those who have not yet shaken off their
- sickness. It is of the latter that Seneca was thinking when he wrote
- that maxim. He was giving counsel to those who were most in danger, for
- it was no use to speak of those whom the flame had already devoured
- and who were past all care for their safety. He addressed himself to
- those in another stage, who still felt the heat but tried to come forth
- of the flame. Many a sick man on the way to recovery has been thrown
- back by a draught of water which before his illness would have done
- him no harm; and often has one wearied out, with a long day's work,
- been knocked down by some trifling shake which when he was in his full
- strength would not have moved him at all.
- It needs but a trifle sometimes, when the soul is emerging from its
- miseries, to plunge it quite back once more into the abyss. To see the
- purple on the shoulders of another will rouse again all our sleeping
- ambition; the sight of a little pile of money sets up our thirst for
- gold; one look at some fair lady will stir again our desire; the light
- glance of an eye will awaken sleeping love.
- It is no wonder plagues like these take possession of your minds, when
- you see the madness of the world; and when once they have found their
- way back to the soul, they come with fatal ease. And since it is so, it
- is not enough merely to leave a plague-stricken spot, but you, O man,
- must keep on in your flight for life, till you have escaped everything
- that might drag the soul back to its old passions; for fear lest, when
- you return from the pit with Orpheus and look back, you lose your
- Eurydice once more.
- Such is the sum of my counsel.
- _Petrarch_. I accept it heartily and with thankfulness, for I feel that
- the remedy is suited to my wound. My intention is to fly, but I know
- not yet where lies the direction I should choose.
- _S. Augustine._ A thousand ways are open to you to make choice of on
- every side; a thousand ports are ready to receive you. I know that,
- more than to other lands, your heart turns to Italy, and that a love of
- your native soil is inborn in you; and you are right, for--
- "Not Media's forests rich, nor Ganges' stream,
- Though fair it be, nor Hermus rolling gold,
- May vie with Italy; Bactria and Ind,
- And all Pachaia with its odours rare
- Shall not be mentioned."[33]
- I think you have yourself not long ago, in a letter to one of your
- friends,[34] treated this theme of the famous Poet at fuller length in
- a Latin poem. Italy then would be my choice for you; because the ways
- of its people, its climate, the sea washing its shores, the Apennine
- range coming between them, all promise that a sojourn there would be
- better suited to extirpate your troubles than going anywhere else in
- the world. I would not, however, wish to confine you only to one corner
- of the land. Go under good auspices wherever inclination may lead; go
- without fear and with a free mind; take no backward glances, forget
- the past and step forward to the future. See how long you have been a
- stranger to your own country and your own self. It is time to return,
- for--
- "O now 'tis evening, and the night
- Is chiefly friend to thieves."[35]
- I warn you in words of your own.
- One further counsel I must urge which I had nearly forgotten. You must
- avoid solitude, until you are quite sure that you have not a trace of
- your old ailment left. You told me that a country life had done you no
- good. There is nothing surprising in that. What remedy were you likely
- to find in a place all lonely and remote? Let me confess that often
- when you were retreating thither all by yourself, sighing, and turning
- longing eyes back to the town, I have laughed heartily and said to
- myself: "What a blindfold fool love has made of this unhappy wight! and
- led him to quite forget the verse that every schoolboy knows, about
- flying from his trouble and finding his death."
- _Petrarch_. I am afraid you are right, but what are the lines to which
- you allude?
- _S. Augustine._ Ovid, of course.
- "Lover! whoe'er you be, dwell not alone;
- In solitude you're sure to be undone.
- You're safer in a crowd; the word is true,
- Lone woods are not the place for such as you."[36]
- _Petrarch_. Yes, I remember them perfectly, and knew them almost by
- heart from my childhood.
- _S. Augustine._ Much good has it done you to know so many things yet
- not know how to suit them to your need. When you not only know all
- the testimony of the ancients, but have yourself proved the evils of
- solitude, it astonishes me that you should commit such a blunder as to
- seek it. You have, in fact, often complained that there was no good in
- being alone. You have expressed it in a thousand places, and especially
- in the fine poem you composed on your own misfortune. The sweet accents
- of it charmed me while you were writing.[37]
- It surprised me to hear a song so harmonious arise from a soul so full
- of agitation, and come from the lips of a man so far out of his senses
- and I asked myself what power of love can stay the offended Muses from
- abandoning so dire a nest of troubles, and, scared by such aberration
- of mind in their host, forsaking utterly their wonted dwelling? I
- thought of words of Plato, "Let no man wholly sane knock at Poe try'd
- door," and then of Aristotle, who followed him and said, "All great
- genius has a touch of madness in it,"[38] but I remembered that in
- these sayings of theirs they were thinking of a frenzy far indeed
- removed from yours. However, we will return to this subject at some
- other time.
- _Petrarch_. I must fain own what you say is the truth; but I never
- thought to have made verses so harmonious as to be worth your praise
- and commendation. They will be all the dearer to me now that I know it.
- If you have other remedy to offer me, I beg you withhold it not from
- him who is in need.
- _S. Augustine_. To unfold all one knows is the act of a braggart more
- than of a wise friend. And remember that men did not invent all the
- sundry kinds of remedies, internal and external, for diverse kinds of
- sickness, on purpose that each and every one should be tried on every
- occasion; but that, as Seneca remarks to Lucilius, "Nothing is so
- contrary to the work of healing as a frequent change of remedy; and
- no wound will ever be healed perfectly, to which first one and then
- another medicine is continually applied. The true way is only to try
- the new when the old remedy has failed."[39]
- So, then, although the remedies for this kind of ailment are many and
- varied, I will content myself with only pointing out a few, and I will
- choose those which in my judgment will best suit your need. For indeed,
- I have no wish merely to show you what is new, but only to tell you, of
- all those which are known, what remedies, so far as I can judge, are
- most likely in your case to be efficacious.
- There are three things, as Cicero says, that will avert the mind of man
- from Love,--Satiety, Shamefastness, Reflection.[40]
- There may indeed be more; there may be less. But, to follow the steps
- of so great an authority, let us suppose there are three. It will be
- useless for me to speak of the first in your case, because you will
- judge it is impossible you should ever come to satiety of your love.
- But still if your passion will hear the voice of reason and judge the
- future from the past, you will readily agree that an object, even
- the most beloved, can produce, I do not say satiety only, but even
- weariness and disgust. Now, as I am quite sure I should be entering
- on a vain quest if I embark on this track, because, even if it were
- granted that satiety is a possible thing, and that it kills love, you
- will pretend that by the ardour of your passion you are a thousand
- leagues removed from any such possibility, and, as I am not at all
- disposed to deny it, what remains is for me to touch only upon the
- other two remedies that are left. You will not wish to dispute my
- assertion that Nature has endowed you with a certain power of reason,
- and also with some talent for forming a weighty judgment.
- _Petrarch._ Unless I am deceived by acting as judge in my own cause,
- what you say is so true that I am often inclined to fear I am too
- wanting in what is due both to my sex and this age; wherein, as
- you doubtless observe, everything goes to the shameless. Honours,
- prosperity, wealth--all these hold the field; and to these, virtue
- itself, nay even fortune, must give way.[41]
- _S. Augustine._ Do you not see what conflict there is between Love and
- Shamefastness? While the one urges the soul forward, the other holds it
- back; the one drives in the spur, the other pulls hard at the bridle;
- the one looks at nothing, the other watches carefully on every side.
- _Petrarch_. This is only too familiar to me, and I feel to my cost
- how distracted is my life by passions so contrary. They come upon me
- by turn, so that my poor spirit, tossed hither and thither, knows not
- which impulse to obey.
- _S. Augustine._ Do you mind telling me if you have looked in your glass
- lately?
- _Petrarch._ And, pray, what do you ask that question for? I have only
- done as usual.
- _S. Augustine._ Heaven grant you do it no oftener, neither with more
- self-complacency, than you should! Well, and have you not noticed that
- your face is changing from day to day, and that from time to time grey
- hairs begin to show themselves around your temples?
- _Petrarch._ Is that all? I thought you were about to ask me something
- out of the common; but to grow up, to grow old, to die is the common
- lot of all that are born. I have observed what befalls almost all my
- contemporaries; for nowadays men seem to age more quickly than they
- used to, though I know not why or wherefore.
- _S. Augustine._ The growing old of others will not give you back your
- youth, neither will their dying bring you immortality. So let us leave
- on one side everything else and return to your own case. Tell me; when
- you have noticed these signs of change in your body, has it not brought
- some change also in your soul?
- _Petrarch._ It has certainly made some impression on me, but not
- exactly a change.
- _S. Augustine._ What, then, were your thoughts, and what did you say to
- yourself?
- _Petrarch._ What would you have me say, except what was said by
- Domitian the Emperor, "With even mind I brook the sight of watching,
- though still young, my hairs grow grey."[42] So illustrious an example
- has consoled me for what grey hairs I too behold. And if I needed more,
- I brought to mind a king beside that emperor; I mean Numa Pompilius
- the Second, who, as the historian relates, had grey hair even from
- his youth. And Poetry as well as History comes to my aid, since in
- his Bucolics our own Virgil, writing when he was but five-and-twenty,
- speaking of himself in the person of a shepherd, exclaims--
- "When now my whitening beard the razor knew."[43]
- _S. Augustine._ What vast abundance of examples you can command! Pray
- heaven you have as many recollections of your own death. For I praise
- not those exemplars that lead one to dissemble grey hairs which are
- the heralds of old age, and the _avant-couriers_ of Death. And good
- those examples are not, if their effect is to take you off the trouble
- of remembering how time flies, and to lead you to forget your own
- last hour; to the recollection of which the whole of my discourse is
- entirely and without ceasing directed. When I bid you think on your own
- whitening forehead, do you quote me a crowd of famous men whose locks
- were white also? What does it prove? Ah, if you were able to say these
- were immortal, then you might from their example put away the dread of
- your changing brow. If instead of mentioning greyness I had ventured
- to hint that you were getting bald, you would, I suppose, have thrown
- Julius Cæsar in my teeth!
- _Petrarch_. Certainly. What more illustrious example could I need?
- Now, unless I am mistaken, it is in fact a great comfort to find
- oneself surrounded by companions so famous. Yes, I will freely admit
- that I am not disposed for a moment to reject such examples, which
- are, for me, part of the luggage I carry daily in my mind; for it is a
- pleasure to me not only in such misfortunes as Nature or chance have
- already allotted me, but also in those which they may still have in
- store; it is a pleasure, I say, to have ever at hand such matter of
- comfort and consolation as I can obtain only from some truly cogent
- reason or outstanding example.
- If, then, you meant to reproach me for being afraid of thunder--a
- charge I could not deny (and one of the chief reasons why I love the
- laurel is because it is said that thunder will not strike this tree),
- then I shall reply to you that this was a weakness Cæsar Augustus
- shared; if you allege that I am getting blind (and there also you
- would be right), I should quote you Appius Cæcus and also Homer, the
- Prince of Poets; if you call me one-eyed, I will, shield myself behind
- Hannibal, the Punic leader, or Philip, King of Macedon; call me deaf,
- and Marcus Crassus shall be my defence; say I cannot stand the heat,
- and I will say I am but like Alexander, Prince of Macedonia.
- It were tedious to go through all the list; but after these you can
- judge who they would be.
- _S. Augustine._ Yes, perfectly. I am nowise displeased with your
- wealth of instances, provided it does not make you self-negligent and
- only serves to disperse the clouds of fear and sadness. I applaud
- anything that helps a man to face with courage the coming of old age,
- and keeps him from bewailing its presence when it has arrived. But I
- loathe and abominate profoundly everything that conceals from him the
- truth that old age is the port of departure from this life, and blinds
- him to the need of reflecting on death. To take with equanimity the
- going grey before one's time is the sign of a good natural disposition;
- but to try and interpose artificial checks, to cheat time of his years,
- to raise an outcry and declare grey hairs are come too soon, to begin
- dyeing or plucking them out, is a piece of folly, which, common as it
- may be, is none the less egregious for all that.
- You perceive not, O blind that you are, how swiftly the stars roll
- in their course, and how soon the flight of time consumes the space
- of your short life, and you marvel when you see old age coming on,
- hastening quickly the despatch of all your days.
- Two causes seem to foster this delusion. The first is that even the
- shortest life is partitioned out by some people into four, by others
- into six, and by others again into a still larger number of periods;
- that is to say, the reality is so small, and as you cannot make it
- longer, you think you will enlarge it by division. But of what profit
- tis all this dividing? Make as many particles as you like, and they are
- all gone in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.
- "Yesterday was born the baby,
- See to-day the lovely boy,
- Then the young man quick as may be,
- Then an end of life and joy."
- You observe with what quick hurrying words the subtle poet has sketched
- out the swift course of our life. So it is in vain you strive to
- lengthen out what Nature, the mother of us all, has made so short.
- The second cause is that you will persist in letting old age find you
- still in the midst of games and empty pleasures; like the old Trojans
- who in their customary ways passed the last night without perceiving.
- "The cunning, fatal horse, who bore within
- Those armed bands, had overleapt the wall
- Of Pergamos."[44]
- Yes, even so you perceive not that old age, bringing in his train
- the armed warrior Death, unpitying and stem, has over-leapt the
- weakly-guarded rampart of your body; and then you find your foe has
- already glided by stealth along his rope--
- "And now the invader climbs within the gate
- And takes the city in its drunken sleep."[45]
- For in the gross body and the pleasure of things temporal, not less
- drunk are you than those old Trojans were, as Virgil saw them, in their
- slumber and their wine.
- Or, looking to another quarter, no less truth is to be found in the
- neat lines of the Satirist--
- "Our lives unfold in morning air As lilies of a day, 'Come bring us
- wine,' we shout. 'Ho, there, Fetch garlands, odours, damsels fair.' But
- ah! before we are aware, Old Age sweeps all away."[46]
- Now, to come back to our subject and to yourself, when this old age
- comes stealing on and knocks at your door, you make an effort to
- bar him out. You pretend that by some infraction of the order of
- Nature he has come too soon. You are delighted when you come across
- some rather elderly person who declares he knew you when you were a
- child, especially if, as people generally do, he makes out it was but
- yesterday or the day before. You find it convenient to forget that one
- can say as much about any old dotard however decrepit. Who was not a
- child yesterday, or to-day, as far as that goes?
- We can look here and there and find infants of ninety quarrelling about
- trifles and even now occupied with infantine toys. The days flee away,
- the body decays, the soul is where it was. Though everything is rotten
- with age, the soul has never grown up, never come to maturity, and
- it is a truth, as the proverb says, "One soul uses up many bodies."
- Infancy passes, but, as Seneca remarks, "childishness remains."[47]
- And, believe me, perhaps you are not so young as you imagine, for the
- greater part of mankind have not yet reached the age which you have.
- Blush, therefore, to pass for an aged lover; blush to be so long the
- Public's jest; and if true glory has no charm for you and ridicule no
- terror, at least let change of heart come to the rescue and save you
- from disgrace. For, if I see things at all truly, a man should guard
- his reputation, if only to spare his own friends the shameful necessity
- of telling lies. All the world owes this to itself, but especially such
- a man as yourself, who have so great a public to justify, and one which
- is always talking of you.
- "Great is the task to guard a great man's name."[48]
- If in your poem of _Africa_ you make a truculent enemy tender such
- good counsel to your beloved Scipio, you may well allow, for your own
- profit, a father, who loves you tenderly, to utter with his lips the
- very same monition.
- Put away the childish things of infancy; quench the burning desires
- of youth; think not all the time of what you are going to be and do
- next; look carefully what you are now; do not imagine that the mirror
- has been put before your eyes for nothing, but remember that which is
- written in the Book of Questions on Nature:--
- "Mirrors were invented that men might know themselves. Much profit
- comes thereby. First, knowledge of self; second, wise counsel. You are
- handsome, then beware of what disfigures: plain, then make up by virtue
- what is wanting in good looks. You are young, then remember youth's
- springtime is the time for study and for manly work: old, then lay
- aside the ugly vices off the flesh and turn your thoughts to what will
- be the latter end."[49]
- _Petrarch_. It has dwelt in my remembrance always, from the first day
- that ever I read it; for the thing itself is worth remembering and its
- warning is wise.
- _S. Augustine._ Of what profit has it been to you to read and remember?
- You had better excused yourself had you pleaded ignorance for your
- shield. Knowing what you do, are you not ashamed to see that your grey
- hairs have brought no change in you?
- _Petrarch._ I am ashamed, I regret it, I repent of it, but as for doing
- more, I cannot. Moreover, you know I have this much of consolation,
- that she too is growing old with me.
- _S. Augustine._ The very word of Julia, Cæsar Augustus' daughter!
- Doubtless it has lain fixed in your mind, has it not? When her father
- found fault because she would not have older people round her, as did
- Livia, she parried the paternal reproof by the neat rejoinder--"They
- will be older as soon as I am."[50]
- But pray, tell me, do you suppose that at your age it will be more
- becoming to doat upon an old woman than to love a young one? On the
- contrary, it is the more unbecoming, as the reason for loving is less.
- Well may you take shame to yourself never to grow any wiser though you
- see your body daily growing older. That is all I can say on the subject
- of shame.
- But, as Cicero tells us, it is but a poor thing to make shame do the
- work of reason; and so to reason, the true source of all remedies, let
- us now turn for help. You will assuredly find it through using deep
- Reflection--the third of the things that turn the soul away from love.
- Remember what you are now called to is that citadel wherein alone you
- can be quite safe against the incursions of passion and by which alone
- you will deserve the name of Man. Consider, then, first how noble a
- thing is the soul, and that so great is it that were I to discourse
- as I should wish, I must needs make a whole book thereon. Consider,
- again, the frailty and vileness of the body, which would demand no
- less full treatment than the other. Think also of the shortness of our
- life, concerning which many great men have left their books. Think
- of the flight of time, that no one yet has been able to express in
- words. Think of Death, the fact so certain, the hour so uncertain, but
- everywhere and at all times imminent. Think how men are deceived just
- in this one point, that they believe they can put off what in fact
- never can be put off: for no one is really such a fool as, supposing
- the question is asked him, not to answer that of course some day he
- will die. And so let not the hope of longer life mock you, as it mocks
- so many others, but rather lay up in your heart the verse that seems as
- it were an oracle of heaven--
- "Count every day that dawns to be your last,"[51]
- For is it not so that to mortal men every day is in truth the last,
- or all but the last? Consider, moreover, how shameful it is to have
- men point the finger at you, and to become a public laughing-stock;
- remember, too, how ill your profession accords with a life like this.
- Think how this woman has injured your soul, your body, your fortune.
- Remember what you have borne for her, all to no purpose: how many times
- you have been mocked, despised, scorned; think what flatteries, what
- lamentations, and of all the tears you have cast upon the wind; think
- how again and again she has heaped all this on you with an air of
- haughty disdain, and how if for a moment she showed herself more kind,
- it was but for the passing of a breath and then was gone.
- Think, moreover, how much you have added to her fame, and of what she
- has subtracted from your life: how you have ever been jealous for her
- good name, but she has been always regardless of your very self and
- condition. Remember how she has turned you aside from loving God, and
- into how great miseries you have fallen, known to me, but which I pass
- in silence lest the birds of the air carry the matter abroad.
- Think, moreover, what tasks on all sides are claiming your attention,
- and by which you may do far more good and deserve far more honour: how
- many things you have on hand, as yet uncompleted, to which it would
- be far better for you to return, and devote more time, instead of
- attempting them so perfunctorily as you have en doing lately.
- Finally, ponder well what that thing is for which you have such
- consuming desire. But think like a man and with your wits about you;
- for fear lest while you are in the act of flying you be cunningly
- entangled, as not a few have been when Beauty's fascinating charm
- steals upon them by some little, unlooked-for channel, and then is fed
- and strengthened by evil remedies.
- For how be there that have once tasted this seductive pleasure and
- can retain enough manliness, not to say courage, to rate at its true
- value that poor form of woman of which I speak. Only too easily Man's
- strength of mind gives way, and with nature pressing on, he falls
- soonest on that side to which he has long leaned. Take most earnest
- heed that this happen not to you. Banish every recollection of those
- old cares of yours: put far away from you every vision of the past,
- and, as one has said in a certain place, "dash the little children
- against the stones,"[52] lest if they grow up you yourself be cast into
- the mire. And defer not to knock at Heaven's door with prayers; let
- your supplications weary the ears of the heavenly King; day and night
- lift up your petition with tears and crying, if perchance the Almighty
- will take compassion upon you and give an end to your sore trouble and
- distress.
- These are the things that you must do, these the safeguards you must
- employ; if you will observe them faithfully the Divine Help will be at
- hand, as I trust; and the right hand of the Deliverer whom none can
- resist will succour you.
- But albeit I have spoken on this one malady what is too short for your
- needs but too long for the briefness of our time, let us pass now to
- another matter. One evil still is left, to heal you of which I now will
- make a last endeavour.
- _Petrarch._ Even so do, most gentle Father. For though I be not yet
- wholly set free from my burdens, yet, nevertheless, from great part of
- them I do feel in truth a blessed release.
- _S. Augustine._ Ambition still has too much hold on you. You seek too
- eagerly the praise of men, and to leave behind you an undying name.
- _Petrarch._ I freely confess it. I cannot beat down that passion in my
- soul. For it, as yet, I have found no cure.
- _S. Augustine_. But I greatly fear lest this pursuit of a false
- immortality of fame may shut for you the way that leads to the true
- immortality of life.
- _Petrarch._ That is one of my fears also, but I await your discovering
- to me the means to save my life; you, of a truth, will do it, who have
- furnished me with means for the healing of evils greater still.
- _S. Augustine_. Think not that any of your ills is greater than this
- one, though I deny not that some may be more vile.
- But tell me, I pray you, what in your opinion is this thing called
- glory, that you so ardently covet?
- _Petrarch._ I know not if you ask me for a definition. But if so, who
- so capable to give one as yourself?
- _S. Augustine._ The name of glory is well enough known to you; but to
- the real thing, if one may judge by your actions, you are a stranger.
- If you had known what it is you would not long for it so eagerly.
- Suppose you define glory, with Cicero, as being "the illustrious
- and world-wide renown of good services rendered to one's fellow
- citizens, to one's country, or to all mankind"; or as he expresses it
- elsewhere, "Public opinion uttering its voice about a man in words of
- praise."[53] You will notice that in both these cases glory is said to
- be reputation. Now, do you know what this reputation is?
- _Petrarch._ I cannot say any good description of it occurs to me at the
- moment; and I shrink from putting forward things I do not understand. I
- think, therefore, the truer and better course is for me to keep silence.
- _S. Augustine_. You act like a wise and modest man. In every serious
- question, and especially when the matter is ambiguous, one should pay
- much less attention to what one will say than to what one will not say,
- for the credit of having said well is something much less than the
- discredit of having said ill. Now I submit to you that reputation is
- nothing but talk about some one, passing from mouth to mouth of many
- people.
- _Petrarch._ I think your definition, or, if you prefer the word, your
- description, is a good one.
- _S. Augustine_. It is, then, but a breath, a changing wind; and, what
- will disgust you more, it is the breath of a crowd. I know to whom I am
- speaking. I have observed that no man more than you abhors the manners
- and behaviour of the common herd. Now see what perversity is this! You
- let yourself be charmed with the applause of those whose conduct you
- abominate; and may Heaven grant you are only charmed, and that you put
- not in their power your own everlasting welfare! Why and wherefore,
- I ask, this perpetual toil, these ceaseless vigils, and this intense
- application to study? You will answer, perhaps, that you seek to find
- out what is profitable for life. But you have long since learned what
- is needful for life and for death.
- What was now required of you was to try and put in practice what you
- know, instead of plunging deeper and deeper into laborious inquiries,
- where new problems are always meeting you, and insoluble mysteries,
- in which you never reach the end. Add to which the fact that you keep
- toiling and toiling to satisfy the public; wearying yourself to please
- the very people who, to you, are the most displeasing; gathering now a
- flower of poesy, now of history--in a word, employing all your genius
- of words to tickle the ears of the listening throng.
- _Petrarch_. I beg your pardon, but I cannot let that pass without
- saying a word. Never since I was a boy have I pleased myself with
- elegant extracts and flowerets of literature. For often have I noted
- what neat and excellent things Cicero has uttered against butchers of
- books, and especially, also, the phrase of Seneca in which he declares,
- "It is a disgrace for a man to keep hunting for flowers and prop
- himself up on familiar quotations, and only stand on what he knows by
- heart."[54]
- _S. Augustine._ In saying what I did, I neither accuse you of idleness
- nor scant memory. What I blame you for is that in your reading you have
- picked out the more flowery passages for the amusement of your cronies,
- and, as it were, packed up boxes of pretty things out of a great heap,
- for the benefit of your friends--which is nothing but pandering to a
- desire of vainglory; and, moreover, I say that, not being contented
- with your duty of every day (which, in spite of great expense of time,
- only promised you some celebrity among your contemporaries), you have
- let your thoughts run on ages of time and given yourself up to dreams
- of fame among those who come after. And in pursuit of this end, putting
- your hand to yet greater tasks, you entered on writing a history from
- the time of King Romulus to that of the Emperor Titus, an enormous
- undertaking that would swallow up an immensity of time and labour.
- Then, without waiting till this was finished, goaded by the pricks of
- your ambition for glory, you sailed off in your poetical barque towards
- Africa; and now on the aforesaid books of your _Africa_ you are hard at
- work, without relinquishing the other. And in this way you devote your
- whole life to those two absorbing occupations--for I will not stop to
- mention the countless others that come in also--and throw utterly away
- what is of most concern and which, when lost, cannot be recovered. You
- write books on others, but yourself you quite forget. And who knows but
- what, before either of your works be finished, Death may snatch the pen
- from your tired hand, and while in your insatiable hunt for glory you
- hurry on first by one path, then the other, you may find at last that
- by neither of them have you reached your goal?
- _Petrarch._ Fears of that kind have sometimes come over me, I confess.
- And knowing I suffered from grave illness, I was afraid death might
- not be far off. Nothing then was more bitter to me than the thought of
- leaving my _Africa_ half finished. Unwilling that another hand should
- put the finishing touch, I had determined that with my own I would cast
- it to the flames, for there was none of my friends whom I could trust
- to do me this service after I was gone. I knew that a request like
- that was the only one of our Virgil's which the Emperor Cæsar Augustus
- declined to grant. To make a long story short, this land of Africa,
- burnt already by that fierce sun to which it is for ever exposed,
- already three times by the Roman torches devastated far and wide, had
- all but yet again, by my hands, been made a prey to the flames.
- But of that we will say no more now, for too painful are the
- recollections that it brings.
- _S. Augustine._ What you have said confirms my opinion. The day of
- reckoning is put off for a short time, but the account remains still
- to be paid. And what can be more foolish than thus to waste such
- enormous labour over a thing of uncertain issue? I know what prevents
- you abandoning the work is simply that you still hope you may complete
- it. As I see that there will be some difficulty (unless I am mistaken)
- in getting you to diminish this hope, I propose we try to magnify it
- and so set it out in words that you will see how disproportionate it is
- to toils like yours. Suppose, therefore, that you have full abundance
- of time, leisure, and freedom of mind; let there be no failure of
- intellect, no languor of body, none of those mischances of fortune
- which, by checking the first onrush of expression, so often stop the
- ready writer's pen; let all things go better even than you had dared to
- wish--still, what considerable work do you expect to achieve?
- _Petrarch._ Oh, certainly, one of great excellence, quite out of the
- common and likely to attract attention.
- _S. Augustine._ I have no wish to seem contradictory: let us suppose
- it may be a work of great excellence. But if you knew of what greater
- excellence still is the work which this will hinder, you would abhor
- what you now desire. For I will go so far as to assert that this work
- of yours is, to begin with, taking off your attention from cares of a
- nobler kind; and, greatly excellent as you think it, has no wide scope
- nor long future before it, circumscribed as it must be by time and
- space.
- _Petrarch._ Well do I know that old story bandied about by the
- philosophers, how they declare that all the earth is but a tiny point,
- how the soul alone endures for infinite millions of years, how fame
- cannot fill either the earth or the soul, and other paltry pleas of
- this sort, by which they try to turn minds aside from the love of
- glory. But I beg you will produce some more solid arguments than
- these, if you know any; for experience has shown me that all this is
- more specious than convincing. I do not think to become as God, or to
- inhabit eternity, or embrace, heaven and earth. Such glory as belongs
- to man is enough for me. That is all I sigh after. Mortal myself, it is
- but mortal blessings I desire.
- _S. Augustine._ Oh, if that is what you truly mean, how wretched are
- you! If you have no desire for things immortal, if no regard for what
- is eternal, then you are indeed wholly of the earth earthy: then all is
- over for you; no hope at all is left.
- _Petrarch._ Heaven defend me from such folly! But my conscience is
- witness, and knows what have been my desires, that never have I
- ceased to love with burning zeal the things eternal. I said--or if,
- perchance, I am mistaken, I intended to say--that my wish was to use
- mortal things for what they were worth, to do no violence to nature
- by bringing to its good things a limitless and immoderate desire, and
- so to follow after human fame as knowing that both myself and it will
- perish.
- _S. Augustine._ There you speak as a wise man. But when you declare you
- are willing to rob yourself of the riches that will endure merely for
- the sake of what you own is a perishing breath of applause--then you
- are a fool indeed.
- _Petrarch_. True, I may be postponing those riches, but not
- relinquishing them altogether.
- _S. Augustine._ But how dangerous is such delay, remembering that
- time flies fast and how uncertain our short life is. Let me ask you a
- question, and I beg you to answer it. Suppose that He who alone can fix
- our time of life and death were this day to assign you one whole year,
- and you had the definite certainty of how would you propose to use that
- year?
- _Petrarch_. Assuredly I should use great economy of time, and be
- extremely, careful to employ it on serious things; and I suppose no man
- alive would be so insolent or foolish as to answer your question in any
- other way.
- _S. Augustine._ You have answered rightly. And yet the folly men
- display in this case is matter of astonishment, not to me only but to
- all those who have ever written on this subject. To set forth what
- they feel, they have combined every faculty they possess and employed
- all their eloquence, and even then the truth itself will leave their
- utmost efforts far behind.
- _Petrarch._ I fear I do not understand the motive of so great
- astonishment.
- _S. Augustine._ It is because you are covetous of uncertain riches and
- altogether wasteful of those which are eternal, doing the very contrary
- of what you ought to do, if you were not quite devoid of wisdom.
- So this space of a year, though short enough indeed, being promised
- you by Him who deceives not, neither is deceived, you would partition
- out and dissipate on any kind of folly, provided you could keep the
- last hour for the care of your salvation! The horrible and hateful
- madness of you all is just this, that you waste your time on ridiculous
- vanities, as if there were enough and to spare, and though you do not
- in the least know if what you have will be long enough for the supreme
- necessities of the soul in face of death. The man who has one year of
- life possesses something certain though short; whereas he who has no
- such promise and lies under the power of death (whose stroke may fall
- at any moment), which is the common lot of all men--this man, I say, is
- not sure of a year, a day; no, not even of one hour. He who has a year
- to live, if six months shall have slipped away, will still have another
- half-year left to run; but for you, if you lose the day that now is,
- who will promise you to-morrow?[55]
- It is Cicero who says: "It is certain that we must die: what is
- uncertain is whether it will be to-day; and there is none so young
- that-he can be sure he will live until the evening."[56] I ask, then,
- of you, and I ask it likewise of all those who stand gaping after the
- future and pay no heed to the present, "Who knows if the high gods will
- add even one morrow to this your little day of life?"[57]
- _Petrarch_. If I am to answer for myself and for all: No one knows, of
- a truth. But let us hope for a year at least; on which, if we are still
- to follow Cicero, even the most aged reckons!
- _S. Augustine._ Yes; and, as he also adds, not old men only but young
- ones too are fools in that they cherish false hope, and promise
- themselves uncertain goods as though they were certain.[58]
- But let us take for granted (what is quite impossible) that the
- duration of life will be long and assured: still, do you not find it is
- the height of madness to squander the best years and the best parts of
- your existence on pleading only the eyes of others and tickling other
- men's ears, and to keep the last and worst--the years that are almost
- good for nothing--that bring nothing but distaste for life and then its
- end--to keep these, I say, for God and yourself, as though the welfare
- of your soul were the last thing you cared for?
- Even supposing the time were certain, is it not reversing the true
- order to put off the best to the last?
- _Petrarch._ I do not think my way of looking at it is so unreasonable
- as you imagine. My principle in that, as concerning the glory which we
- may hope for here below, it is right for us to seek while we are here
- below. One may expect to enjoy that other more radiant glory in heaven,
- when we shall have there arrived, and when one will have no more care
- or wish for the glory of earth. Therefore, as I think, it is in the
- true order that mortal men should first care for mortal things; and
- that to things transitory things eternal should succeed; because to
- pass from those to these is to go forward in most certain accordance
- with what is ordained for us, although no way is open for us to pass
- back again from eternity to time.
- _S. Augustine._ O man, little in yourself, and of little wisdom! Do
- you, then, dream that you shall enjoy every pleasure in heaven and
- earth, and everything will turn out fortunate and prosperous for you
- always and everywhere? But that delusion has betrayed thousands of
- men thousands of times, and has sunk into hell a countless host of
- souls. Thinking to have one foot on earth and one in heaven, they
- could neither stand here below nor mount on high. Therefore they fell
- miserably, and the moving breeze swept them suddenly away, some in the
- flower of their age, and some when they were in midst of their years
- and all their business.
- And do you suppose what has befallen so many others may not befall you?
- Alas! if (which may God forefend!) in the midst of all your plans and
- projects you should be cut off--what grief, what shame, what remorse
- (then too late!) that you should have grasped at all and lost all!
- _Petrarch._ May the Most High in His mercy save me from that misery!
- _S. Augustine._ Though Divine Mercy may deliver a man from his folly,
- yet it will not excuse it. Presume not upon this mercy overmuch. For
- if God abhors those who lose hope, He also laughs at those who in
- false hope put their trust. I was sorry when I heard fall from your
- lips that phrase about despising what you called the old story of
- the philosophers on this matter. Is it, then, an old story, pray, by
- figures of geometry, to show how small is all the earth, and to prove
- it but an island of little length and width? Is it an old story to
- divide the earth into five zones, the largest of which, lying in the
- centre, is burned by the heat of the sun, and the two utmost, to right
- and left, are a prey to binding frost and eternal snow, which leave
- not a corner where man can dwell; but those other two, between the
- middle and two utmost zones, are inhabited by man? Is it an old story
- that this habitable part is divided again into two parts, whereof one
- is placed under your feet, guarded by a vast sea, and the other is
- left you to inhabit everywhere, or, according to some authorities, is
- again in two parts subdivided, with but one part habitable and the
- other surrounded by the winding intricacies of the Northern Ocean,
- preventing all access to it? As to that part under your feet, called
- the antipodes, you are aware that for a long time the most learned men
- have been of two opinions whether it is inhabited or not: for myself, I
- have set forth my opinion in the book called _The City of God_, which
- you have doubtless read. Is it also an old story that your habitable
- part, already so restricted, is yet further diminished to such an
- extent by seas, marshes, forests, sand and deserts, that the little
- corner left you, of which you are so proud, is brought down to almost
- nothing? And, finally, is it an old story to point out to you that on
- this narrow strip, where you dwell, there are divers kinds of life,
- different religions which oppose one another, different languages and
- customs, which render it impossible to make the fame of your name go
- far?
- But if these things are to you nought but fables, so, to me, all I had
- promised myself of your future greatness must be a fable also; for I
- had thought, hitherto, that no man had more knowledge of these things
- than you yourself To say nothing of the conceptions of Cicero and
- Virgil and other systems of knowledge, physical or poetic, of which you
- seemed to have a competent knowledge, I knew that not long since, in
- your _Africa,_ you had expressed the very same opinions in these pretty
- lines--
- "The Universe itself is but an isle
- Confined in narrow bounds, small, and begirt
- By Ocean's flowing waves."[59]
- You have added other developments later on, and now that I know you
- think them all fables, I am astonished you have put them forth with
- such hardihood.
- What shall I say now of the brief existence of human fame, the short,
- short span of time, when you know too well how small and recent even
- the oldest memory of man is if compared to eternity? I spare to call to
- your mind those opinions of the men of old, laid up in Plato's _Timæus_
- and in the sixth book of Cicero's _Republic,_ where it is foretold what
- floods and conflagrations shall be coming not seldom on the earth. To
- many men such things have seemed probable; but they wear a different
- aspect to those who, like yourself, have come to know the true religion.
- And besides these, how many other things there are that militate
- against, I do not say the eternity, but even the survival of one's
- name. First there is the death of those with whom one has passed
- one's life; and that forgetfulness which is the common bane of old
- age: then there is the rising fame, ever growing greater, of new men;
- which always, by its freshness, is somewhat derogatory to that of those
- who went before, and seems to mount up higher just in so far as it
- can depress this other down. Then you must add, also, that persistent
- envy which ever dogs the steps of those who embark on any glorious
- enterprise; and the hatred of Truth itself, and the fact that the very
- life of men of genius is odious to the crowd. Think, too, how fickle is
- the judgment of the multitude. And alas for the sepulchres of the dead!
- to shatter which--
- "The wild fig's barren branch is strong enough,"[60]
- as Juvenal has told us.
- In your own _Africa_ you call this, elegantly enough, "a second death";
- and if I may here address to you the same words you have put in the
- mouth of another--
- "The animated bust and storied urn
- Shall fall, and with them fall thy memory,
- And thou, my son, thus taste a second death."[61]
- Lo, then, how excellent, how undying that glory must be which the fall
- of one poor stone can bring to nought!
- And, then, consider the perishing of books wherein your name has
- been written, either by your own hand or another's. Even though that
- perishing may appear so much more delayed as books outlast monuments,
- nevertheless it is sooner or later inevitable; for, as is the case with
- everything else, there are countless natural or fortuitous calamities
- to which books are ever exposed. And even if they escape all these,
- they, like us, grow old and die--
- "For whatsoever mortal hand has made,
- With its vain labour, shall be mortal too,"[62]
- if one may be allowed, for choice, to refute your childish error by
- your own words.
- What need to say more? I shall never cease to bring to your
- recollection lines of your own making which only too truly fit the case.
- "When your books perish you shall perish too;
- This is the third death, still to be endured."[63]
- And now you know what I think about glory.
- Perhaps I have used more words in expressing it than was needful for
- you or me; and yet fewer, I believe, than the importance of the subject
- demands--unless perchance you still think all these things only an old
- story?
- _Petrarch_. No indeed. What you have been saying--so far from seeming
- to me like old stories--has stirred in me a new desire to get rid of
- my old delusions. For albeit that these things were known to me long
- ago, and that I have heard them oftentimes repeated, since, as Terence
- puts it--
- "Everything that one can say
- Has all been said before,"[64]
- nevertheless the stateliness of phrase, the orderly narration, the
- authority of him who speaks, cannot but move me deeply.
- But I have yet a last request to make, which is that you will give me
- your definite judgment on this point. Is it your wish that I should put
- all my studies on one side and renounce every ambition, or would you
- advise some middle course?
- _S. Augustine._ I will never advise you to live without ambition; but
- I would always urge you to put virtue before glory. You know that
- glory is in a sense the shadow of virtue. And therefore, just as it
- is impossible that your body should not cast a shadow if the sun is
- shining, so it is impossible also in the light of God Himself that
- virtues should exist and not make their glory to appear. Whoever, then,
- would take true glory away must of necessity take away virtue also; and
- when that is gone man's life is left bare, and only resembles that of
- the brute beasts that follow headlong their appetite, which to them is
- their only law. Here, therefore, is the rule for you to live by--follow
- after virtue and let glory take care of itself; and as for this, as
- some one said of Cato, the less you seek it the more you will find it.
- I must once more allow myself to invoke your own witness--
- "Thou shalt do well from Honour's self to flee,
- For then shell Honour follow after thee."[65]
- Do you not recognise the verse? It is your own. One would surely think
- that man a fool who at midday should run here and there in the blaze
- of the sun, wearing himself out to see his shadow and point it out
- to others; now the man shows no more sense or reason who, amid the
- anxieties of life, takes huge trouble, first one way, then another, to
- spread his own glory abroad.
- What then? Let a man march steadily to the goal set before him, his
- shadow will follow him step by step: let him so act that he shall make
- virtue his prize, and lo! glory also shall be found at his side. I
- speak of that glory which is virtue's true companion; as for that which
- comes by other means, whether from bodily grace or mere cleverness, in
- the countless ways men have invented, it does not seem to me worthy of
- the name. And so, in regard to yourself, while you are wearing your
- strength out by such great labours in writing books, if you will allow
- me to say so, you are shooting wide of the mark. For you are spending
- all your efforts on things that concern others, and neglecting those
- that are your own; and so, through this vain hope of glory, the time,
- so precious, though you know it not, is passing away.
- _Petrarch._ What must I do, then? Abandon my unfinished works? Or would
- it be better to hasten them on, and, if God gives me grace, put the
- finishing touch to them? If I were once rid of these cares I would go
- forward, with a mind more free, to greater things; for hardly could I
- bear the thought of leaving half completed a work so fine and rich in
- promise of success.
- _S. Augustine._ Which foot you mean to hobble on, I do not know. You
- seem inclined to leave yourself derelict, rather than your books.
- As for me, I shall do my duty, with what success depends on you; but
- at least I shall have satisfied my conscience. Throw to the winds
- those great loads of histories; the deeds of the Romans have been
- celebrated quite enough by others, and are known by their own fame.
- Get out of Africa and leave it to its possessors. You will add nothing
- to the glory of your Scipio or to your own. He can be exalted to no
- higher pinnacle, but you may bring down his reputation, and with it
- your own. Therefore leave all this on one side, and now at length take
- possession of yourself; and to come back to our starting-point, let me
- urge you to enter upon the meditation of your last end, which comes
- on step by step without your being aware. Tear off the veil; disperse
- the shadows; look only on that which is coming; with eyes and mind
- give all your attention there: let nought else distract you. Heaven,
- Earth, the Sea--these all suffer change. What can man, the frailest of
- all creatures, hope for? The seasons fulfil their courses and change;
- nothing remains as it was. If you think you shall remain, you are
- deceived. For, Horace beautifully says--
- "The losses of the changing Heaven,
- The changing moons repair;
- But we, when we have gone below,
- And our rich land no longer know,
- And hear no more its rivers flow,
- Are nought but dust and air."[66]
- Therefore, as often as you watch the fruits of summer follow the
- flowers of spring, and the pleasant cool of autumn succeed the summer
- heat, and winter's snow come after autumn's vintage, say to yourself:
- "The seasons pass, yet they will come again; but I am going, never
- again to return." As often as you behold at sunset the shadows of
- the mountains lengthening on the plain, say to yourself: "Now life
- is sinking fast; the shadow of death begins to overspread the scene;
- yonder sun to-morrow will again be rising the same, but this day of
- mine will never come back."
- Who shall count the glories of the midnight sky, which, though it be
- the time that men of evil heart choose for their misdoing, yet is it
- to men of good heart the holiest of all times? Well, take care you be
- not less watchful than that admiral of the Trojan fleet;[67] for the
- seas you sail upon are no more safe than his; rise up at the mid hour
- of night, and
- "All the stars, that in the silent sky
- Roll on their way, observe with careful heed."[68]
- As you see them hasten to their setting in the west, think how you
- also are moving with them; and that as for your abiding you have no
- hope, saving only in Him who knows no change and suffers no decline.
- Moreover, when you meet with those whom you knew but yesterday as
- children, and see them now growing up in stature to their manhood,
- stage by stage, remember how you in like manner, in the same lapse of
- time, are going down the hill, and at greater speed, by that law in
- nature under which things that are heavy tend to fall.
- When your eyes behold some ancient building, let your first thought
- be, Where are those who wrought it with their hands? and when you see
- new ones, ask, Where, soon, the builders of them will be also? If you
- chance to see the trees of some orchard, remember how often it falls
- out that one plants it and another plucks the fruit; for many a time
- the saying in the _Georgics_ comes to pass--
- "One plants the tree, but eh, the slow-grown shade
- His grandchild will enjoy."[69]
- And when you look with pleased wonder at some swiftly flowing stream,
- then, that I bring no other poet's thought, keep ever in mind this one
- of your own--
- "No river harries with more rapid flight
- Than Life's swift current."[70]
- Neither let multitude of days or the artificial divisions of time
- deceive your judgment; for man's whole existence, let it be never so
- prolonged, Is but as one day, and that not a day entire.
- Have oftentimes before your eyes one similitude of Aristotle's, whom
- I know to be a favourite of yours; and his words I am sure you never
- read or hear without feeling them deeply. You will find it reported
- by Cicero in the _Tusculan Orations_, and in words possibly even more
- clear and impressive than the original. Here is what he says, or very
- nearly so, for at the moment I have not his book at hand:--
- "Aristotle tells us that on the banks of the river Hypanis, which on
- one side of Europe empties itself into the Euxine Sea, there exists a
- race of little animals who only live one day. Any one of them that dies
- at sunrise dies young; he that dies at noon is middle-aged; and should
- one live till sunset, he dies in old age: and especially is this so
- about the time of the solstice. If you compare the time of man's life
- with eternity, it will seem no longer than theirs."[71] So far I give
- you Cicero; but what he says seems to me so beyond all cavil that now
- for a long time the saying has passed from the tongue of philosophers
- into common speech. Every day you hear even ignorant and unlearned men,
- if they chance to see a little child, make use of some expression like
- this--"Well, well, it's early morning with him yet"; if they see a
- man they will say, "Oh, it's high noon with him now," or "He's well in
- the middle of his day"; if they see one old and broken down they will
- remark, "Ah! he's getting toward evening and the going down of the sun."
- Ponder well on these things, my very dear son, and on others akin
- to them, which will, I doubt not, flock into your thoughts, as
- these on the spur of the moment have come into mine. And one more
- thing I beseech you to have in mind: look at the graves of those
- older, perhaps, than you, but whom nevertheless you have known; look
- diligently, and then rest assured that the same dwelling-place,
- the same house, is for you also made ready. Thither are all of us
- travelling on; that is our last home. You who now, perchance, are proud
- and think that your springtime has not quite departed, and are for
- trampling others underfoot, you in turn shall underfoot be trampled.
- Think over all this; consider it by day and by night; not merely as a
- man of sober mind and remembering what nature he is of, but as becomes
- a man of wisdom, and so holding it all fast, as one who remembers it is
- written
- "A wise man's life is all one preparation for death."[72]
- This saying will teach you to think little of what concerns earthly
- things, and set before your eyes a better path of life on which to
- enter. You will be asking me what is that kind of life, and by what
- ways you can approach it? And I shall reply that now you have no need
- of long advice or counsel. Listen only to that Holy Spirit who is ever
- calling, and in urgent words saying, "Here is the way to your native
- country, your true home."
- You know what He would bring to mind; what paths for your feet, what
- dangers to avoid. If you would be safe and free obey His voice. There
- is no need for long deliberations. The nature of your danger calls
- for action, not words. The enemy is pressing you from behind, and
- hastening to the charge in front; the walls of the citadel, where you
- are besieged, already tremble. There is no time for hesitation. Of what
- use is it to make sweet songs for the ears of others, if you listen not
- to them yourself?
- I must draw to an end. Shun the rocks ahead, at all costs; drop anchor
- in a place of safety; follow the lead which the inspirations of your
- own soul give you. They may, on the side of what is evil, be evil; but
- towards that which is good they are themselves of the very best.
- _Petrarch_. Ah! would that you had told me all this before I had
- surrendered myself over to these studies!
- _S. Augustine._ I have told you, many a time and oft. From the moment
- when I saw you first take up your pen, I foresaw how short life would
- be, and how uncertain: how certain, too, and how long the toil. I
- saw the work would be great and the fruit little, and I warned you
- of all these things. But your ears were filled with the plaudits of
- the public, which, to my astonishment, took you captive, although you
- talked as if you despised them. But as we have now been conferring
- together long enough, I beg that if any of my counsels have seemed good
- to you, you will not allow them to come to nothing for want of energy
- or recollection; and if, on the other hand, I have sometimes been too
- rough, I pray you take it not amiss.
- _Petrarch_. Indeed I owe you a deep debt of gratitude, as for many
- other things, so, especially, for this three days' colloquy; for you
- have cleansed my darkened sight and scattered the thick clouds of error
- in which I was involved. And how shall I express my thankfulness to
- Her also, the Spirit of Truth, who, unwearied by our much talking,
- has waited upon us to the end? Had She turned away her face from us we
- should have wandered in darkness: your discourse had then contained no
- sure truth, neither would my understanding have embraced it. And now,
- as She and you have your dwelling-place in heaven, and I must still
- abide on earth, and, as you see, am greatly perplexed and troubled, not
- knowing for how long this must be, I implore you, of your goodness, not
- to forsake me, in spite of that great distance which separates me from
- such as you; for without you, O best of fathers, my life would be but
- one long sadness, and without Her I could not live at all.
- _S. Augustine._ You may count your prayer already granted, if you will
- only to yourself be true: for how shall any one be constant to him who
- is inconstant to himself?
- _Petrarch._ I will be true to myself, so far as in me lies. I will
- pull myself together and collect my scattered wits, and make a great
- endeavour to possess my soul in patience. But even while we speak, a
- crowd of important affairs, though only of the world, is waiting my
- attention.
- _S. Augustine._ For the common herd of men these may be what to
- them seem more important; but in reality there is nothing of more
- importance, and nothing ought to be esteemed of so much worth. For,
- of other trains of thought, you may reckon them to be not essential
- for the soul, but the end of life will prove that these we have been
- engaged in are of eternal necessity.
- _Petrarch._ I confess they are so. And I now return to attend to those
- other concerns only in order that, when they are discharged, I may come
- back to these.
- I am not ignorant that, as you said a few minutes before, it would be
- much safer for me to attend only to the care of my soul, to relinquish
- altogether every bypath and follow the straight path of the way of
- salvation. But I have not strength to resist that old bent for study
- altogether.
- _S. Augustine_. We are falling into our old controversy. Want of will
- you call want of power. Well, so it must be, if it cannot be otherwise.
- I pray God that He will go with you where you go, and that He will
- order your steps, even though they wander, into the way of truth.
- _Petrarch._ O may it indeed be as you have prayed! May God lead me safe
- and whole out of so many crooked ways; that I may follow the Voice that
- calls me; that I may raise up no cloud of dust before my eyes; and,
- with my mind calmed down and at peace, I may hear the world grow still
- and silent, and the winds of adversity die away.
- _Francis Petrarch, Poet, Most illustrious Orator; his Book, which
- he entitled Secretum; in which a Three days' Discussion concerning
- Contempt of the World is carried on._ Finis.
- [1] _De Senectute_, xxiii.
- [2] _Æneid_, vi. 428-29.
- [3] "Tarda sit illa dies et nostro serior ævo."--_Met._ xv. 868.
- [4] This refers to the second Scipio Africanus, and the words alluded
- to are these: "It is his goodness that I loved, and that is not dead;
- it lives not alone for me, who have had it ever before my eyes, but it
- will go down in all its beauty to those who come after. Whenever a man
- is meditating some great undertaking, or shall be nourishing in his
- breast great hopes, his shall be the memory, and his the image that
- such a man shall take for a pattern."--Cicero, _De Amicitiâ_, xxvii.
- [5] _Æneid,_ i. 328-29.
- [6] Cicero, _Tusculan Orations,_ iv. 18.
- [7] Quoted from Attilius in Cicero's _Letters to Atticus,_ xiv.
- [8] Ovid, _Amores_, I. x. 13.
- [9] _Æneid_, vi. 540-43.
- [10] _Æneid_, i. 613
- [11] Seneca, _De Beneficiis,_ vii. 8.
- [12] Terence, _Phormio_, 949.
- [13] _Tusculan Orations_, iv. 35
- [14] Academica.
- [15] Quoted from Tusculan Orations, iii. 26.
- [16] Simone Martini, of Siena.
- [17] A river in Thessaly.
- [18] A town in Phocis, near Delphi.
- [19] Terence, _Eunuch,_ 59-63.
- [20] Terence, _Eunuch,_ 70-73.
- [21] _Ibid.,_ 56.
- [22] _Ibid._ 57, 58.
- [23] _Tusculan Orations_, iv. 35.
- [24] _De Remediis Amoris,_ I. 162.
- [25] _Æneid,_ iii. 44.
- [26] _Tusculan Orations,_ iv. 35.
- [27] _Æneid_, iv. 69-73.
- [28] Seneca, _Epist._, xxviii.
- [29] Horace, _Epistles_, Book I., _Epist._, xi. 27 (Conington).
- [30] Horace, _Epist.,_ Book I., xi. 25-26 (Conington).
- [31] Seneca's _Epist.,_ lxiv.
- [32] _Æneid,_ vi. 126-27.
- [33] _Georgics,_ ii. 136-39.
- [34] Ildebrandino di Conte, Bishop of Padua, _Epist._ cxi. 25.
- [35] Petrarch's _Penitential Psalms,_ iii. (translated by George
- Chapman).
- [36] Ovid's _De Remediis Amoris_, 579-80.
- [37] Petrarch's _Epistles,_ i. 7.
- [38] Quoted in Seneca's treatise, _De Animæ tranquillitate_, xv.
- [39] Seneca's _Epistles,_ ii.
- [40] _Tusculan Orations,_ iv. 35.
- [41] The text here is obscure.
- [42] Suetonius Domitian, xviii.
- [43] Virgil, _Eclogues,_ i. 29.
- [44] _Æneid,_ vi. 615-16.
- [45] _Ibid.,_ ii. 265.
- [47] Seneca, _Epistles,_ iv.
- [48] Petrarch's _Africa_, vii. 292.
- [49] Seneca, _De Natura Quæstiones,_ i. 17.
- [50] Macrobius _Saturnalia,_ ii 5.
- [51] Horace, _Epistles_, i 4, 13.
- [52] PS. cxxxi. 9.
- [53] Cicero, _Pro Marcello_, viii.
- [54] Seneca, _Letters_.
- [55] _De Senectute_, xx.
- [56] _Ibid.,_ xix.
- [57] Horace, _Odes,_ iv. 7,17.
- [58] _De Senectute_, xix.
- [59] _Africa_, ii. 361, 363.
- [60] _Satira,_ x. 145.
- [61] _Africa,_ ii. 481, &c.
- [62] _Africa_, ii. 455-6.
- [63] _Ibid._, ii. 464-5.
- [64] Terence's _Eunuch,_ 41.
- [65] _Africa_, ii 486.
- [66] Horace, _Odes_, iv. 7, 13-16.
- [67] Palinurus.
- [68] Æneid, iii. 515.
- [69] _Georgics_, ii. 58.
- [70] Petrarch's Epist., I. iv. 91-2.
- [71] _Tusculan Orations_, i. 39.
- [72] _Tusculan Orations_, i. 30.
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