e spent, hearing what you
maintain on that subject; afterwards it may be possible to bring this
company together again, in another place."

"How can your Excellency wish," I answered, "that I should dare to do so
at once, and how should I be able to interest this company with my little
knowledge, especially as I am a pupil of the lady who is dumb and has no
tongue? Particularly, too, as it is already late, if the light through
these windows does not deceive me; how can you order me to praise my
innamorata before her own husband and in such an honourable court of those
who know her worth? If there were some powerful adversaries here I might
attempt it, although in this I am wrong, for it would be much easier to
vanquish enemies than to please these friends. But if your Excellency
desires so much to see me put to silence I will speak, not as an enemy of
poetry, for I am much indebted to her, and I owe her much in the virtue of
my profession, and in the perfection which I so much desire, but to defend
the other lady, who is still more mine, for whose sake only I rejoice to
live, and for whom I confess I have a voice and speak, she being dumb,
solely because I one day saw her move her eyes; and as she teaches one to
speak by her eyes, what would she do if she were to move her wise lips?
Good poets (as Senhor Lactancio said) do not do more with words than even
mediocre painters do with their works, for the former recount what the
latter express and declare. They with fastidious meanings do not always
engage one's ears, whilst the latter satisfy one's eyes, as with some
beautiful spectacle they hold all men prisoners and entranced; and the
passage over which good poets most trouble themselves, and which they hold
as the greatest finesse, is to show you in words (perchance too many and
too long), as if painting a storm on the sea, or the burning of a city,
which storm, if they were able, they would rather paint, for when you
finish the work of reading, you have already forgotten the commencement,
and you have only present the short verse on which your eyes were last
fixed; and the one who shows you this best is the best poet.

"Now, how much more does painting say which shows you that storm
altogether with the thunder, lightning, waves, vessels, and reefs, and you
see: _omniaque viris ostentant praesentem mortem_, and in the same place:
_ex-templo Aeneas tendens ad sidera palmas_ and _tres Eurus abreptas in
saxa latentia torqu