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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
Cato in yeares learn't Greeke, for Romanes w[e]re
To deale with Grecians, and in Greeke was writt
Philosophic of nature, manners, witt:
Which grace to him, good to his Rome might reare.
Owr English Cato then (who manie a yeare
Censorious maie in vertues Senate sitt)
It maie without disparagement befitt
To knowe Italiane; since Italianes beare
Inteligence with moste, and writing showe
What Greece or Rome, ages, or places knewe:
They best inuent, or best inuented choose.
Which yow my lord maie more exactlie knowe
(If knowledge more exact maie be in yow)
If yow sometimes this Dictionarie use.
The scholar-diplomat John Florio, translator of Michel de Montaigne's Essais into English (1603), copied this sonnet of his friend Matthew Gwinne into a presentation-copy of his Italian-English dictionary (1598) destined for the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, Sir Thomas Egerton. The language used points to a late humanistic context. The central idea is still the discovery and use of ancient wisdom, compared here to the gathering of secrets by 'inteligence'. Humanist logic's classification of the two aspects of all intellectual activity is prominent: the finding and storing, or inventio ('invention'), of philosophical matter; and the choice and deployment, or iudidum ('judgement') of that matter in specific contexts - the whole process amounting to the successful mediation of ancient wisdom (lines 8-11).
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