⚠Significant water staining on the right side of the page, though text remains legible.

FIRST DIALOGUE

...the first syllable "Di," from the beginning of that Latin word diversum original: "diuersum" (diverse or different). Prudentio is arguing that "Dialogue" implies two different voices..

SMITH: For heaven’s sake, Master, let us leave these grammatical rigors and come to our point.

PRUDENTIO: O the times! original: "O seclum," a variation of Cicero's famous exclamation "O tempora, o mores!" You seem to me to take little account of fine letters. How can we conduct a good tetralogue A conversation involving four speakers. if we do not know what this term "tetralogue" means? And what is worse original: "quod peius est", we might think it is a dialogue! Must one not commence from a definition and the explanation of the name original: "difinitione et a nominis explicatione exordiendum", as our Arpinate Refers to the Roman orator Cicero, who was born in Arpinum. teaches us?

THEOPHILO: You, Master Prudentio, are too prudent. I beg you, let us leave these grammatical discourses and consider this discussion of ours a dialogue; for although we are four in person, we shall be two in function: proposing and responding, reasoning and listening. Now, to make a beginning and take up the matter from the start: Come and inspire me, O Muses! I do not speak to you who speak through turgid and haughty verse on Mount Helicon; for I fear that perhaps you might complain about me in the end, when after having made such a long and tedious pilgrimage, crossed such perilous seas, and tasted such fierce customs, you were forced to return home barefoot and naked, because here there are "no fish for Lombards." A proverb meaning there is nothing to be gained here, or perhaps that the local environment (England) is too harsh for delicate Italian or Classical sensibilities. Furthermore, not only are you foreigners, but you are also of that race of which a certain poet said:

No Greek was ever free of malice.

Besides, I cannot fall in love with something I do not see. There are others, others who have enchained my soul. To you others, then, I speak: gracious, gentle, mellow, soft, young, beautiful, delicate—with blonde hair, white brows, crimson cheeks, succulent lips, divine eyes, breasts of enamel, and hearts of diamond—for whom I build so many thoughts in my