The history of Latin composition cannot here be traced in detail.For fully two centuries the humanists acted as if Latin were, and must remain, the only language worthy to be written.Poggio deplores that Dante wrote his great poem in Italian; and Dante, as is well known, actually made the attempt in Latin, and wrote the beginning of the 'Inferno' first in hexameters.The whole future of Italian poetry hung on his not continuing in the same style, but even Petrarch relied more on his Latin poetry than on the Sonnets and 'Canzoni,' and Ariosto himself was desired by some to write his poem in Latin.A stronger coercion never existed in literature; but poetry shook it off for the most part, and it may be said, without the risk of too great optimism, that it was well for Italian poetry to have had both means of expressing itself.In both something great and characteristic was achieved, and in each we can see the reason why Latin or Italian was chosen.Perhaps the same may be said of prose.The position and influence of Italian culture throughout the world depended on the fact that certain subjects were treated in Latin--'urbi et orbi'--while Italian prose was written best of all by those to whom it cost an inward struggle not to write in Latin.
From the fourteenth century Cicero was recognized universally as the purest model of prose.This was by no means due solely to a dispassionate opinion in favour of his choice of language, of the structure of his sentences, and of his style of composition, but rather to the fact that the Italian spirit responded fully and instinctively to the amiability of the letter writer, to the brilliancy of the orator, and to the lucid exposition of the philosophical thinker.Even Petrarch recognized dearly the weakness of Cicero as a man and a statesman, though he respected him too much to rejoice over them.After Petrarch's time, the epistolary style was formed entirely on the pattern of Cicero; and the rest, with the exception of the narrative style, followed the same influence.Yet the true Ciceronianism, which rejected every phrase which could not be justified out of the great authority, did not appear till the end of the fifteenth century, when the grammatical writings of Lorenzo Valla had begun to tell on all Italy, and when the opinions of the Roman historians of literature had been sifted and compared.Then every shade of difference in the style of the ancients was studied with closer and doser attention till the consoling conclusion was at last reached that in Cicero alone was the perfect model to be found, or, if all forms of literature were to be embraced, in 'that immortal and almost heavenly age of Cicero.' Men like Pietro Bembo and Pierio Valeriano now turned all their energies to this one object.Even those who had long resisted the tendency, and had formed for themselves an archaic style from the earlier authors, yielded at last, and joined in the worship of Cicero.Longolius, at Bembo's advice, determined to read nothing but Cicero for five years long, and finally took an oath to use no word which did not occur in this author.It was this temper which broke out at last in the great war among the scholars, in which Erasmus and the elder Scaliger led the battle.