Note 515 — Chapter XV

After studying the Lettere scritte all'Aretino—epistles, it must be remembered, from foreign kings and princes, from cardinals and bishops, from Italian dukes and noblemen, from illustrious ladies and great artists, and from the most distinguished men of letters of his day—I am quite at a loss to comprehend the furore of fashion which accompanied this man through his career. One and all praise him as the most powerful, the most virtuous, the bravest, the wittiest, the wisest, or, to use their favorite phrase, the divinest man of his century. Was all this a mere convention? Was it evoked by fear and desire of being flattered in return? Or, after all, had Aretino some now occult splendor, some real, but now unintelligible, utility for his contemporaries?