Citation (80)
On successive days he would study Cicero side by side with Boccaccio, Virgil with Dante, and Horace with Petrarch, being curious to see and judge for himself the differences between them. And he learned how far in all three cases the Latin tongue surpasses the Italian, by reading their most cultivated writers always three times each on the following plan: the first time to grasp each composition as a whole, the second to note the transitions and the sequences of things, the third in greater detail to collect the fine turns of thought and expression, which he marked in the books themselves instead of copying them into commonplace or phrase books. This practice, he thought, would lead him to make good use of them as his needs recalled them to mind in their contexts: which is the sole measure of effective thought and expression.