8 “Brother,” said he, “more smiling are the leaves that Franco of Bologna pencils; 84 the honor is now all his, and mine in part. Truly I should not have been so courteous while I lived, because of the great desire 87 of excelling whereon my heart was intent. Of such pride the fee is paid here; and I should not yet be here, were it not 90 that, still having power to sin, I turned me unto God. “O vainglory of human powers! how short while lasts the green upon the top, 93 if it be not followed by dull ages. Cimabue thought in painting to hold the field, and now Giotto has the cry, 96 so that the fame of him is obscured. In like manner the one Guido has taken from the other the glory of our tongue; and perhaps is born 99 he who shall drive both one and the other from the nest. Worldly renown is naught but a breath of wind, which now comes this way and now comes that, 102 and changes name because it changes quarter. What more repute shalt thou have, if when it is old thou strippest thy flesh from thee, than if thou hadst died 105 before thou hadst left thy pap and thy rattle, ere a thousand years have passed ? – which is a shorter space compared to the eternal than a movement of the eyelid 108 to the circle which is slowest turned in Heaven.
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