“Then as soon as he learned the first rudiments of the grammatic art, as we have heard from himself, often pondering upon this in the glory of the omnipotent God, he began to read the poet Prudentius, at the instance of his master. This one, as he is catholic in faith and argument, eminent for eloquence and truth, and most elegant in the variety of his works and metres, with so great sweetness quickly pleased the palate of his heart, that at once, with greater avidity than can be expressed, he drank up not only the knowledge of the foreign words, but even the marrow of the innermost meaning and most liquid nectar, if I may so say. Afterwards there was almost no branch of liberal study in all Greek or Latin eloquence, that escaped the quickness of his genius. Nor indeed, as often happens, did the multitude of riches, or the insistency of clamouring crowds, nor any disgust otherwise coming over him, ever turn his mind from this noble employment of leisure.... Often he seated himself as a learned arbiter in the midst of the most learned Greek and Latin doctors, when they argued on the sublimity of philosophy or upon some subtility of her glistening discipline, and gave satisfaction to the disputants, amid universal plaudits, than which he cared for nothing less.”[390] One may read between these awkward lines that all this learning was something to which Bruno had been introduced at school. Another short passage shows how new and strange this Latin culture seemed, and how he approached it with a timorous seriousness natural to one who did not well understand what it all meant: “The buffoonery and mimic talk in comedies and tragedies, which cause such laughter when recited by a number of people, he would always read seriously; he took small count of the matter, but chiefly of authority, in literary compositions.”[391] Such an attitude would have been impossible for an Italian cradled amid Latin or quasi-Latin speech and reminiscence.