Courage was now no longer necessary even to the military character. Men grew old
in camps, and acquired the highest renown by their warlike achievements, without
being once required to face serious danger. The political consequences are too
well known. The richest and most enlightened part of the world was left
undefended to the assaults of every barbarous invader, to the brutality of
Switzerland, the insolence of France, and the fierce rapacity of Arragon. The
moral effects which followed from this state of things were still more
remarkable.
Among the rude nations which lay beyond the Alps, valor was absolutely
indispensable. Without it none could be eminent; few could be secure. Cowardice
was, therefore, naturally considered as the foulest reproach. Among the polished
Italians, enriched by commerce, governed by law, and passionately attached to
literature, everything was done by superiority and intelligence. Their very
wars, more pacific than the peace of their neighbors, required rather civil than
military qualifications. Hence, while courage was the point of honor in other
countries, ingenuity became the point of honor in Italy.
From these principles were deduced, by processes strictly analogous, two
opposite systems of fashionable morality. Through the greater part of Europe,
the vices which peculiarly belong to timid dispositions, and which are the
natural defense Of weakness, fraud, and hypocrisy, have always been most
disreputable. On the other hand, the excesses of haughty and daring spirits have
been treated with indulgence, and even with respect. The Italians regarded with
corresponding lenity those crimes which require self-command, address, quick
observation, fertile invention, and profound knowledge of human nature.
Such a prince as our Henry the Fifth would have been the idol of the North. The
follies of his youth, the selfish ambition of his manhood, the Lollards roasted
at slow fires the prisoners massacred on the field of battle, the expiring lease
of priestcraft renewed for another century, the dreadful legacy of a causeless
and hopeless war bequeathed to a people who had no interest in its event,
everything is forgotten but the victory of Agincourt. Francis Sforza, on the
other hand, was the model of Italian heroes. He made his employers and his
rivals alike his tools. He first overpowered his open enemies by the help of
faithless allies; he then armed himself against his allies with the spoils taken
from his enemies. By his incomparable dexterity, he raised himself from the
precarious and dependent situation of a military adventurer to the first throne
of Italy. To such a man much was forgiven, hollow friendship, ungenerous enmity,
violated faith. Such are the opposite errors which men commit, when their
morality is not a science but a taste, when they abandon eternal principles for
accidental associations.
We have illustrated our meaning by an instance taken from history. We will
select another from fiction. Othello murders his wife; he gives orders for the
murder of his lieutenant; he ends by murdering himself. Yet he never loses the
esteem and affection of Northern readers. His intrepid and ardent spirit redeems
everything. The unsuspecting confidence with which he listens to his adviser,
the agony with which he shrinks from the thought of shame, the tempest of
passion with which he commits his crimes, and the haughty fearlessness with
which he avows them, give an extraordinary interest to his character. Iago, on
the contrary, is the object of universal loathing. Many are inclined to suspect
that Shakespeare has been seduced into an exaggeration unusual with him, and has
drawn a monster who has no archetype in human nature. Now we suspect that an
Italian audience in the fifteenth century would have felt very differently.
Othello would have inspired nothing but detestation and contempt. The folly with
which he trusts the friendly professions of a man whose promotion he had
obstructed, the credulity with which he takes unsupported assertions, and
trivial circumstances, for unanswerable proofs, the violence with which he
silences the exculpation till the exculpation can only aggravate his misery,
would have excited the abhorrence and disgust of the spectators. The conduct of
Iago they would assuredly have condemned; but they would have condemned it as we
condemn that of his victim. Something of interest and respect would have mingled
with their disapprobation. The readiness of the traitor's wit, the clearness of
his judgment, the skill with which he penetrates the dispositions of others and
conceals his own, would have ensured to him a certain portion of their esteem.
So wide was the difference between the Italians and their neighbors. A similar
difference existed between the Greeks of the second century before Christ, and
their masters the Romans. The conquerors, brave and resolute, faithful to their
engagements, and strongly influenced by religious feelings, were, at the same
time, ignorant, arbitrary, and cruel. With the vanquished people were deposited
all the art, the science, and the literature of the Western world. In poetry, in
philosophy, in painting, in architecture, in sculpture, they had no rivals.
Their manners were polished, their perceptions acute, their invention ready;
they were tolerant, affable, humane; but of courage and sincerity they were
almost utterly destitute. Every rude centurion consoled himself for his
intellectual inferiority, by remarking that knowledge and taste seemed only to
make men atheists, cowards, and slaves. The distinction long continued to be
strongly marked, and furnished an admirable subject for the fierce sarcasms of
Juvenal.
The citizen of an Italian commonwealth was the Greek of the time of Juvenal and
the Greek of the time of Pericles, joined in one. Like the former, he was timid
and pliable, artful and mean. But, like the latter, he had a country. Its
independence and prosperity were dear to him. If his character were degraded by
some base crimes, it was, on the other hand, ennobled by public spirit and by an
honorable ambition,
A vice sanctioned by the general opinion is merely a vice. The evil terminates
in itself. A vice condemned by the general opinion produces a pernicious effect
on the whole character. The former is a local malady, the latter a
constitutional taint. When the reputation of the offender is lost, he too often
flings the remains of his virtue after it in despair. The Highland gentleman
who, a century ago, lived by taking blackmail from his neighbors, committed the
same crime for which Wild was accompanied to Tyburn by the huzzas of two hundred
thousand people. But there can be no doubt that he was a much less depraved man
than Wild. The deed for which Mrs. Brownrigg was hanged sinks into nothing, when
compared with the conduct of the Roman who treated the public to a hundred pair
of gladiators. Yet we should greatly wrong such a Roman if we supposed that his
disposition was as cruel as that of Mrs. Brownrigg. In our own country, a woman
forfeits her place in society by what, in a man, is too commonly considered as
an honorable distinction, and, at worst, as a venial error. The consequence is
notorious. The moral principle of a woman is frequently more impaired by a
single lapse from virtue than that of a man by twenty years of intrigues.
Classical antiquity would furnish us with instances stronger, if possible, than
those to which we have referred.
We must apply this principle to the case before us. Habits of dissimulation and
falsehood, no doubt, mark a man of our age and country as utterly worthless and
abandoned. But it by no means follows that a similar judgment would be just in
the case of an Italian of the middle ages. On the contrary, we frequently find
those faults which we are accustomed to consider as certain indications of a
mind altogether depraved, in company with great and good qualities, with
generosity, with benevolence, with disinterestedness. From such a state of
society, Palamedes, in the admirable dialogue of Hume, might have drawn
illustrations of his theory as striking as any of those with which Fourli
furnished him. These are not, we well know, the lessons which historians are
generally most careful to teach, or readers most willing to learn. But they are
not therefore useless. How Philip disposed his troops at Chaeronea, where
Hannibal crossed the Alps, whether Mary blew up Darnley, or Siquier shot Charles
the Twelfth, and ten thousand other questions of the same description, are in
themselves unimportant. The inquiry may amuse us, but the decision leaves us no
wiser. He alone reads history aright who, observing how powerfully circumstances
influence the feelings and opinions of men, how often vices pass into virtues
and paradoxes into axioms, learns to distinguish what is accidental and
transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.
In this respect no history suggests more important reflections than that of the
Tuscan and Lombard commonwealths. The character of the Italian statesman seems,
at first sight, a collection of contradictions, a phantom as monstrous as the
portress of hell in Milton, half divinity, half snake, majestic and beautiful
above, groveling and poisonous below, We see a man whose thoughts and words have
no connection with each other, who never hesitates at an oath when he wishes to
seduce, who never wants a pretext when he is inclined to betray. His cruelties
spring, not from the heat of blood, or the insanity of uncontrolled power, but
from deep and cool meditation. His passions, like well-trained troops, are
impetuous by rule, and in their most headstrong fury never forget the discipline
to which they have been accustomed. His whole soul is occupied with vast and
complicated schemes of ambition: yet his aspect and language exhibit nothing but
philosophical moderation. Hatred and revenge eat into his heart: yet every look
is a cordial smile, every gesture a familiar caress. He never excites the
suspicion of his adversaries by petty provocations. His purpose is disclosed
only when it is accomplished. His face is unruffled, his speech is courteous,
till vigilance is laid asleep, till a vital point is exposed, till a sure aim is
taken; and then he strikes for the first and last time. Military courage, the
boast of the sottish German, of the frivolous and prating Frenchman, of the
romantic and arrogant Spaniard, he neither possesses nor values. He shuns
danger, not because he is insensible to shame, but because, in the society in
which he lives, timidity has ceased to be shameful. To do an injury openly is,
in his estimation, as wicked as to do it secretly, and far less profitable. With
him the most honorable means are those which are the surest, the speediest, and
the darkest. He cannot comprehend how a man should scruple to deceive those whom
he does not scruple to destroy. He would think it madness to declare open
hostilities against rivals whom he might stab in a friendly embrace, or poison
in a consecrated wafer.
Yet this man, black with the vices which we consider as most loathsome, traitor,
hypocrite, coward, assassin, was by no means destitute even of those virtues
which we generally consider as indicating superior elevation of character. In
civil courage, in perseverance, in presence of mind, those barbarous warriors,
who were foremost in the battle or the breach, were far his inferiors. Even the
dangers which he avoided with a caution almost pusillanimous never confused his
perceptions, never paralyzed his inventive faculties, never wrung out one secret
from his smooth tongue, and his inscrutable brow. Though a dangerous enemy, and
a still more dangerous accomplice, he could be a just and beneficent ruler. With
so much unfairness in his policy, there was an extraordinary degree of fairness
in his intellect. Indifferent to truth in the transactions of life, he was
honestly devoted to truth in the researches of speculation. Wanton cruelty was
not in his nature. On the contrary, where no political object was at stake, his
disposition was soft and humane. The susceptibility of his nerves and the
activity of his imagination inclined him, to sympathize with the feelings of
others, and to delight in the charities and courtesies of social life.
Perpetually descending to actions which might seem to mark a mind diseased
through all its faculties, he had nevertheless an exquisite sensibility, both
for the natural and the moral sublime, for every graceful and every lofty
conception. Habits of petty intrigue and dissimulation might have rendered him
incapable of great general views, but that the expanding effect of his
philosophical studies counteracted the narrowing tendency. He had the keenest
enjoyment of wit, eloquence, and poetry. The fine arts profited alike by the
severity of his judgment, and by the liberality of his patronage. The portraits
of some of the remarkable Italians of those times are perfectly in harmony with
this description. Ample and majestic foreheads, brows strong and dark, but not
frowning, eyes of which the calm full gaze, while it expresses nothing, seems to
discern everything, cheeks pale with thought and sedentary habits, lips formed
with feminine delicacy, but compressed with more than masculine decision, mark
out men at once enterprising and timid, men equally skilled in detecting the
purposes of others, and in concealing their own, men who must have been
formidable enemies and unsafe allies, but men, at the same time, whose tempers
were mild and equable, and who possessed an amplitude and subtlety of intellect
which would have rendered them eminent either in active or in contemplative
life, and fitted them either to govern or to instruct mankind.
Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail
almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even
rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion
of their morals, with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some
other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of
their ancestors. Nor is this all. Posterity, that high court of appeal which is
never tired of eulogizing its own justice and discernment, acts on such
occasions like a Roman dictator after a general mutiny. Finding the delinquents
too numerous to be all punished, it selects some of them at hazard, to bear the
whole penalty of an offence in which they are not more deeply implicated than
those who escape, Whether decimation be a convenient mode of military execution,
we know not; but we solemnly protest against the introduction of such a
principle into the philosophy of history.
In the present instance, the lot has fallen on Machiavelli, a man whose public
conduct was upright and honorable, whose views of morality, where they differed
from those of the persons around him, seemed to have differed for the better,
and whose only fault was, that, having adopted some of the maxims then generally
received, he arranged them more luminously, and expressed them more forcibly,
than any other writer.
Having now, we hope, in some degree cleared the personal character of
Machiavelli, we come to the consideration of his works. As a poet he is not
entitled to a high place; but his comedies deserve attention.
The Mandragola, in particular, is superior to the best of Goldoni, and inferior
only to the best of Moliere. It is the work of a man who, if he had devoted
himself to the drama, would probably have attained the highest eminence, and
produced a permanent and salutary effect on the national taste. This we infer,
not so much from the degree, as from the kind of its excellence. There are
compositions which indicate still greater talent, and which are perused with
still greater delight, from which we should have drawn very different
conclusions. Books quite worthless are quite harmless. The sure sign of the
general decline of an art is the frequent occurrence, not of deformity, but of
misplaced beauty. In general, Tragedy is corrupted by eloquence, and Comedy by
wit.
The real object of the drama is the exhibition of human character. This, we
conceive, is no arbitrary canon, originating in local and temporary
associations, like those canons which regulate the number of acts in a play, or
of syllables in a line. To this fundamental law every other regulation is
subordinate. The situations which most signally develop character form the best
plot. The mother tongue of the passions is the best style.
This principle rightly understood, does not debar the poet from any grace of
composition. There is no style in which some man may not under some
circumstances express himself. There is therefore no style which the drama
rejects, none which it does not occasionally require. It is in the discernment
of place, of time, and of person, that the inferior artists fail. The fantastic
rhapsody of Mercutio, the elaborate declamation of Antony, are, where
Shakespeare has placed them, natural and pleasing. But Dryden would have made
Mercutio challenge Tybalt in hyperboles as fanciful as those in which he
describes the chariot of Mab. Corneille would have represented Antony as
scolding and coaxing Cleopatra with all the measured rhetoric of a funeral
oration.
No writers have injured the Comedy of England so deeply as Congreve and
Sheridan. Both were men of splendid wit and polished taste. Unhappily, they made
all their characters in their own likeness. Their works bear the same relation
to the legitimate drama which a transparency bears to a painting. There are no
delicate touches, no hues imperceptibly fading into each other: the whole is
lighted up with an universal glare. Outlines and tints are forgotten in the
common blaze which illuminates all. The flowers and fruits of the intellect
abound; but it is the abundance of a jungle, not of a garden, unwholesome,
bewildering, unprofitable from its very plenty rank from its very fragrance.
Every fop, every boor, every valet, is a man of wit. The very butts and dupes,
Tattle, Witwould, Puff, Acres, outshine the whole Hotel of Rambouillet. To prove
the whole system of this school erroneous, it is only necessary to apply the
test which dissolved the enchanted Florimel, to place the true by the false
Thalia, to contrast the most celebrated characters which have been drawn by the
writers of whom we speak with the Bastard in King John or the Nurse in Romeo and
Juliet. It was not surely from want of wit that Shakespeare adopted so different
a manner. Benedick and Beatrice throw Mirabel and Millamant into the shade. All
the good sayings of the facetious houses of Absolute and Surface might have been
clipped from the single character of Falstaff, without being missed. It would
have been easy for that fertile mind to have given Bardolph and Shallow as much
wit as Prince Hal, and to have made Dogberry and Verges retort on each other in
sparkling epigrams. But he knew that such indiscriminate prodigality was, to use
his own admirable language, "from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
first and now, was, and is, to hold, as it were, the mirror up to Nature."
This digression will enable our readers to understand what we mean when we say
that in the Mandragola, Machiavelli has proved that he completely understood the
nature of the dramatic art, and possessed talents which would have enabled him
to excel in it. By the correct and vigorous delineation of human nature, it
produces interest without a pleasing or skilful plot, and laughter without the
least ambition of wit. The lover, not a very delicate or generous lover, and his
adviser the parasite, are drawn with spirit. The hypocritical confessor is an
admirable portrait. He is, if we mistake not, the original of Father Dominic,
the best comic character of Dryden. But old Nicias is the glory of the piece. We
cannot call to mind anything that resembles him. The follies which Moliere
ridicules are those of affection, not those of fatuity. Coxcombs and pedants,
not absolute simpletons, are his game. Shakespeare has indeed a vast assortment
of fools; but the precise species of which we speak is not, if we remember
right, to be found there. Shallow is a fool. But his animal spirits supply, to a
certain degree, the place of cleverness. His talk is to that of Sir John what
soda water is to champagne. It has the effervescence though not the body or the
flavor. Slender and Sir Andrew Aguecheek are fools, troubled with an uneasy
consciousness of their folly, which in the latter produces meekness and
docility, and in the former, awkwardness, obstinacy, and confusion. Cloten is an
arrogant fool, Osric a foppish fool, Ajax a savage fool; but Nicias is, as
Thersites says of Patroclus, a fool positive. His mind is occupied by no strong
feeling; it takes every character, and retains none; its aspect is diversified,
not by passions, but by faint and transitory semblances of passion, a mock joy,
a mock fear, a mock love, a mock pride, which chase each other like shadows over
its surface, and vanish as soon as they appear. He is just idiot enough to be an
object, not of pity or horror, but of ridicule. He bears some resemblance to
poor Calandrino, whose mishaps, as recounted by Boccaccio, have made all Europe
merry for more than four centuries. He perhaps resembles still more closely
Simon da Villa, to whom Bruno and Buffalmacco promised the love of the Countess
Civillari. Nicias is, like Simon, of a learned profession; and the dignity with
which he wears the doctoral fur, renders his absurdities infinitely more
grotesque. The old Tuscan is the very language for such a being. Its peculiar
simplicity gives even to the most forcible reasoning and the most brilliant wit
an infantine air, generally delightful, but to a foreign reader sometimes a
little ludicrous. Heroes and statesmen seem to lisp when they use it. It becomes
Nicias incomparably, and renders all his silliness infinitely more silly. We may
add, that the verses with which the Mandragola is interspersed, appear to us to
be the most spirited and correct of all that Machiavelli has written in meter.
He seems to have entertained the same opinion; for he has introduced some of
them in other places. The contemporaries of the author were not blind to the
merits of this striking piece. It was acted at Florence with the greatest
success. Leo the Tenth was among its admirers, and by his order it was
represented at Rome.1
The Clizia is an imitation of the Casina of Plautus, which is itself an
imitation of the lost kleroumenoi of Diphilus. Plautus was, unquestionably, one
of the best Latin writers; but the Casina is by no means one of his best plays;
nor is it one which offers great facilities to an imitator. The story is as
alien from modern habits of life, as the manner in which it is developed from
the modern fashion of composition. The lover remains in the country and the
heroine in her chamber during the whole action, leaving their fate to be decided
by a foolish father, a cunning mother, and two knavish servants. Machiavelli has
executed his task with judgment and taste. He has accommodated the plot to a
different state of society, and has very dexterously connected it with the
history of his own times. The relation of the trick put on the doting old lover
is exquisitely humorous. It is far superior to the corresponding passage in the
Latin comedy, and scarcely yields to the account which Falstaff gives of his
ducking.
Two other comedies without titles, the one in prose, the other in verse, appear
among the works of Machiavelli. The former is very short, lively enough, but of
no great value. The latter we can scarcely believe to be genuine. Neither its
merits nor its defects remind us of the reputed author. It was first printed in
1796, from a manuscript discovered in the celebrated library of the Strozzi. Its
genuineness, if we have been rightly informed, is established solely by the
comparison of hands. Our suspicions are strengthened by the circumstance, that
the same manuscript contained a description of the plague of 1527, which has
also, in consequence, been added to the works of Machiavelli. Of this last
composition the strongest external evidence would scarcely induce us to believe
him guilty. Nothing was ever written more detestable in matter and manner. The
narrations, the reflections, the jokes, the lamentations, are all the very worst
of their respective kinds, at once trite and affected, threadbare tinsel from
the Rag Fairs and Monmouth Streets of literature. A foolish schoolboy might
write such a piece, and, after he had written it, think it much finer than the
incomparable introduction of the Decameron. But that a shrewd statesman, whose
earliest works are characterized by manliness of thought and language, should,
at near sixty years of age, descend to such puerility, is utterly inconceivable.
The little novel of Belphegor is pleasantly conceived and pleasantly told. But
the extravagance of the satire in some measure injures its effect. Machiavelli
was unhappily married; and his wish to avenge his own cause and that of his
brethren in misfortune, carried him beyond even the license of fiction. Jonson
seems to have combined some hints taken from this tale, with others from
Boccaccio, in the plot of The Devil is an Ass, a play which, though not the most
highly finished of his compositions, is perhaps that which exhibits the
strongest proofs of genius.
The Political Correspondence of Machiavelli, first published in 1767, is
unquestionably genuine, and highly valuable. The unhappy circumstances in which
his country was placed during the greater part of his public life gave
extraordinary encouragement to diplomatic talents. From the moment that Charles
the Eighth descended from the Alps, the whole character of Italian politics was
changed. The governments of the Peninsula ceased to form an independent system.
Drawn from their old orbit by the attraction of the larger bodies which now
approached them, they became mere satellites of France and Spain. All their
disputes, internal and external, were decided by foreign influence. The contests
of opposite factions were carried on, not as formerly in the senate-house or in
the marketplace, but in the antechambers of Louis and Ferdinand. Under these
circumstances, the prosperity of the Italian States depended far more on the
ability of their foreign agents, than on the conduct of those who were entrusted
with the domestic administration. The ambassador had to discharge functions far
more delicate than transmitting orders of knighthood, introducing tourists, or
presenting his brethren with the homage of his high consideration. He was an
advocate to whose management the dearest interests of his clients were
entrusted, a spy clothed with an inviolable character. Instead of consulting, by
a reserved manner and ambiguous style, the dignity of those whom he represented,
he was to plunge into all the intrigues of the Court at which he resided, to
discover and flatter every weakness of the prince, and of the favorite who
governed the prince, and of the lacquey who governed the favorite. He was to
compliment the mistress and bribe the confessor, to panegyrize or supplicate, to
laugh or weep, to accommodate himself to every caprice, to lull every suspicion,
to treasure every hint, to be everything, to observe everything, to endure
everything. High as the art of political intrigue had been carried in Italy,
these were times which required it all.
On these arduous errands Machiavelli was frequently employed. He was sent to
treat with the King of the Romans and with the Duke of Valentinois. He was twice
ambassador of the Court of Rome, and thrice at that of France. In these
missions, and in several others of inferior importance, he acquitted himself
with great dexterity. His dispatches form one of the most amusing and
instructive collections extant. The narratives are clear and agreeably written;
the remarks on men and things clever and judicious. The conversations are
reported in a spirited and characteristic manner. We find ourselves introduced
into the presence of the men who, during twenty eventful years, swayed the
destinies of Europe. Their wit and their folly, their fretfulness and their
merriment, are exposed to us. We are admitted to overhear their chat, and to
watch their familiar gestures. It is interesting and curious to recognize, in
circumstances which elude the notice of historians, the feeble violence and
shallow cunning of Louis the Twelfth; the bustling insignificance of Maximilian,
cursed with an impotent pruriency for renown, rash yet timid, obstinate yet
fickle, always in a hurry, yet always too late; the fierce and haughty energy
which gave dignity to the eccentricities of Julius; the soft and graceful
manners which masked the insatiable ambition and the implacable hatred of Caesar
Borgia.
We have mentioned Caesar Borgia. It is impossible not to pause for a moment on
the name of a man in whom the political morality of Italy was so strongly
personified, partially blended with the sterner lineaments of the Spanish
character. On two important occasions Machiavelli was admitted to his society;
once, at the moment when Caesar's splendid villainy achieved its most signal
triumph, when he caught in one snare and crushed at one blow all his most
formidable rivals; and again when, exhausted by disease and overwhelmed by
misfortunes, which no human prudence could have averted, he was the prisoner of
the deadliest enemy of his house. These interviews between the greatest
speculative and the greatest practical statesman of the age are fully described
in the Correspondence, and form perhaps the most interesting part of it.
From some passages in The Prince, and perhaps also from some indistinct
traditions, several writers have supposed a connection between those remarkable
men much closer than ever existed. The Envoy has even been accused of prompting
the crimes of the artful and merciless tyrant. But from the official documents
it is clear that their intercourse, though ostensibly amicable, was in reality
hostile. It cannot be doubted, however, that the imagination of Machiavelli was
strongly impressed, and his speculations on government colored, by the
observations which he made on the singular character and equally singular
fortunes of a man who under such disadvantages had achieved such exploits; who,
when sensuality, varied through innumerable forms, could no longer stimulate his
sated mind, found a more powerful and durable excitement in the intense thirst
of empire and revenge; who emerged from the sloth and luxury of the Roman purple
the first prince and general of the age; who, trained in an unwarlike
profession, formed a gallant army out of the dregs of an unwarlike people; who,
after acquiring sovereignty by destroying his enemies, acquired popularity by
destroying his tools; who had begun to employ for the most salutary ends the
power which he had attained by the most atrocious means; who tolerated within
the sphere of his iron despotism no plunderer or oppressor but himself; and who
fell at last amidst the mingled curses and regrets of a people of whom his
genius had been the wonder, and might have been the salvation. Some of those
crimes of Borgia which to us appear the most odious would not, from causes which
we have already considered, have struck an Italian of the fifteenth century with
equal horror. Patriotic feeling also might induce Machiavelli to look with some
indulgence and regret on the memory of the only leader who could have defended
the independence of Italy against the confederate spoilers of Cambray.
1 Nothing can be more evident than that Paulus Jovius
designates the Mandragola under the name of the Nicias. We should not have
noticed what is so perfectly obvious. were it not that this natural and palpable
misnomer has led the sagacious and industrious Bayle into a gross error.
Previous |
Critical And Historical Essays, Volume II
| Next
Critical And Historical Essays, Volume II, Thomas Babbington Macaulay,
1843 |
|