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Part II
Part II
In the Italian States, as in many natural bodies, untimely decrepitude
was the penalty of precocious maturity. Their early greatness, and their early
decline, are principally to be attributed to the same cause - the
preponderance which the towns acquired in the political system.
In a community of hunters or of shepherds every man easily and
necessarily becomes a soldier. His ordinary avocations are perfectly
compatible with all the duties of military service. However remote may be the
expedition on which he is bound, he finds it easy to transport with him the
stock from which he derives his subsistence. The whole people in an army, the
whole year a march. Such was the state of society which facilitated the
gigantic conquests of Attila and Tamerlane.
But a people which subsists by the cultivation of the earth is in a very
different situation. The husbandman is bound to the soil on which he labors. A
long campaign would be ruinous to him. Still his pursuits are such as to give
his frame both the active and the passive strength necessary to a soldier. Nor
do they, at least in the infancy of agricultural science, demand his
uninterrupted attention. At particular times of the year he is almost wholly
unemployed, and can, without injury to himself, afford the time necessary for
a short expedition. Thus the legions of Rome were supplied during its earlier
wars. The season during which the fields did not require the presence of the
cultivators sufficed for a short inroad and a battle. These operations, too
frequently interrupted to produce decisive results, yet served to keep up
among the people a degree of discipline and courage which rendered them not
only secure but formidable. The archers and billmen of the Middle Ages, who,
with provisions for forty days at their back, left the fields for the camp,
were troops of the same description.
But when commerce and manufactures begin to flourish, a great change
takes place. The sedentary habits of the desk and the loom render the
exertions and hardships of war insupportable. The business of traders and
artisans requires their constant presence and attention. In such a community
there is little superfluous time; but there is generally much superfluous
money. Some members of the society are, therefore, hired to relieve the rest
from a task inconsistent with their habits and engagements.
The history of Greece is, in this, as in many other respects, the best
commentary on the history of Italy. Five hundred years before the Christian
era the citizens of the republics round the Aegean Sea formed perhaps the
finest militia that ever existed. As wealth and refinement advanced, the
system underwent a gradual alteration. The Ionian States were the first in
which commerce and the arts were cultivated, and the first in which the
ancient discipline decayed. Within eighty years after the battle of Plataea,
mercenary troops were everywhere plying for battles and sieges. In the time of
Demosthenes, it was scarcely possible to persuade or compel the Athenians to
enlist for foreign service. The laws of Lycurgus prohibited trade and
manufactures. The Spartans, therefore, continued to form a national force long
after their neighbors had begun to hire soldiers. But their military spirit
declined with their singular institutions. In the second century before
Christ, Greece contained only one nation of warriors, the savage highlanders
of Aetolia, who were some generations behind their countrymen in civilization
and intelligence.
All the causes which produced these effects among the Greeks acted still
more strongly on the modern Italians. Instead of a power like Sparta, in its
nature warlike, they had amongst them an ecclesiastical state, in its nature
pacific. Where there are numerous slaves, every freeman is induced by the
strongest motives to familiarize himself with the use of arms. The
commonwealths of Italy did not, like those of Greece, swarm with thousands of
these household enemies. Lastly, the mode in which military operations were
conducted during the prosperous times of Italy was peculiarly unfavorable to
the formation of an efficient militia. Men covered with iron from head to
foot, armed with ponderous lances, and mounted on horses of the largest breed,
were considered as composing the strength of an army. The infantry was
regarded as comparatively worthless, and was neglected till it became really
so. These tactics maintained their ground for centuries in most parts of
Europe. That foot-soldiers could withstand the charge of heavy cavalry was
thought utterly impossible, till, towards the close of the fifteenth century,
the rude mountaineers of Switzerland dissolved the spell, and astounded the
most experienced generals by receiving the dreaded shock on an impenetrable
forest of pikes.
The use of the Grecian spear, the Roman sword, or the modern bayonet,
might be acquired with comparative ease. But nothing short of the daily
exercise of years could train the man at arms to support his ponderous
panoply, and manage his unwieldy weapon. Throughout Europe this most important
branch of war became a separate profession. Beyond the Alps, indeed, though a
profession, it was not generally a trade. It was the duty and the amusement of
a large class of country gentlemen. It was the service by which they held
their lands, and the diversion by which, in the absence of mental resources,
they beguiled their leisure. But in the northern States of Italy, as we have
already remarked, the growing power of the cities, where it had not
exterminated this order of men, had completely changed their habits. Here,
therefore, the practice of employing mercenaries became universal, at a time
when it was almost unknown in other countries.
When war becomes the trade of a separate class the least dangerous course
left to a government is to form that class into a standing army. It is
scarcely possible that men can pass their lives in the service of one State,
without feeling some interest in its greatness. Its victories are their
victories. Its defeats are their defeats. The contract loses something of its
mercantile character. The services of the soldier are considered as the
effects of patriotic zeal, his pay as the tribute of national gratitude. To
betray the power which employs him, to be even remiss in its service, are in
his eyes the most atrocious and degrading of crimes.
When the princes and commonwealths of Italy began to use hired troops,
their wisest course would have been to form separate military establishments.
Unhappily this was not done. The mercenary warriors of the Peninsula, instead
of being attached to the service of different powers, were regarded as the
common property of all. The connection between the State and its defenders was
reduced to the most simple and naked traffic. The adventurer brought his
horse, his weapons, his strength, and his experience, into the market. Whether
the King of Naples or the Duke of Milan, the Pope or the Signory of Florence,
struck the bargain, was to him a matter of perfect indifference. He was for
the highest wages and the longest term. When the campaign for which he had
contracted was finished, there was neither law nor punctilio to prevent him
from instantly turning his arms against his late masters. The soldier was
altogether disjoined from the citizen and from the subject.
The natural consequences followed. Left to the conduct of men who neither
loved those whom they defended, nor hated those whom they opposed, who were
often bound by stronger ties to the army against which they fought than to the
State which they served, who lost by the termination of the conflict, and
gained by its prolongation, war completely changed its character. Every man
came into the field of battle impressed with the knowledge, that, in a few
days, he might be taking the pay of the power against which he was then
employed, and fighting by the side of his enemies against his associates. The
strongest interests and the strongest feelings concurred to mitigate the
hostility of those who had lately been brethren in arms, and who might soon be
brethren in arms once more. Their common profession was a bond of union not to
be forgotten, even when they were engaged in the service of contending
parties. Hence it was that operations, languid and indecisive beyond any
recorded in history, marches and countermarches, pillaging expeditions and
blockades, bloodless capitulations and equally bloodless combats, make up the
military history of Italy during the course of nearly two centuries. Might
armies fight from sunrise to sunset. A great victory is won. Thousands of
prisoners are taken, and hardly a life is lost. A pitched battle seems to have
been really less dangerous than an ordinary civil tumult.
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 Aragon. The moral effects which followed from this state of
things were still more remarkable.
Amongst 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 of 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 defence 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 V 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 his 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 insured 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 and 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 200,000 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 one hundred pairs 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 in 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 XII, and the 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, grovelling 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, in and 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 very high place;^4 but the comedies deserve more attention.
[Footnote 4: In the original essay Macaulay had here some critical remarks on
the poetry of Machiavelli, but he omitted them on republication.]
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 a 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^5 into the shade. All the good sayings of the facetious
hours 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."
[Footnote 5: In Congreve`s "Way of the World."]
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 skillful 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,^6 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 affectation,
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 de 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.
[Footnote 6: In Dryden`s "Spanish Friar."]
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 metre. 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 X was among its admirers, and by his order it was
represented at Rome.^7
[Footnote 7: 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. - M.]
The "Clizia" is an imitation of the "Casina" of Plautus, which is itself
an imitation of the lost kxnpoumevol of Diphilus.^8 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.
[Footnote 8: A writer of the Greek "New Comedy," which followed that of
Aristophanes.]
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^9 and Monmouth -
streets^9 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.
[Footnote 9: Old-clothes markets in London.]
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 VIII 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 approach 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 market-place, but in the ante-chambers 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 intrusted 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 intrusted, 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 lackey 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 at 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 despatches 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 XII; 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 statesmen 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.
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