The _rifacimento_ appeared in a mutilated form at Venice in 1541, from

the press of the Giunti, and again in 1542 at Milan from that of

Francesco Calvo. These two issues are identical, except in the title

and tail pages. The same batch of sheets was in fact divided by the

two publishers. In 1545 another issue, called _Edizione Seconda_, saw

the light at Venice, in which Giunta introduced a very significant

note, pointing out that certain stanzas were not the work of "M.

Francesco Berni, but of one who presumptuously willed to do him so

great an injury."[473] This edition, differing in many respects from

those of 1541 and 1542, was on the whole an improvement. It would seem

that the publishers, in the interval between 1541 and 1545, regretted

that Berni's copy had been tampered with, and did their best, in the

absence of the original, to restore a correct text. Still, as Giunta

acknowledged, the _rifacimento_ had been irretrievably damaged by some

private foe.[474] The introductory dedication to Isabella Gonzaga,

where we might have expected an allusion to Boiardo, is certainly not

Berni's; and the two lines,

Ne ti sdegnar veder quel ch'altri volse

Forse a te dedicar, ma morte il tolse,

must be understood to refer to Berni's and not to Boiardo's death.

Comparison of the two editions makes it, moreover, clear that Berni's

MS. had been garbled, and the autograph probably put out of the way

before the publication of the poem.

[Footnote 473: "Di chi presuntuosamente gli ha voluto fare tanta

ingiuria." This note occurs at Stanza 83 of Canto 1.]

[Footnote 474: In some cases the readings of the second edition are

inferior to those of the first, while both fall short of Boiardo.

Boiardo wrote in his description of Astolfo (Canto i. 60):

Quel solea dir, ch'egli era per sciagura,

E tornava a cader senza paura.

In the _rifacimento_ of 1541 we have:

E alle volte cadeva per sciagura,

E si levava poi senza paura.

In that of 1545:

Un sol dispetto avea: dice Turpino

Che nel cader alquanto era latino.

I take these instances from Panizzi.]

Who is to be held responsible for this fraud? Who was the presumptuous

enemy who did such injury to Berni? Panizzi, so far back as 1830,

pointed out that Giovanni Alberto Albicante took some part in

preparing the edition of 1541-2. This man prefixed sonnets written by

himself to the _rifacimento_; "whence we might conclude that he was

the editor."[475] Signor Virgili, to whose researches attention has

already been directed, proved further by references to Pietro

Aretino's correspondence that this old enemy of Berni had a hand in

the same work. Writing to Francesco Calvo from Venice on February 16,

1540, Aretino approaches the subject of the _rifacimento_ in these

words:[476] "Our friend Albicante informs me, with reference to the

printing of _Orlando_ defamed by Berni, that you are good enough to

meet my wishes, for which I thank you.... You will see that, for the

sake of your own modesty, you are bound either not to issue the book

at all, or else to purge it of all evil-speaking." He then states that

it had been his own intention "to emend the Count of Scandiano's

_Innamoramento_, a thing in its kind of heroic beauty, but executed in

a trivial style, and expressed with phrases at once plebeian and

obsolete." This task he renounced upon reflection that it would bring

him no fame to assume the mask of a dead man's labors. In another

letter to the same Calvo, dated February 17, 1542, Aretino resumes the

subject. Sbernia (so he chooses to call Berni) has been "overwhelmed

beneath the ruins he pulled down upon himself by his undoing of the

_Innamoramento_."[477] Now, it is certain that the ruin proclaimed by

Aretino did really fall on Berni's labors. In 1545 Lodovico Domenichi

published a second _rifacimento_, far inferior in style to that of

Berni, and executed with the slovenliness of a literary hack. But this

was several times reprinted, whereas Berni's remained neglected on the

shelves of the librarians until the year 1725, when it was

republished and welcomed with a storm of exaggerated enthusiasm.

[Footnote 475: _Boiardo ed Ariosto_, vol. ii. p. cxxxiv.]

[Footnote 476: _Lettere_, Book ii. p. 121.]

[Footnote 477: _Ibid._ p. 249. We might quote a parallel passage from

the Prologue to the _Ipocrita_, which Aretino published in 1542, just

after accomplishing his revenge on Berni: "Io non ho pensato al

gastigo che io darei a quegli che pongono il lor nome nei libri che

essi guastano nella foggia che un non so chi ha guasto il Boiardo, per

non mi credere che si trovasse cotanta temerita nella presunzione del

mondo." The hypocrisy of this is worthy of the play's title.]

We have therefore reached this conclusion, that Aretino, aided by

Albicante, both of them notable literary brigands, contrived to send a

mutilated version of the _rifacimento_ to press, with a view of doing

irreparable mischief to Berni's reputation.[478] We have also seen

that there was something dangerous in Berni's work, described by

Aretino as _maldicentia_, which he held as a threat over the Milanese

publisher. Lastly, Giunta recognized too late that he had made himself

the party to some act of malice by issuing a garbled copy. Aretino

had, we know, a private grudge to satisfy. He could not forget the

castigation he received at Berni's hands, in the sonnet which has been

already described. The hatred subsisting between the two men had been

further exasperated by the different parts they took in a literary

duel. Antonio Broccardo, a young Venetian scholar, attacked Pietro

Bembo's fame at Padua in 1530, and attempted to raise allies against

the great dictator. Aretino took up the cudgels for Bembo, and

assailed Broccardo with vehement abuse and calumny. Berni ranged

himself upon Broccardo's side. The quarrel ended in Broccardo's death

under suspicious circumstances in 1531 at Padua. He was, indeed, said

to have been killed by Aretino.[479] Berni died mysteriously at

Florence four years later, and Aretino caused his _rifacimento_,

"purged of evil-speaking," to be simultaneously published at Venice

and Milan.

[Footnote 478: Mazzuchelli (_Scrittori d'Italia_: Albicante, Giov.

Alberto) may be consulted about the relations between these two

ruffians, who alternately praised and abused each other in print.]

[Footnote 479: See Mazzuchelli, _op. cit._, under "Brocardo, Antonio."

The spelling of the name varies. Bembo, six years afterwards, told

Varchi that Aretino drove Broccardo for him into an early grave. See

_Lettere all'Aretino_, vol. ii. p. 186, ed. Romagnoli. The probability

is that Broccardo died of fever aggravated by the annoyance caused him

by Aretino's calumnies. There is no valid suspicion of poison.]

The question still remains to be asked how Aretino, Berni's avowed

enemy, obtained possession of the MS. Berni had many literary friends.

Yet none of them came forward to avert the catastrophe. None of them

undertook the publication of his remains. His last work was produced,

not at Florence, where he lived and died, but at Venice; and

Albicante, Aretino's tool, was editor. In the present state of our

knowledge it is impossible to answer this question authoritatively.

Considerable light, however, is thrown upon the mystery by a pamphlet

published in 1554 by the heretic Vergerio. He states that Berni

undertook his _rifacimento_ with the view of diffusing Protestant

doctrines in a popular and unobtrusive form; but that the craft of the

devil, or in other words the policy of the Church, effected its

suppression at the very moment when it was finished and all but

printed.[480] Here, then, we seem to find some missing links in the

dark chain of intrigue. Aretino's phrase _maldicentia_ is explained;

his menace to Francesco Calvo becomes intelligible; the silence of

Berni's friends can be accounted for; and the agency by which the MS.

was placed in Albicante's hands, can be at least conjectured. As a

specimen of Berni's Lutheran propaganda, Vergerio subjoins eighteen

stanzas, written in the poet's purest style, which were addressed to

Battista Sanga, and which formed the induction to the twentieth Canto.

This induction, as it stands in Berni's _Innamorato_, is reduced to

seven stanzas, grossly garbled and deformed in diction. Very few of

the original lines have been retained, and those substituted are full

of vulgarisms.[481] From a comparison of the original supplied by

Vergerio with the mutilated version, the full measure of the mischief

practiced upon Berni's posthumous work can be gauged. Furthermore, it

must be noticed that these compromising eighteen stanzas contained the

names of several men alive in Italy, all of whom were therefore

interested in their suppression, or precluded from exposing the fraud.

[Footnote 480: This curious pamphlet was reprinted from a unique copy

by Panizzi, _op. cit._ vol. iii. p. 361. In the introduction, Vergerio

gives an interesting account of Berni. He represents him as a man of

worldly life, addicted to gross pleasures and indecent literature

until within a few years of his death. Having been converted to

evangelical faith in Christ, Berni then resolved to use the _Orlando_

as a vehicle for Lutheran opinions; and his _rifacimento_ was already

almost printed, when the devil found means to suppress it. Vergerio is

emphatic in his statement that the poem was finished and nearly

printed. If this was indeed the case, we must suppose that Albicante

worked upon the sheets, canceling some and leaving others, and that

the book thus treated was afterwards shared by Giunta and Calvo.]

[Footnote 481: I shall print a translation of the eighteen stanzas in

an Appendix to this volume. Lines like the following,

Arrandellarsi come un salsicciuolo,

which are common in the mangled version, would never have passed

Berni's censure.]

The inference I am inclined to draw from Signor Virgili's researches,

combined with Vergerio's pamphlet, is that the Church interfered to

prevent the publication of Berni's heretical additions to Boiardo's

poem. Berni's sudden death, throwing his affairs into confusion at the

moment when he was upon the point of finishing the business, afforded

an excellent occasion to his ecclesiastical and personal opponents,

who seem to have put some pressure on his kinsmen to obtain the MS.

or the sheets they meant to mutilate.[482] The obnoxious passages may

have been denounced by Aretino; for we know that he was intimate with

Vergerio, and it is more than probable that the verses to Sanga were

already in circulation.[483] Aretino, strange to say, was regarded in

clerical quarters as a pillar of the Church. He therefore found it in

his power to wreak his vengeance on an enemy at the same time that he

posed as a defender of the faith. That he was allowed to control the

publication, appears from his letters to Calvo; and he confided the

literary part of the business to Albicante. His threats to Calvo have

reference to Berni's heresy, and the _maldicentia_ may possibly have

been the eighteen stanzas addressed to Sanga. The terror of the

Inquisition reduced Berni's friends to silence. Aretino, even if he

had not denounced Berni to the Church, had now identified himself with

the crusade against his poem, and he was capable of ruining opponents

in this unequal contest by charges they would have found it impossible

to refute. The eighteen stanzas were addressed to a secretary of

Clement VII.; and men of note like Molza, Flamminio, Navagero,

Fondulo, Fregoso, were distinctly named in them. If, then, there is

any cogency in the conclusions I have drawn from various sources,

Berni's poem, and perhaps his life, was sacrificed to theological

hatred in combination with Aretino's personal malice. The

unaccountable inactivity of his friends is explained by their dread of

being entangled in a charge of heresy.[484]

[Footnote 482: This appears from a reference in Aretino's second

letter to Calvo, where he talks of Berni's "friends and relatives." It

might be going too far to suggest that Berni was murdered by his

ecclesiastical enemies, who feared the scandal which would be caused

by the publication of his opinions.]

[Footnote 483: Vergerio may have communicated the eighteen stanzas to

Aretino; or conversely he may have received them from him. I have read

through the letters exchanged between him and Aretino--and they are

numerous--without, however, finding any passage that throws light on

this transaction. Aretino published both series of letters. He had

therefore opportunity to suppress inconvenient allusions.]

[Footnote 484: We may note the dates and fates of the chief actors in

this tragedy. Broccardo died of grief in 1531. Berni died, under

suspicion of poison, in 1535. Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici was

poisoned a few months later, in 1535. Alessandro de' Medici was

murdered by Lorenzino in 1537. Pietro Paolo Vergerio was deprived of

his see and accused of heresy in 1544. Berni's old friend, the author

of _Il Forno_, M. La Casa, conducted his trial, as Papal Nuncio at

Venice. Aretino, who had assumed the part of inquisitor and mutilator

to gratify his private spite, survived triumphant.]

Enough has been already said about Berni's imitators in the burlesque

style. Of satire in the strict sense of the term, the poets of the

sixteenth century produced nothing that is worth consideration. The

epistolary form introduced by Ariosto, and the comic caprices rendered

fashionable by Berni, determined the compositions of Pietro Aretino,

of Ercole Bentivoglio, of Luigi Alamanni, of Antonio Vinciguerra, of

Giovanni Andrea dell'Anguillara, of Cesare Caporali, and of the minor

versifiers whose occasional poems in _terza rima_, seasoned with more

or less satirical intention, are usually reckoned among the satires of

the golden age.[485] Personal vituperation poured forth in the heat of

literary quarrels, scarcely deserves the name of satire. Else it might

be necessary in this place to mention Niccolo Franco's sonnets on

Pietro Aretino, or the far more elegant compositions of Annibale Caro

directed against his enemy Castelvetro.[486] Models for this species

of poetical abuse had been already furnished by the sonnets exchanged

between Luigi Pulci and Matteo Franco in a more masculine age of

Italian literature.[487] It is not, however, incumbent upon the

historian to resuscitate the memory of those forgotten and now

unimportant duels. The present allusion to them may suffice to

corroborate the opinion already stated that, while the Italians of the

Renaissance were ingenious in burlesque, and virulent in personal

invective, they lacked the earnestness of moral conviction, the

indignation, and the philosophic force that generate real satire.

[Footnote 485: See the _Raccolta di Poesie Satiriche_, Milano, 1808.]

[Footnote 486: See, for the latter series, _Poesie Satiriche_, pp.

138-156.]

[Footnote 487: See _Sonetti di Matteo Franco e di Luigi Pulci_, 1759.

Cp. above, Part i. p. 431.]

CHAPTER XV.

PIETRO ARETINO.

Aretino's Place in Italian Literature and Society--His Birth

and Boyhood--Goes to Rome--In the Service of Agostino

Chigi--At Mantua--Gradual Emergence into Celebrity--The

Incident of Giulio Romano's Postures--Giovanni delle Bande

Nere--Aretino settles at Venice--The Mystery of his

Influence--Discerns the Power of the Press--Satire on the

Courts--Magnificent Life--Aretino's Wealth--His Tributary

Princes--Bullying and Flattery--The Divine Aretino--His

Letter to Vittoria Colonna--To Michelangelo--His Admiration

of Artists--Relations with Men of Letters--Epistle to

Bernardo Tasso--His Lack of Learning--Disengagement from

Puristic Prejudices--Belief in his own Powers--Rapidity of

Composition--His Style--Originality and

Independence--Prologue to _Talanta_--Bohemian

Comrades--Niccolo Franco--Quarrel with Doni--Aretino's

Literary Influence--His Death--The Anomaly of the

Renaissance--Estimate of Aretino's Character.

Pietro Aretino, as I have already had occasion to observe, is a

representative name in the history of Italian literature. It is almost

as impossible to slur him over with a passing notice as it would be to

dwell but casually upon Machiavelli or Ariosto, Cellini or Poliziano,

in reviewing the Renaissance. Base in character, coarse in mental

fiber, unworthy to rank among real artists, notwithstanding his

undoubted genius, Aretino was the typical ruffian of an age which

brought ruffianism to perfection, welcomed it when successful, bowed

to its insolence, and viewed it with complacent toleration in the

highest places of Church, State, and letters. He was the _condottiere_

of the pen in a society which truckled to the Borgias. He embodied

the infamy and cowardice which lurked beneath the braveries of Italian

Court-life--the coarseness of speech which contradicted literary

purism--the cynicism and gross strength of appetite for which

convention was a flimsy veil.[488] The man himself incarnated the

dissolution of Italian culture. His works, for the student of that

period, are an anti-mask to the brilliant display of Ariosto's or of

Tasso's puppets. It is the condemnation of Italy that we are forced to

give this prominence to Aretino. If we place Poliziano or

Guicciardini, Bembo or La Casa, Bandello or Firenzuola, Cellini or

Berni, Paolo Giovio or Lodovico Dolce--typical men of letters chosen

from the poets, journalists, historians, thinkers, artists,

novel-writers of the age--under the critical microscope, we find in

each and all of them a tincture of Aretino. It is because he

emphasizes and brings into relief one master element of the

Renaissance, that he deserves the rank assigned to him. In Athens

Aristophanes is named together with Sophocles, Thucydides and Plato,

because, with genius equal to theirs, he represented the comic

antithesis to tragedy, philosophy and history. In Italy Aretino is

classed with Machiavelli and Ariosto for a different reason. His lower

nature expressed, not an antithesis, but a quality, which, in spite of

intellectual and moral superiority, they possessed in common with

him, which he exhibited in arrogant abundance, and which cannot be

omitted from the survey of his century. The alloy of cynicism in

Machiavelli, his sordid private pleasures, his perverse admiration for

Cesare Borgia, his failure to recognize the power of goodness in the

world, condemn him to the company of this triumvir. The profligacy of

genius in Ariosto, his waste of divine gifts upon trifles, his lack of

noble sentiment, his easy acquiescence in conditions of society

against which he should have uttered powerful protest, consign him,

however undeservedly, to the same association.[489]

[Footnote 488: The best source of information regarding Pietro Aretino

is his own correspondence published in six volumes (Paris, 1609), and

the two volumes of letters written to him by eminent personages, which

are indeed a rich mine of details regarding Italian society and

manners in the sixteenth century. Mazzuchelli's _Vita di Pietro

Aretino_ (Padua, 1741) is a conscientious, sober, and laborious piece

of work, on which all subsequent notices have been based.]

[Footnote 489: It may be mentioned that Ariosto has immortalized this

bully in the _Orlando_ (xlvi. 14), among the most illustrious men and

women of his age:

ecco il flagello

De' principi, il divin Pietro Aretino.]

Pietro was born at Arezzo in 1492. His reputed father was a nobleman

of that city, named Luigi Bacci. His mother, Tita, was a woman of the

town, whose portrait, painted as the Virgin of the Annunciation,

adorned the church-door of S. Pietro. The boy, "born," as he

afterwards boasted, "in a hospital with the spirit of a king," passed

his childhood at Arezzo with his mother. He had no education but what

he may have picked up among the men who frequented Tita's house, or

the artists who employed her as a model. Of Greek and Latin he learned

nothing either now or afterwards. Before growing to man's estate, he

had to quit his native city--according to one account because he

composed and uttered a ribald sonnet on indulgences, according to

another because he robbed his mother. He escaped to Perugia, and

gained his livelihood by binding books. Here he made acquaintance with

Firenzuola, as appears from a letter of the year 1541, in which he

alludes to their youthful pranks together at the University. One of

Aretino's exploits at Perugia became famous. "Having noticed in a

place of much resort upon the public square a picture, in which the

Magdalen was represented at the feet of Christ, with extended arms and

in an attitude of passionate grief, he went privily and painted in a

lute between her hands." From Perugia he trudged on foot to Rome, and

entered the service of Agostino Chigi, under whose patronage he made

himself useful to the Medici, remaining in the retinue of both Leo X.

and Clement VII. between 1517 and 1524. This period of seven years

formed the man's character; and it would be interesting to know for

certain what his employment was. Judging by the graphic descriptions

he has left us of the Roman Court in his comedy of the _Cortigiana_

and his dialogue _De le Corti_, and also by his humble condition in

Perugia, we have reason to believe that he occupied at first the post

of lackey, rising gradually by flattery and baser arts to the position

of a confidential domestic, half favorite, half servant.[490] That he

possessed extraordinary social qualities, and knew how to render

himself agreeable by witty conversation and boon companionship, is

obvious from the whole course of his subsequent history. It is no less

certain that he allowed neither honor nor self-respect to interfere

with his advancement by means which cannot be described in detail, but

which opened the readiest way to favor in that profligate society of

Rome. His own enormous appetite for sensual enjoyment, his cynicism,

and his familiarity with low life in all its forms, rendered him the

congenial associate of a great man's secret pleasures, the convenient

link of communication between the palace and the stews.[491]

[Footnote 490: Aretino's comedies, letters, and occasional poems are

our best sources for acquaintance with the actual conditions of

palace-life. The _Dialogo de le Corti_ opens with a truly terrible

description of the debauchery and degradation to which a youth was

exposed on his first entrance into the service of a Roman noble. It

may have been drawn from the author's own experience. The nauseous

picture of the _tinello_, or upper-servants' hall, which occurs in the

comedy _Cortigiana_ (act v. sc. 15), proves intimate familiarity with

the most revolting details of domestic drudgery. The dirt of these

places made an ineffaceable impression on Aretino's memory. In his

burlesque _Orlandino_, when he wishes to call up a disgusting image,

he writes:

Odorava la sala come odora

Un gran tinel d'un Monsignor Francese,

O come quel d'un Cardinal ancora

Quando Febo riscalda un bestial mese.]

[Footnote 491: Aretino's correspondence and the comedy above mentioned

throw sufficient light upon these features of Roman society. It will,

for the rest, suffice to quote a passage from Monsignore Guidiccioni's

letter to Giambattista Bernardi (_Opere di M. Giov. Guidiccioni_,

Barbera, 1867, vol. i. p. 195): "Non solamente _da questi illustri per

ricchezze_ non si puo avere, ma non si puote ancora sperare premio che

sia di lunghe fatiche o di rischio di morte, se _l'uomo non si rivolge

ad acquistarlo per vie disoneste_. Perciocche essi non carezzano e non

esaltano se non adulatori, e _quelli che sanno per alfabeto le

abitazioni, le pratiche e le qualita delle cortigiane_." The whole

letter should be read by those who would understand Roman society of

the Renaissance. The italics are mine.]

Yet though Pietro resided at this time principally in Rome, he had by

no means a fixed occupation, and his life was interrupted by frequent

wanderings. He is said to have left Agostino Chigi's service, because

he stole a silver cup. He is also said to have taken the cowl in a

Capuchin convent at Ravenna, and to have thrown his frock to the

nettles on the occasion of Leo's election to the Papacy. We hear of

him parading in the Courts of Lombardy, always on the lookout for

patronage, supporting himself by what means is unapparent, but

gradually pushing his way to fame and fashion, loudly asserting his

own claims to notice, and boasting of each new favor he received. Here

is a characteristic glimpse into his nomadic mode of life:[492] "I am

now in Mantua with the Marquis, and am held by him in so high favor

that he leaves off sleeping and eating to converse with me, and says

he has no other pleasure in life; and he has written to the Cardinal

about me things that will not fail to help me greatly to my credit. I

have also received a present of 300 crowns. He has assigned to me the

very same apartment which Francesco Maria, Duke of Urbino, occupied

when he was in exile; and has appointed a steward to preside over my

table, where I always have some noblemen of rank. In a word, more

could not be done for the entertainment of the greatest prince.

Besides, the whole Court worships me. Happy are they who can boast of

having got a verse from me. My lord has had all the poems ever writ by

me copied, and I have made some in his praise. So I pass my life here,

and every day get some gift, grand things which you shall see at

Arezzo. But it was at Bologna they began to make me presents. The

Bishop of Pisa had a robe of black satin embroidered with gold cut for

me; nothing could be handsomer. So I came like a prince to Mantua.

Everybody calls me 'Messere' and 'Signore.' I think this Easter we

shall be at Loreto, where the Marquis goes to perform a vow; and on

this journey I shall be able to satisfy the Dukes of Ferrara and

Urbino, both of whom have expressed the desire to make my

acquaintance."

[Footnote 492: Quoted by Philarete Chasles from Gamurrini, _Ist. Gen.

delle famiglie nobili Toscane ed Umbre_, iii. 332. I do not know

exactly to what period the letter refers.]

On the election of Clement VII., Pietro returned to Rome with a

complimentary sonnet in his pocket for the new Pope. He had now

acquired an Italian reputation, and was able to keep the state of an

independent gentleman, surrounded by a band of disreputable

hangers-on, the _bardassonacci, paggi da taverna_, of Berni's

satirical sonnet. But a misfortune obliged him suddenly to decamp.

Giulio Romano had designed a series of obscene figures, which

Marcantonio Raimondi engraved, and Aretino illustrated by sixteen

sonnets, describing and commenting upon the lewdness of each picture.

Put in circulation, these works of immodest art roused the indignation

of the Roman prelates, who, though they complacently listened to

Berni's _Pesche_ or La Casa's _Forno_ behind the closed doors of a

literary club, disliked the scandal of publicity. Raimondi was

imprisoned; Giulio Romano went in the service of the Marquis of Mantua

to build the famous Palazzo del Te; and Aretino discreetly retired

from Rome for a season. Of the three accomplices in this act of high

treason against art, Aretino was undoubtedly the guiltiest. Yet he had

the impudence to defend his sonnets in 1537, and to address them with

a letter of dedication, unmatched for its parade of shamelessness, to

Messer Battista Zatti of Brescia.[493] In this epistle he takes credit

to himself for having procured the engraver's pardon and liberation

from Clement VII. However this may be, he fell in 1524 under the

special ban of Monsignor Giberti's displeasure, and had to take

refuge with Giovanni de' Medici delle Bande Nere.[494] This famous

general was a wild free-liver. He conceived a real affection for

Aretino, made him the sharer in his debaucheries, gave him a place

even in his own bed, and listened with rapture to his indecent

improvisations. Aretino's fortune was secured. It was discovered that

he had the art of pleasing princes. He knew exactly how to season his

servility with freedom, how to flatter the great man by pandering to

his passions and tickling his vanity, while he added the pungent sauce

of satire and affected bluntness. _Il gran Diavolo_, as Giovanni de'

Medici was called, introduced Aretino to Francis I., and promised, if

fortune favored him, to make the adventurer master of his native town,

Arezzo.[495]

[Footnote 493: _Lettere_, vol. i. p. 258.]

[Footnote 494: It may be remembered that Giberti, Bishop of Verona,

was Berni's patron. This helps to account for the animosity between

Berni and Aretino.]

[Footnote 495: _Op. Burl._ ii. p. 11:

Sotto Milano dieci volte, non ch'una,

Mi disse: Pietro, se di questa guerra

Mi scampa Dio e la buona fortuna,

Ti voglio impadronir della tua terra.

Giovanni de' Medici wrote to him thus: "Vieni presto.... Il re a buon

proposito si dolse che non ti aveva menato al solito, onde io diedi la

colpa al piacerti piu lo stare in Corte che in Campo ... non so vivere

senza l'Aretino."--_Lettere scritte all'Aretino_, i. 6.]

Aretino's intercourse with these powerful protectors was broken by a

short visit to Rome, where he seems to have made peace with the

prelates. It was probably inconvenient to protract hostilities against

a man who had gained the friendship of a King of France and of the

greatest Italian _condottiere_ of his age. But fortune had ceased to

smile on our hero in Rome. It so happened that he wrote a ribald

sonnet on a scullion-wench in the service of Monsignor Giberti, to

whom a certain Achille della Volta was at the same time paying his

addresses. The _bravo_ avenged this insult to his mistress by

waylaying Aretino in the Trastevere and stabbing him several times in

the breast and hands. When Aretino recovered from his wounds, he

endeavored in vain to get justice against Achille. The Pope and his

Datary refused to interfere in this ignoble quarrel. Aretino once more

retired from Rome, vowing vengeance against Clement, whom he defamed

to the best of his ability in scurrilous libels and calumnious

conversation.[496]

[Footnote 496: The sonnet by Berni quoted above, p. 371, was written

to meet these libels of Aretino. It contains an allusion to Achille

della Volta's poignard.]

He now remained with Giovanni de' Medici until that general's death in

1526. The great captain died in Aretino's arms at Mantua from the

effect of a wound inflicted by an unknown harquebuss in Frundsperg's

army.[497] This accident decided Aretino to place no further reliance

on princely patronage. He was thirty-two years of age, and had

acquired a singular reputation throughout Italy for social humor,

pungent wit and literary ability. Though deficient in personal

courage, as the affair of Achille della Volta proved, he contrived to

render himself formidable by reckless evil-speaking; and while he had

no learning and no style, he managed to pass for a writer of

distinction. How he attained this position in an age of purists,

remains a puzzle; we possess nothing which explains the importance

attached to his compositions at this early period. His sonnets had

made what the French call a success of scandal; and the libertines who

protected him, were less particular about literary elegance than eager

to be amused. If we inquire minutely into the circumstances of

Aretino's career, we find that he had worked himself into favor with a

set of princes--the Marquis of Mantua, the Dukes of Ferrara and

Urbino, Giovanni de' Medici, and the King of France--who were powerful

enough to confer fashion upon an adventurer, and to place him in a

position where it would be perilous to contest his claims, but who

were not eminent for literary taste. In the Court of the two Medici at

Rome, who exacted more scholarship and refinement than Aretino

possessed, he never gained firm footing; and this was perhaps the

chief reason of his animosity against Clement. He had in fact become

the foremost parasite, the wittiest and most brilliant companion of

debauch, in the less cultivated Italian Courts. This reputation he now

resolved to use for his own profit. From the moment when he retired to

Venice in 1527, resolved to support himself by literary work, until

his death, in 1557, he enjoyed a princely income, levying tribute on

kings and nobles, living with prodigal magnificence, corresponding

with the most illustrious men of all nations, and dictating his own

terms to the society he alternately flattered and insulted. The

history of these last thirty years, which may be clearly read in the

six bulky volumes of his published correspondence, and in the four

volumes of letters written to him, is one of the most extraordinary

instances on record of celebrity and power acquired by calculated

imposture and audacious brigandism.[498]

[Footnote 497: See Aretino's Letters, vol. i. pp. 8, 10, for very

interesting details concerning the death of Giovanni de' Medici. He

here used the interest of his old master to secure the favor of Duke

Cosimo.]

[Footnote 498: The edition of Aretino's own letters which I shall use

is that of Paris, 1609 in six books. The edition of the _Lettere

scritte all'Aretino_ is Romagnoli's reprint, _Scelta di Curiosita_,

Bologna, 1873-1876, Dispensa cxxxii., two books divided into four

volumes; to these, for convenience sake, I shall refer as 1, 2, 3, 4.]

Aretino showed prudence in the choice of Venice for his fixed abode.

In Venice there was greater liberty both of life and speech than

elsewhere at that time in Italy. So long as a man refrained from

politics and offered no cause of suspicion to the State, he might do

and publish pretty much what he chose, without fear of interference

and without any serious peril from the Inquisition. For a filibuster

of Aretino's type, Venice offered precisely the most advantageous

harbor, whence he could make sallies and predatory excursions, and

whither he might always return to rest at ease beneath the rampart of

a proud political indifference. His greatness consisted in the

accurate measure he had taken of the society upon which he now

intended to live by literary speculation. His acute common sense

enabled him to comprehend the power of the press, which had not as yet

been deliberately used as a weapon of offense and an instrument of

extortion. We have seen in another portion of this book how important

a branch of literature the invectives of the humanists had been, how

widely they were read, and what an impression they produced upon

society. The diatribes of Poggio and Filelfo circulated in manuscript;

but now the press was in full working order, and Aretino perceived

that he might make a livelihood by printing threats and libels mixed

with eulogies and personal panegyrics. The unwieldy three-decker of

the invective should be reduced to the manageable form of the

epistolary torpedo and gunboat. To propagate calumnies and to render

them imperishable by printing was the menace he addressed to society.

He calculated wisely on the uneasiness which the occasional appearance

of stinging pamphlets, fully charged with personalities, would produce

among the Italians, who were nothing if not a nation of readers at

this epoch. At the same time he took measures to secure his own

safety. Professing himself a good Christian, he liberally seasoned his

compositions with sacred names; and, though he had no more real

religion than Fra Timoteo in Machiavelli's _Mandragola_ he published

pious romances under the titles of _I tre libri della Humanita di

Christo_, _I Sette Salmi de la penitentia di David_, _Il Genesi di

Pietro Aretino_, _La Vita di Catherina Vergine_, _La Vita di Maria

Vergine_, _La Vita di S. Tommaso Signor d'Aquino_. These books,

proceeding from the same pen as the _Sonetti lussuriosi_ and the

pornographic _Ragionamenti_, were an insult to piety. Still they

served their author for a shield, behind which he shot the arrows of

his calumnies, and carried on the more congenial game of making money

by pandering to the licentiousness or working on the cowardice of the

wealthy.[499]

[Footnote 499: It is clear from a perusal of the _Lettere all'Aretino_

that his reputation depended in a great measure upon these pious

romances. The panegyrics heaped on them are too lengthy and too

copious to be quoted. They are curiously mixed with no less fervent

praises of the _Dialoghi_.]

Aretino, who was able to boast that he had just refused a flattering

invitation from the Marquis of Montferrat, was received with honor by

the State of Venice. Soon after his arrival he wrote thus to the Doge

Andrea Gritti:[500] "I, who, in the liberty of so great and virtuous a

commonwealth, have now learned what it is to be free, reject Courts

henceforth for ever, and here make my abiding tabernacle for the years

that yet remain to me; for here there is no place for treason, here

favor cannot injure right, here the cruelty of prostitutes exerts no

sway, here the insolence of the effeminate is powerless to command,

here there is no robbing, no violence to the person, no assassination.

Wherefore I, who have stricken terror into kings, I, who have restored

confidence to virtuous men, give myself to you, fathers of your

people, brothers of your servants, sons of truth, friends of virtue,

companions of the stranger, pillars of religion, observers of your

word, executors of justice, treasuries of charity, and subjects of

clemency." Then follows a long tirade in the same stilted style upon

the majesty of Venice. The Doge took Aretino by the hand, reconciled

him with Clement and the Bishop of Verona, and assured him of

protection, so long as the illustrious author chose to make the city

of the lagoons his home. Luigi Gritti, the Doge's son, assigned him a

pension; and though invitations came from foreign Courts, Aretino made

his mind up to remain at Venice. He knew that the very singularity of

his resolve, in an age when men of letters sought the patronage of

princely houses, would enable him to play the game he had in view. Nor

could he forget the degradation he had previously undergone in

courtly service. "Only let me draw breath outside that hell! Ah! your

Court! your Court! To my mind a gondolier here is better off than a

chamberlain there. Look you at yonder poor waiting man, tortured by

the cold, consumed by the heat, standing at his master's

pleasure--where is the fire to warm him? where is the water to refresh

him? When he falls ill, what chamber, what stable, what hospital will

take him in? Rain, snow, mud! Faugh, it murders a man to ride in such

weather with his patron or upon his errands. Think how cruel it is to

have to show a beard grown in the service of mere boys, how abject are

white hairs, when youth and manhood have been spent in idling around

tables, antechamber doors, and privies? Here I sit when I am tired;

when I am hungry, eat; when I feel the inclination, sleep; and all the

hours are obedient to my will."[501] He revels in the sense of his own

freedom. "My sincerity, and my virtue, which never could stomach the

lies that bolster up the Court of Rome, nor the vices that reign in

it, have found favor in the eyes of all the princes of the world.

Emperors, thank God, are not Popes, nor Kings Cardinals! Therefore I

enjoy their generosity, instead of courting that hypocrisy of priests,

which acts the bawd and pander to our souls. Look at Chieti, the

parasite of penitence! Look at Verona, the buffoon of piety! They at

least have solved the doubts in which their ambitious dissimulation

held those who believed that the one would not accept the hat, and

the other was not scheming for it. I meanwhile praise God for being

what I am. The hatred of slaves, the rancors of ambition no longer hem

me round. I rob no man's time. I take no delight in seeing my

neighbors go naked through the world. Nay, I share with them the very

shirts off my back, the crust of bread upon my plate. My servant-girls

are my daughters, my lackeys are my brothers. Peace is the pomp of my

chambers, and liberty the majordomo of my palace. I feast daily off

bread and gladness; and, wishing not to be of more importance than I

am, live by the sweat of my ink, the luster of which has never been

extinguished by the blasts of malignity or the mists of envy."[502] At

another time he breaks into jubilant descriptions of his own

magnificence and popularity. "I swear to you by the wings of Pegasus

that, much as may have reached your ears, you have not heard one half

the hymn of my celebrity. Medals are coined in my honor; medals of

gold, of silver, of brass, of lead, of stucco. My features are carved

along the fronts of palaces. My portrait is stamped upon comb-cases,

engraved on mirror-handles, painted on majolica. I am a second

Alexander, Caesar, Scipio. Nay more: I tell you that some kinds of

glasses they make at Murano, are called Aretines. Aretine is the name

given to a breed of cobs--after one Pope Clement sent me and I gave to

Duke Frederick. They have christened the little canal that runs beside

my house upon the Canalozzo, Rio Aretino. And, to make the pedants

burst with rage, besides talking of the Aretine style, three wenches

of my household, who have left me and become ladies, will have

themselves known only as the Aretines."[503]

[Footnote 500: _Lettere_, vol. i. p. 3.]

[Footnote 501: _Lettere_, i. 204.]

[Footnote 502: _Lettere_, ii. 58.]

[Footnote 503: _Lettere_, iii. 145; cp. iii. 89. The whole of the

passage translated above is an abstract of a letter professedly

written to Aretino by Doni (_Lett. all'Ar._ vol. iv. p. 395), which

may be read with profit as an instance of flattery. The occurrence of

the same phrases in both series of epistles raises a doubt whether

Aretino did not tamper with the text of the correspondence he

published, penning panegyrics of himself and printing them under

fictitious names as advertisements. Doni was a man who might have lent

himself to such imposture on the public.]

These self-congratulations were no idle vaunts. His palace on the

Grand Canal was crowded with male and female servants, thronged with

visitors, crammed with costly works of art and presents received from

every part of Italy and Europe. The choicest wines and the most

exquisite viands--rare birds, delicate fruits, and vegetables out of

season--arrived by special messengers to furnish forth his banquets.

Here he kept open house, enjoying the society of his two bosom

friends, Titian and Sansovino, entertaining the magnificent Venetian

prostitutes, and welcoming the men of fashion or of learning who made

long journeys to visit him.[504] "If I only spent in composition one

third of the time I fling away, the printers would do nothing but

attend to the issuing of my works. And yet I could not write so much

if I would; so enormous is the multitude which comes incessantly to

see me. I am often forced to fly from my own house, and leave the

concourse to take care of itself."[505] "So many lords and gentlemen

are eternally breaking in upon me with their importunities, that my

stairs are worn by their feet like the Capitol with wheels of

triumphal chariots. Turks, Jews, Indians, Frenchmen, Germans,

Spaniards, flock to see me. You can fancy how many Italians come! I

say nothing about the common folk. You could not find me without a

flock of friars and priests. I have come to be the Oracle of Truth,

the Secretary of the Universe: everybody brings me the tale of his

injury by this prince or that prelate."[506] This sumptuous train of

life demanded a long purse, and Aretino had nothing but his brains to

live by. Yet, by the sale of his books and the contributions levied on

great folk, he accumulated a yearly income sufficient to his needs.

"Thanks to their Majesties of Spain and France, with the addition of a

hundred crowns of pension allowed me by the Marquis of Vasto, and the

same amount paid by the Prince of Salerno, I have six hundred crowns

of fixed income, besides the thousand or thereabouts I make yearly

with a quire of paper and a bottle of ink."[507] In another place he

says that in the course of eighteen years "the alchemy of his pen had

drawn over twenty-five thousand crowns from the entrails of various

princes."[508] It was computed that, during his lifetime, he levied

blackmail to the extent of about 70,000 crowns, or considerably more

than a million of francs, without counting his strictly professional

earnings. All this wealth he spent as soon as he laid hands upon it,

boasting loudly of his prodigality, as though it were a virtue. He

dressed splendidly, and denied himself no sensual indulgence. His

house contained a harem of women, devoted to his personal pleasures

and those, apparently, of his familiar friends. He had many

illegitimate daughters, whom he dowered. Moreover, he was liberal to

poor people; and while squandering money first upon his vices, he paid

due attention to his reputation for generosity.[509] The bastard of

Arezzo vaunted he had been born in a hospital with the soul of a

king.[510] Yet he understood nothing of real magnanimity; his charity

was part of an openhanded recklessness, which made him fling the goods

of fortune to the wind as soon as gained--part of the character of

_grand seigneur_ he aspired to assume.[511]

[Footnote 504: See _Lettere all'Ar._ vol. iv. p. 352, for a vivid

description, written by Francesco Marcolini, of Aretino's train of

living and prodigal hospitality. It realizes the vast banqueting-pictures

of Veronese.]

[Footnote 505: _Lettere_, iii. 72.]

[Footnote 506: _Lettere_, i. 206. This passage occurs also in a letter

addressed to Aretino by one Alessandro Andrea (_Lett. all'Ar._ vol.

iii. p. 178); whence Mazzuchelli argues that Aretino tampered with the

letters written to him, and interpolated passages before he sent them

to the press. See last page, note 1.]

[Footnote 507: _Lettere_, ii. 213.]

[Footnote 508: _Lettere_, iii. 70.]

[Footnote 509: See _Lettere_, ii. 257; iii. 340; v. 251.]

[Footnote 510: See the _Capitolo al Duca di Fiorenza_.]

[Footnote 511: Marcolini's letter (_Lettere all'Aretino_, vol. iv. p.

352), and some letters from obscure scholars (for example, _ib._ vol.

ii. pp. 118-121), seem to prove that he was really openhanded in cases

of distress.]

It would fatigue the patience of the reader to furnish forth a

complete list of the presents made to Aretino and acknowledged by him

in his correspondence. Chains, jewels, horses, pictures, costly

stuffs, cups, mirrors, delicacies of the table, wines--nothing came

amiss to him; and the more he received, the more he cried continually,

give, give, give! There was hardly a reigning prince in Europe, hardly

a noble of distinction in Italy, who had not sent some offering to his

shrine. The Sultan Soliman, the pirate Barbarossa, the Pope, the

Emperor, were among his tributaries.[512] The Empress gave him a

golden collar worth three hundred crowns. Philip, Infante of Spain,

presented him with another worth four hundred. Francis I. bestowed on

him a still more costly chain, wrought of pure gold, from which hung a

row of red enameled tongues, bearing the inscription _Lingua ejus

loquetur mendacium_. Aretino received these presents from the hands of

embassadors, and wore them when he sat to Titian or to Tintoretto for

his portrait. Instead of resenting the equivocal compliment of the

French king's motto, he gloried in it. Lies, no less than flattery,

were among the openly-avowed weapons of his armory.[513] Upon the

medals struck in his honor he styled himself _Divus P. Aretinus,

Flagellum Principum_, the Divine Pietro Aretino, Scourge of Princes.

Another inscription ran as follows: _I Principi tributati dai popoli

il Servo loro tributano_--Princes who levy tribute from their people,

bring tribute to their servant. And there is Aretino seated on a

throne, with noble clients laying golden vases at his feet.[514]

[Footnote 512: There is a letter from Barbarossa to Aretino in the

_Lettere all'Ar._ vol. iii. p. 269.]

[Footnote 513: See the frank admissions in _Lettere_, ii. 52; iv. 168;

i. 19, 30, 142.]

[Footnote 514: See the plates prefixed to Mazzuchelli's Life of

Aretino. Compare a passage in his Letters, vi. 115, and the headings

of the Letters addressed to him, _passim_.]

It is incredible that arrogance so palpable should have been

tolerated, inconceivable how such a braggart exercised this

fascination. What had Emperors and Kings to gain or lose by Aretino's

pen? What was the secret of his power? No satisfactory answer has yet

been given to these questions. The enigma does not, indeed, admit of

solution. We have to deal in Aretino's case with a blind movement

among "the better vulgar," expressing itself as fashion; and nothing

is more difficult to fathom than the fashion of a bygone age.[515] The

prestige which attached itself to people like Cagliostro or S.

Germains or Beau Nash is quite incalculable. Yet some account may be

rendered of what seems to have been Aretino's method. He assiduously

cultivated a reputation for reckless freedom of speech. He loudly

trumpeted his intention of speaking evil when and where it pleased

him. He proclaimed himself the champion of veracity, asserted that

nothing was so damnatory as the truths he had to tell, and announced

himself the "Censor of the world," the foe of vice, the defender of

virtue. Having occupied the ear of society by these preliminary

fanfaronnades, he proceeded to satirize the Courts in general, and to

vilify the manners of princes, without mentioning any in

particular.[516] It thus came to be believed that Aretino was a

dangerous person, a writer it would be wiser to have upon one's side,

and who, if he were not coaxed into good humor, might say something

eminently disagreeable.[517] There was pungency enough in his

epigrams, in the slashing, coarse, incisive brutality of his style, to

make his attack formidable. People shrank from it, as they now shrink

from articles in certain libelous weekly papers. Aretino was

recognized as a Cerberus, to whom sops should be thrown. Accordingly,

the custom began of making him presents and conferring on him

pensions. Then it was discovered that if he used a pen dipped in

vitriol for his enemies, he had in reserve a pen of gold for his

patrons, from which the gross mud-honey of flatteries incessantly

trickled.[518] To send him a heavy fee was the sure way of receiving

an adulatory epistle, in which the Scourge of Princes raised his

benefactor of the moment to the skies. In a word, Aretino's art

consisted in making each patron believe that the vigilant satirist of

other people's vices bestowed just eulogy on him alone, and that his

praises were wrung from the mouth of truth by singular and exceptional

merit. The fact is that though Aretino corresponded with all the

princes of Europe and with at least thirty Cardinals, his letters are

nothing but a series of the grossest flatteries. There is a hint here

and there that the benefactor had better loosen his purse strings, if

he wishes the stream of sycophancy to continue. When Cerberus has been

barking long without a sop, we hear an angry growl, a menace, a curt

and vicious snarl for gold.[519] But no sooner has the gift been sent,

than the fawning process recommences. In this way, by terrorism and

toad-eating, by wheedling and bullying, by impudent demands for money

and no less impudent assertions of his power to confer disgrace or

fame, the rascal held society at his disposal. He boasted, and not

without reason, that from his study in Venice he could move the world

by a few lines scribbled on a piece of paper with his pen. What

remains inconceivable, is that any value should have been attached to

his invectives or his panegyrics--that persons of distinction should

have paid him for the latter, and have stooped to deprecate the

former. But it had become the fashion to be afraid of Aretino, the

fashion to court his goodwill, the fashion to parade his praises.

Francis I. and Charles V. led this vogue. The other princes followed

suit. Charles wished to knight Aretino: but the adventurer refused a

barren honor. Julius III. made him knight of S. Peter with a small

pension. Henry VIII. sent him a purse of 300 crowns for a dedicatory

epistle.[520] It was even talked of elevating him to the rank of

Cardinal, and engrossing his talents for the service of the

Church.[521] Nobody thought of addressing him without the prefix of

_Divino_.[522] And yet, all this while, it was known to every one in

Italy that Aretino was a pander, a coward, a liar, a debauchee, who

had wallowed in every lust, sold himself to work all wickedness, and

speculated on the grossest passions, the basest curiosities, the

vilest vices of his age.[523]

[Footnote 515: After studying the _Lettere scritte

all'Aretino_--epistles, it must be remembered, from foreign kings and

princes, from cardinals and bishops, from Italian dukes and noblemen,

from illustrious ladies and great artists, and from the most

distinguished men of letters of his day--I am quite at a loss to

comprehend the _furore_ of fashion which accompanied this man through

his career. One and all praise him as the most powerful, the most

virtuous, the bravest, the wittiest, the wisest, or, to use their

favorite phrase, the _divinest_ man of his century. Was all this a

mere convention? Was it evoked by fear and desire of being flattered

in return? Or, after all, had Aretino some now occult splendor, some

real, but now unintelligible, utility for his contemporaries?]

[Footnote 516: The Papal Court was attacked by him; but none other

that I can discover. The only Prince who felt the rough side of his

tongue was the Farnese:

Impara tu, Pierluigi ammorbato,

Impara, Ducarel da sei quattrini,

Il costume d'un Re si onorato.

Cardinal Gaddi and the Bishop of Verona were pretty roughly treated.

So was Clement VII. But all these personages made their peace with

Aretino, and paid him homage.]

[Footnote 517: See the curious epistle written to Messer Pompeo Pace

by the Conte di Monte Labbate, and included among the _Lettere

all'Aretino_, vol. iv. p. 385. Speaking of Aretino's singular worth

and excellent qualities, it discusses the question of the terror he

inspired, which the author attributes to a kind of justifiable

_chantage_. That Aretino was the inventor of literary _chantage_ is

certain; but that it was justifiable, does not appear.]

[Footnote 518: Aretino made no secret of his artificial method of

flattery. In a letter to Bembo (_Lettere_, ii. 52), he openly boasts

that his literary skill enables him to "swell the pride of grandees

with exorbitant praises, keeping them aloft in the skies upon the

wings of hyperboles." "It is my business," he adds, "to transform

digressions, metaphors, and pedagogeries of all sorts into capstans

for moving and pincers for opening. I must so work that the voice of

my writings shall break the sleep of avarice; and baptize that conceit

or that phrase which shall bring me crowns of gold, not laurels."]

[Footnote 519: As a sample of his begging style, we may extract the

following passage from a letter (1537), referring to the king of

France (_Lettere_, i. 111): "I was and ever shall be the servant of

his Majesty, of whom I preached and published what appears in all my

utterances and in all my works. But since it is my wonted habit not to

live by dreams, and since certain persons take no care for me, I have

with glory to myself made myself esteemed and sought by those who are

really liberal. The chain was three years delayed, and four have gone

without so much as a courtesy to me from the King's quarter. Therefore

I have turned to one who gives without promising--I speak of the

Emperor. I adored Francis; but never to get money from the stirring of

his liberality, is enough to cool the furnaces of Murano."]

[Footnote 520: See Cromwell's letter, in the _Lettere all'Aretino_,

vol. ii. p. 15.]

[Footnote 521: _Lettere all'Aretino_, vol. i. p. 245; vol. iv. pp.

281, 289, 300, contain allusions to this project, which is said to

have originated with the Duke of Parma. The first citation is a letter

of Titian's.]

[Footnote 522: "Divino," "Divinissimo," "Precellentissimo,"

"Unichissimo," "Onnipotente," are a few of the epithets culled from

the common language of his flatterers.]

[Footnote 523: I will translate passages from two letters, which, by

their very blasphemies, emphasize this contradiction. "One might well

say that you, most divine Signor Pietro, are neither Prophet nor

Sibyl, but rather the very Son of God, seeing that God is highest

truth in heaven, and you are truth on earth; nor is any city but

Venice fit to give you harborage, who are the jewel of the earth, the

treasure of the sea, the pride of heaven; and that rare cloth of gold,

bedecked with gems, they place upon the altar of S. Mark's, is naught

but you" (_Lettere scritte a P. Aretino_, vol. iii. p. 176). The next

is more extraordinary, since it professes to be written by a monk: "In

this our age you are a column, lantern, torch and splendor of Holy

Church, who, could she speak, would give to you the revenues of

Chieti, Farnese, Santa Fiore, and all those other idlers, crying

out--Let them be awarded to the Lord Pietro, who distinguishes, exalts

and honors me, in whom unite the subtlety of Augustine, the moral

force of Gregory, Jerome's profundity of meaning, the weighty style of

Ambrose. It is not I but the whole world that says you are another

Paul, who have borne the name of the Son of God into the presence of

kings, potentates, princes of the universe; another Baptist, who with

boldness, fearing naught, have reproved, chastised, exposed

iniquities, malice, hypocrisy before the whole world; another John the

Evangelist, for exhorting, entreating, exalting, honoring the good,

the righteous, and the virtuous. Verily he who first called you

Divine, can claim the words Christ spake to Peter: Beatus es, quia

caro et sanguis non revelavit tibi, sed Pater noster qui in coelis

est" (_Ibid._ p. 142).]

Sometimes he met with men stout enough to treat him as he deserved.

The English embassador at Venice cudgeled him within an inch of his

life. Pietro Strozzi threatened to assassinate him if he showed his

face abroad, and Aretino kept close so long as the _condottiere_

remained in Venice. Tintoretto offered to paint his portrait; and when

he had got the fellow inside his studio, grimly took his measure with

a cutlass. Aretino never resented these insults. Bully as he was, he

bowed to blows, and kissed the hand that dared to strike him. We have

already seen how he waited till Berni's death before he took revenge

for the famous sonnet. All this makes the general adulation of society

for the "divine Aretino" the more unintelligible. We can only compare

the treatment he received with the mingled contempt and flattery, the

canings and the invitations, showered at the present time on editors

of scandal-mongering journals.

The miracle of Aretino's dictatorship is further enhanced by the fact

that he played with cards upon the table. His epistles were

continually being printed--in fact, were sent to the press as soon as

written. Here all the world could see the workings of his mind, his

hypocrisies, his contradictions, the clamorousness of his demands for

gold, the grossness and universality of his flatteries, his cynical

obscenity, his simulation of a superficial and disgusting piety. Yet

the more he published of his correspondence, the louder was the

acclamation of society. The charlatan of genius knew his public, and

won their favor by effronteries that would have ruined a more cautious

impostor. Some of his letters are masterpieces of infernal malice.

The Marchioness of Pescara had besought him to change his mode of

life, and to dedicate his talents only to religion.[524] This is how

he answers her:[525] "It gives me pleasure, most modest lady, that the

religious pieces I have written do not displease the taste of your

good judgment. Your doubt, whether to praise me or to dispraise me for

expending my talents on aught else than sacred studies, is prompted by

that most excellent spirit which moves you to desire that every

thought and every word should turn toward God, forasmuch as He is the

giver of virtue and of intellectual power. I confess that I am less

useful to the world, and less acceptable to Christ, when I exhaust my

studious energies on lying trifles, and not on the eternal verities.

But all this evil is caused by the pleasure of others, and by my own

necessities; for if the princes were as truly pious as I am indigent,

I would employ my pen on nothing else but Misereres. Excellent my

lady, all men are not gifted with the graces of divine inspiration.

_They_ are ever burning with lustful desires, while _you_ are every

hour inflamed with angelic fire. For _you_ the services of the Church

and sermons are what music and comedies are for _them_. _You_ would

not turn your eyes to look at Hercules upon his pyre, nor yet on

Marsyas without his skin: while _they_ would hardly keep a S. Lawrence

on the gridiron or a flayed Bartholomew in their bedroom. There's my

bosom friend Bruciolo; five years ago he dedicated his Bible to the

King, who calls himself Most Christian, and yet he has not had an

answer. Perhaps the book was neither well translated nor well bound.

On this account my _Cortigiana_, which drew from his Majesty the

famous chain of gold, abstained from laughing at his _Old Testament_;

for this would be indecent. So you see I ought to be excused if I

compose jests for my livelihood and not for evil purpose. Anyhow, may

Jesus inspire you with the thought of paying me through M. Sebastiano

of Pesaro--from whom I received your thirty crowns--the rest, which I

owe, upon my word and honor. From Venice. The 9th of January, 1537."

[Footnote 524: Her letter may be read in the _Lettere all'Aretino_,

vol iii. p. 28.]

[Footnote 525: _Lettere_, ii. 9.]

This letter, one long tissue of sneers, taunts and hypocritical

sarcasms, gives the complete measure of Aretino's arrogance. Yet the

illustrious and pious lady to whom it was addressed, suffered the

writer--such was this man's unaccountable prestige--to remain her

correspondent. The collection of his letters contains several

addressed to Vittoria Colonna, of which the date is subsequent to

1537.[526] Not less remarkable were Aretino's dealings with the proud,

resentful, solitary Michelangelo. Professing the highest admiration

for Buonarroti's genius, averring that "the world has many kings but

one only Michelangelo," Aretino wrote demanding drawings from the

mighty sculptor, and giving him advice about his pictures in the

Sistine. Instead of treating these impertinent advances with silence

or sending a well-merited rebuff, we have a letter from Michelangelo

addressed to "M. Pietro, my lord and brother," requesting the

dictator to write something concerning him:[527] "Not only do I hold

this dear, but I implore you to do so, since kings and emperors regard

it as the height of favor to be mentioned by your pen." Was this the

depth of humility, or the acme of irony, or was it the acquiescence of

a noble nature in a fashion too prevalent to be examined by the light

of reason? Let those decide who have read a portion of Aretino's

letters to his "singularly divine Buonaruoto." For my own part, in

spite of their strange but characteristic fusion of bullying and

servility, I find in these epistles a trace of Aretino's most

respectable quality--his worship of art, and his personal attachment

to great artists. It may be said in passing that he never shows so

well as in the epistles to Sansovino and Titian, men from whom he

could gain but indirectly, and to whom he clung by an instinct of what

was truest and sincerest in his nature. It is, therefore, not

improbable that Michelangelo gave him credit for sincerity, and,

instead of resenting his importunity, was willing to accept his

advances in a kindly spirit.[528]

[Footnote 526: She wrote to him again in 1539; see _Lettere

all'Aretino_, vol. iii. p. 30. The series of letters from the virtuous

Veronica Gambara are equally astonishing (_ib._ vol. i. pp. 318-333).]

[Footnote 527: _Lettere all'Aretino_, vol. ii. p. 335.]

[Footnote 528: Giorgio Vasari, the common friend of Pietro Aretino and

M.A. Buonarroti, had no doubt something to do with the acquiescent

courtesy of the latter.]

Thus far we have been dealing with Aretino's relation to sovereigns,

ladies, and people of importance in the world of art. That he should

have imposed upon them is singular. But his position in the republic

of letters offers still stranger food for reflection. In an age of

literary refinement and classical erudition, this untaught child of

the people arrogated to himself the fame of a prominent author, and

had his claims acknowledged by men like Bembo, Varchi, Molza,

Sperone.[529] All the Academies in Italy made him their member with

extraordinary honors, and he corresponded with every writer of

distinction. He treated the scholars of his day as he treated the

princes of Italy, abusing them collectively for pedantry, and

showering the epithets of _divino, divinissimo_, upon them

individually. With his usual sagacity, Aretino saw how to command the

public by running counter to the prejudices of his century, and

proclaiming his independence of its principles. He resolved to win

celebrity by contrast, by piquancy of style, by the assertion of his

individual character, by what Machiavelli termed _virtu_. As he had

boasted of the baseness of his origin, so now he piqued himself upon

his ignorance. He made a parade of knowing neither Latin nor Greek,

derided the puristic veneration for Petrarch and Boccaccio then in

vogue, and asserted that his mother-wit was the best source of

inspiration. This audacity proved successful. While the stylists of

the day were polishing their labored periods to smoothness, he

expressed such thoughts as occurred to him in the words which came

first to hand, seeking only vivacity, relief and salience. He wrote as

he talked; and the result was that he acquired a well-won reputation

for freshness, wit, originality and vigor. This is how he dictates the

terms of epistolary style to Bernardo Tasso:[530] "I, who am more your

brother in benevolence than you show yourself to be my friend in

honor, did not believe that the serenity of my mind would ever again

be dimmed by those clouds, which, after thunders and lightnings, burst

in the bolt that sent Antonio Broccardo beneath the earth. Pride and

vanity, for certain, prompted you to tell the excellent and

illustrious Annibale Caro that no writer of letters is worthy to be

imitated at the present day, sagaciously hinting at yourself as the

right man to be imitated. Without doubt, your inordinate self-love,

combined with your inattention to the claims of others, brought your

judgment to this pass. I published letters before you, and you

borrowed your style, in so far as it is worth anything, from me. Yet

you cannot produce even a counterfeit of my manner. My sentences and

similes are made to live; yours issue stillborn from your mind. It is

time that you copy a few of my familiar phrases, word by word. What

else can you do? Your own taste is rather inclined to the scent of

flowers than the savor of fruits. You have the graces of a certain

celestial style, fit for epithalamial odes and hymns. But all that

sweetness is out of place in epistles, where we want the salience of

invention, not the illuminated arabesques of artifice. I am not going

to sing my own praises, nor to tell you that men of merit ought to

mark my birthday with white chalk--I, who without scouring the

post-roads, without following Courts, without stirring from my study,

have made every living duke, prince, sovereign, tributary to my

virtue--I, who hold fame at my discretion through the universe--I,

whose portrait is revered, whose name is honored in Persia and the

Indies. To end this letter, I salute you with the assurance that

nobody, so far as your epistles go, blames you for envy's sake, while

many, very many, praise you through compassion for your having written

them." There was no limit to his literary self-confidence.[531] "Of

the three opinions current respecting the talents which keep my name

alive, time has refuted that, which, hearing I had no erudition,

judged my compositions to be nonsense, together with that other,

which, finding in them some gust of genius, affirmed they were not

mine. Whence it follows that only one remains, the opinion, to wit,

that I, who never had a tutor, am complete in every branch of

knowledge. All this comes from the poverty of art, which ever envies

the wealth of nature, from whom I borrow my conceptions. Wherefore, if

you are of the number of those who, in order to deprive me of nature's

favor, attribute to me the learning that comes from study, you deceive

yourself, for I swear by God I hardly understand my mother tongue."

Meanwhile his tirades against the purists are full of excellent good

sense. "O mistaken multitude, I tell you again, and yet again that

poetry is a caprice of nature in her moments of gladness; it depends

on a man's own inspiration, and if this fails, a poet's singing is but

a tambourine without rattles, a bell-tower without bells. He who

attempts to write verses without the gift is like the alchemists, who,

for all their industry and eager avarice, never yet made gold, while

nature, without labor, turns it out in plenty, pure and beautiful.

Take lessons from that painter, who, when he was asked whom he

imitated, pointed to a crowd of living men, meaning that he borrowed

his examples from life and reality. This is what I do, when I write or

talk. Nature herself, of whose simplicity I am the secretary, dictates

that which I set down."[532] And again: "I laugh at those pedants, who

think that learning consists in Greek and Latin, laying down the law

that one who does not understand these languages, cannot open his

mouth. It is not because I do not know them, that I have departed from

Petrarch's and Boccaccio's precedents; but because I care not to lose

time, patience, reputation, in the mad attempt to convert myself into

their persons. The true aim of writing is to condense into the space

of half a page, the length of histories, the tedium of orations; and

this my letters clearly show that I have done." "It is far better to

drink out of one's own wooden cup than another's golden goblet; and a

man makes a finer show in his own rags than in stolen velvets. What

have we to do with other people's property?"[533] "What have we to do

with words which, however once in common use, have now passed out of

fashion?"[534] At times he bursts into a fury of invective against

erudition: "Those pedants, the asses of other people's books, who,

after massacring the dead, rest not till they have crucified the

living! It was pedantry that murdered Duke Alessandro, pedantry that

flung the Cardinal of Ravenna into prison, and, what is worse, stirred

up heresy against our faith through the mouth of that arch-pedant

Luther."[535] This is admirable. It plunges to the very root of the

matter. Sharpened by his hostility to the learning he did not share,

and the puerile aspects of which he justly satirized, this acute and

clairvoyant critic is enabled to perceive that both Italian

tyrannicide and German Reformation had their origin in the humanistic

movement of the fifteenth century. He is equally averse to either

consequence. Erudition spoils sport, stiffens style, breaks in upon

the pastimes of the principalities and papacies, which breed the lusts

on which an Aretino lives.

[Footnote 529: The adulation with which all the chief literary men of

Italy greeted Aretino, is quite incredible. One must read their

letters in the _Lettere all'Aretino_ to have any conception of it. See

in particular those of Varchi (_ib._ vol. ii. pp. 186-202), of Dolce

(vol. ii. pp. 277-295), of Paolo Giovio (vol. iii. pp. 59-64), of

Niccolo Martelli (vol. iii. pp. 116-125), of Annibale Caro (_ib._ p.

163), of Sperone (_ib._ pp. 324-330), of Firenzuola (_ib._ p. 345), of

Doni (vol. iv. p. 395). Molza, terrified by one of Aretino's threats,

cringes before him (vol. i. p. 340). Doni signs himself "Il Doni

dell'Aretino," and Vergerio, Bishop of Capo d'Istria, "Il Vescovo

dell'Aretino." Even the excellent Bishop of Fossombrone pays him

courtly compliments (vol. ii. pp. 61-67). The pitch attained by these

flatteries may be understood from this opening of a letter: "Bella

armonia, e soave concento, dovea essere nel cielo, Signor Pietro

divino, e fra le stelle amiche, il di, che Iddio e la Natura di voi

fece altero dono a questa nostra etade," etc. _ad. inf._ (vol. iv. p.

269). Here is another fragment: "Manifestamente si vede e si conosce

che da Iddio per conservazione de la sua gloria e per utilita del

mondo v'abbi fra tanti avversari," etc. (vol. iv. p. 398).]

[Footnote 530: _Lettere_, v. 184. The above is only a condensed

paraphrase of a very long tirade.]

[Footnote 531: _Lettere_, ii. 242.]

[Footnote 532: _Lettere_, i. 123.]

[Footnote 533: _Lettere_, ii. 182.]

[Footnote 534: _Lettere_, i. 210.]

[Footnote 535: _Lettere_, i. 143.]

It was Aretino's boast that he composed as fast as the pen would move

across the paper, and that his study contained no books of

reference--nothing but the quire of paper and the bottle of ink, which

were necessary to immortalize the thick-crowding fancies of his brain.

His comedy of the _Filosofo_ was written in ten mornings; the

_Talanta_ and the _Ipocrita_ in "the hours robbed from sleep during

perhaps twenty nights."[536] Referring to his earlier fertility in

1537, he says:[537] "Old age begins to stupefy my brains, and love,

which ought to wake them up, now sends them off to sleep. I used to

turn out forty stanzas in a morning; now I can with difficulty produce

one. It took me only seven mornings to compose the _Psalms_; ten for

the _Cortigiana_ and the _Marescalco_; forty-eight for the two

_Dialogues_; thirty for the _Life of Christ_." The necessary

consequences of this haste are discernible in all his compositions.

Aretino left nothing artistically finished, nothing to which it is now

possible to point in justification of his extraordinary celebrity. His

sonnets are below contempt. Frigid, inharmonious, pompous, strained,

affected, they exhibit the worst vices to which this species of poetry

is liable. His _Capitoli_, though he compared them to "colossal

statues of gold or silver, where I have carved the forms of Julius, a

Pope, Charles, an Emperor, Catherine, a Queen, Francesco Maria, a

Duke, with such art that the outlines of their inner nature are

brought into relief, the muscles of their will and purpose are shown

in play, the profiles of their emotions are thrown into

salience"[538]--these _Capitoli_ will not bear comparison for one

moment with Berni's. They are coarse and strident in style, threadbare

in sentiment, commonplace in conception, with only one eminent

quality, a certain gross prolific force, a brazen clash and clangor of

antithesis, to compensate for their vulgarity. Yet, such as they are,

the _Capitoli_ must be reckoned the best of his compositions in verse.

Of his comedies I have already spoken. These will always be valuable

for their lively sketches of contemporary manners, their free satiric

vein of humor. The _Dialoghi_, although it is scarcely possible to

mention them in a decent book of history, are distinguished by the

same qualities of veracity, acumen, prolific vigor, animal spirits,

and outspokenness. Aretino's religious works, it need hardly be said,

are worthless or worse. Impudent romances, penned by one of the most

unscrupulous of men, frankly acknowledged by their author to be a

tissue of "poetical lies," we are left to marvel how they could have

deceived the judgment and perverted the taste of really elevated

natures.[539] That the Marchioness of Pescara should have hailed the

coarse fictions of the Life of S. Catherine, which Aretino confessed

to have written out of his own head, as a work of efficient piety,

remains one of the wonders of that extraordinary age.

[Footnote 536: _Lettere_, iii. 84. Letter at the end of the

_Talanta_.]

[Footnote 537: _Lettere_, i. 99.]

[Footnote 538: _Lettere_, vi. 4.]

[Footnote 539: See _Lettere_, ii. 168, iii. 169, for his method of

composing these books.]

What then, it may finally be asked, was Aretino's merit as an author?

Why do we allude to him at all in writing the history of

sixteenth-century literature? The answer can be given in two

words--originality and independence. It was no vain boast of Aretino

that he trusted only to nature and mother-wit. His intellectual

distinction consisted precisely in this confidence and self-reliance,

at a moment when the literary world was given over to pedantic

scruples and the formalities of academical prescription. Writing

without the fear of pedagogues before his eyes--seeking, as he says,

relief, expression, force, and brilliancy of phrase, he produced a

manner at once singular and attractive which turned to ridicule the

pretensions of the purists. He had the courage of his personality, and

stamped upon his style the very form and pressure of himself. As a

writer, he exhibited what Machiavelli demanded from the man of

action--_virtu_, or the virility of self-reliance. That was the secret

of his success. The same audacity and independence characterize all

his utterances of opinion--his criticisms of art and literature--his

appreciation of natural beauty. In some of the letters written to

painters and sculptors, and in a description of a Venetian sunset

already quoted in this book, we trace the dawnings of a true and

natural school of criticism, a forecast of the spontaneity of Diderot

and Henri Beyle. This naturalness of expression did not save Aretino

from glaring bad taste. His letters and his dedicatory introductions

abound in confused metaphors, extravagant _concetti_, and artificial

ornaments. It seems impossible for him to put pen to paper without

inventing monstrous and ridiculous periphrases. Still the literary

impropriety, which would have been affectation in any one else, and

which became affectation in his imitators, was true to the man's

nature. He could not be true to himself without falseness of

utterance, because there was in him an inherent insincerity, and this

was veiled by no scholastic accuracy or studied purity of phrase.

Much of the bad taste of the later Renaissance (the tropes of Marini

and the absurdities of _seicentismo_) may be ascribed to the

fascination exercised by this strange combination of artificiality and

naturalness in a style remarkable for vigor. Who, for instance does

not feel that the mannerism of our euphuistic prosaists is shadowed

forth in the following passage from the introduction to the

_Talanta_?[540] The Prologue, on the drawing of the curtain, takes

the audience into his confidence, and tells them that he long had

hesitated which of the Immortal Gods to personate. Mars, Jupiter,

Phoebus, Venus, Mercury, and all the Pantheon in succession were

rejected, for different appropriate reasons, till the God of Love

appeared. "When at last it came to Cupid's turn, I immediately said

Yes! and having so assented, I felt wings growing at my shoulders, the

quiver at my side, the bow within my hands. In a moment I became all

steel, all fire; and eager to be ware what things are done in love, I

cast a glance upon the crowd of lovers; whence I soon could see who

has the rendezvous, who is sent about his business, who prowls around

his mistress' house, who enters by the door, who clambers up the

walls, who scales the rope, who jumps from the window, who hides

himself within a tub, who takes the cudgel, who gets a gelding for his

pains, who is stowed away by the chambermaid, who is kicked out by the

serving-man, who goes mad with anxiety, who bursts with passion, who

wastes away in gazing, who cuts snooks at hope, who lets himself be

hoodwinked, who spends a fortune on his mistress to look grand, who

robs her for a freak, who saps her chastity with threats, who conjures

her with prayers, who blabs of his success, who hides his luck, who

bolsters up his vaunt with lies, who dissembles the truth, who extols

the flame that burns him, who curses the cause of his heart's

conflagration, who cannot eat for grief, who cannot sleep for joy, who

compiles sonnets, who scribbles billets-doux, who dabbles in

enchantments, who renews assaults, who takes counsel with bawds, who

ties a favor on his arm, who mumbles at a flower the wench has

touched, who twangles the lute, who hums a glee, who thrusts his rival

through the body, who gets killed by his competitors, who eats his

heart out for a mylady, who dies of longing for a strumpet. When I

understood the things aforesaid, I turned round to these female

firebrands, and saw how the devil (to chastise them for the perverse

ways they use toward men who serve them, praise them, and adore them)

gives them up, easy victims, to a pedant, a plebeian, a simpleton, a

loon, a groom, a graceless clown, and to a certain mange that catches

them."

[Footnote 540: I have purposely chosen an extract where the style is

keen and mobile. Had I taken examples from the Letters, I could have

produced a far closer parallel to Lilly's rhetoric.]

Aretino congregated round him a whole class of literary Bohemians,

drawing forth the peccant humors of more than one Italian city, and

locating these greedy adventurers in Venice as his satellites. It is

enough to mention Niccolo Franco, Giovanni Alberto Albicante, Lorenzo

Veniero, Doni, Lodovico Dolce. They were, most of them, hack writers,

who gained a scanty livelihood by miscellaneous work for the

booksellers and by selling dedications to patrons. More or less

successfully, they carried on the trade invented and developed by

Aretino; remaining on terms of intimacy with him, at first as friends

or secretaries, afterwards as enemies and rivals. We have already seen

what use was made of Albicante for the mutilation of Berni's

_Innamoramento_. This poetaster was a native of Milan, who published a

history of the war in Piedmont, which Aretino chose to ridicule in one

of his _Capitoli_.[541] Albicante replied with another poem in _terza

rima_, and Aretino seems to have perceived that he had met a worthy

adversary. It was Albicante's glory to be called _furibondo_ and

_bestiale_. He affected an utter indifference to consequences, an

absolute recklessness concerning what he did and said. Whether Aretino

was really afraid of him, or whether he wished to employ him in the

matter of Berni's _Innamoramento_, is not certain. At any rate, he

made advances to Albicante in a letter which begins: "My brother, the

rage of poets is but a frenzy of stupidity." The antagonists were

reconciled, and the Academy of the Intronati at Siena thought this

event worthy of commemoration in a volume: "Combattimento poetico del

divino Aretino e del bestiale Albicante occorso sopra la Guerra di

Piemonte, e la pace loro celebrata nella Accademia de gli Intronati a

Siena."

[Footnote 541: See the article on Albicante in Mazzuchelli's

_Scrittori Italiani_, vol. i.]

Niccolo Franco was a native of Benevento, whom Aretino took into his

service, as a kind of secretary.[542] Being deficient in scholarship,

he needed a man capable of supplying him with Greek and Latin

quotations, and who could veneer his coarse work with a show of

humanistic erudition. Franco undertook the office; and it is probable

that some of Aretino's earlier works of piety and learning--the

_Genesis_, for instance--issued from this unequal collaboration. But

their good accord did not last long. Franco proved to be a ruffian of

even fiercer type than his master. If Aretino kept a literary poignard

in the scabbard, ready to strike when his utility demanded, Franco

went about the world with unsheathed dagger, stabbing for the pleasure

of the sport. "I would rather lose a dinner," he writes, "than omit to

fire my pen off when the fancy takes me." The two men could not dwell

together in union. When Aretino published the first series of his

letters, Franco issued a rival volume, in the last epistle of which,

addressed to Envy, he made an attack on his patron. Ambrogio degli

Eusebi, an _ame damnee_ of the Aretine, about whom many scurrilous

stories were told, stabbed Franco, while Aretino published invective

after invective against him in the form of letters. Franco left

Venice, established himself for a while at Casale in the lordship of

Montferrat, opened a school at Mantua, and ran a thousand infamous

adventures, pouring forth satirical sonnets all the while at Aretino.

In the course of his wanderings, he completed a Latin commentary on

the _Priapea_. These two works together--the centuries of sonnets

against Aretino, and the Priapic lucubrations--obtained a wide

celebrity. Speaking of the book, Tiraboschi is compelled to say that

"few works exist which so dishonor human nature. The grossest

obscenities, the most licentious evil-speaking, the boldest contempt

of princes, Popes, Fathers of the Council, and other weighty

personages, are the gems with which he adorned his monument of

perverse industry." Franco proved so obnoxious to polite society that

he was at last taken and summarily hanged in 1569. The curious point

about this condemnation of a cur is, that he was in no whit worse than

many other scribblers of the day. But he made more noise; he had not

the art to rule society like Aretino; he committed the mistake of

trusting himself to the perilous climates of Lombardy and Rome. His

old master drove him out of Venice, and the unlucky reprobate paid

the penalty of his misdeeds by becoming the scapegoat for men whom he

detested.

[Footnote 542: For what follows see Tiraboschi, tom. vii. part 3, lib.

iii.]

Doni began his Venetian career as a friend of Aretino, whose companion

he was in the famous Academy of the Pellegrini. They quarreled over a

present sent to Doni by the Duke of Urbino, and the bizarre Florentine

passed over to the ranks of Aretino's bitterest enemies. In 1556 he

declared war, with a book entitled "Terremoto del Doni Fiorentino."

The preface was addressed to "the infamous and vicious Pietro Aretino,

the source and fountain of all evil, the stinking limb of public

falsehood, and true Antichrist of our century." Soon after the

appearance of this volume, followed Aretino's death. But Doni pursued

his animosity beyond the grave, and was instrumental in causing his

rival's writings to be subjected to ecclesiastical interdiction.

We tire of these low literary quarrels. Yet they form an integral part

of the history of Italian civilization; and the language of invective

used in them, originating with Aretino and improved upon by Doni and

Franco, became the model of vituperative style in Europe. Doni's

"Earthquake, with the Ruin of a great Bestial Colossus, the Antichrist

of our age," brings to mind a score of pamphlets, published in Europe

during the conflict of the Church with Reformation. We find an echo of

its strained metaphors in the polemical writings of Bruno and

Campanella. The grotesque manner of the seventeenth century begins

with Aretino and his satellites, just as its far-fetched conceits may

be traced in the clear language of Guarini. Gongora, Marini, Euphues,

and the _Precieuses Ridicules_ of the Hotel Rambouillet are

contained, as it were, in germ among this little knot of refugees at

Venice, who set their wits against the academical traditions of pure

Italian taste.

A characteristic legend is told of Aretino's death. Two of his sisters

kept, it is said, a house of ill fame; and the story runs that he died

of immoderate laughter, flinging himself backward in his chair and

breaking his neck, on hearing some foul jest reported by them. It is

difficult to believe that this tale has any foundation in fact. We

must take it as a scurrilous invention, proving the revolution of

public opinion, which since his books had been put upon the Index in

1559, undoubtedly took place. Of like tenor is the epitaph which was

never really placed upon his grave:[543]

Qui giace l'Aretin poeta tosco,

Che disse mal d'ognun fuorche di Cristo,

Scusandosi col dir: non lo conosco.

[Footnote 543: These lines have been, without authority, ascribed to

Giovio; they may thus be rendered:

Here lieth Aretine, in prose and poem

Who spake such ill of all the world but Christ,

Pleading for this neglect, I do not know him.

Giovio, we may remember, styled Aretino _divino_, _divinissimo_,

_unichissimo_, _precellentissimo_, in his letters.]

His features, though formed upon a large and not ignoble type, bore in

later life a mixed expression of the wolf and the fox; nor was it

without oblique satire that the engraver of his portrait, Giuseppe

Patrini, surrounded the medallion with a wolf's hide, the grinning

snarl and slanting eyes of the brute mimicking the man's physiognomy.

It was a handsome face, no doubt, in youth, when, richly attired in

the satin mantle cut for him by a bishop, and mounted on his white

charger, he scoured the streets of Reggio at Giovanni de' Medici's

side, curling his blue-black beard, and fixing his bold bright eyes

upon the venal beauties they courted in company. But the thick lips

and open sensual mouth, the distended nostrils, and the wicked puckers

of the wrinkles round his eyes and nose, show that the beast of prey

and appetite had been encouraged through a life of self-indulgence,

until the likeness of humanity yielded to victorious animalism. The

same face, at once handsome and bestial, never to be forgotten after a

first acquaintance, leans out, in the company of Sansovino and Titian,

from the bronze door of the Sacristy in S. Mark's Church.[544] The

high relief is full of life and movement, one of Sansovino's

masterpieces. And yet it strikes one here with even greater

strangeness than the myths of Ganymede and Leda on the portals of S.

Peter's at Rome.

[Footnote 544: Among the many flatteries addressed to Aretino none is

more laughable than a letter (_Lettere all'Aretino_, vol. iii. p. 175)

which praises his physical beauty in most extravagant terms: "Most

divine Lord Peter; if, among the many and so lovely creatures that

swinish Nature sends into this worst of worlds, you alone are of such

beauty and incomparable grace that you combine all qualities the human

frame can boast of: for the which cause there is no need to wonder

that Titian, when he seeks to paint a face that has in it true beauty,

uses his skilled brush in only drawing you," etc. etc. The period is

too long to finish.]

Aretino is, in truth, not the least of the anomalies which meet us

everywhere in the Italian Renaissance. Was he worse, was he not even

in some respects better than his age? How much of the repulsion he

inspires can be ascribed to altered taste and feeling? To what extent

was the legend of the man, so far as this is separable from the

testimony of his writings, made black by posthumous malevolence and

envy? These are the questions which rise in our mind when we reflect

upon the incidents of his extraordinary career, and calmly estimate

his credit with contemporaries. The contradictions of the epoch were

concentrated in his character. He was a professed Christian of the

type formed by Rome before the Counter-Reformation. He helped the

needy, tended the sick, dowered orphans, and kept open house for

beggars. He was the devoted friend of men like Titian, a sincere lover

of natural and artistic beauty, an acute and enthusiastic critic. At

the same time he did his best to corrupt youth by painting vice in

piquant colors. He led a life of open and voluptuous debauchery. He

was a liar, a bully, a braggart, venomous in the pursuit of private

animosities, and the remorseless foe of weaker men who met with his

displeasure. From the conditions of society which produced Cesare and

Lucrezia Borgia, Pier Luigi Farnese and Gianpaolo Baglioni, it was no

wonder that a writer resolved on turning those conditions to account,

should have arisen. The credit of originality, independence,

self-reliant character--of what Machiavelli called _virtu_--does

certainly belong to him. It is true that he extracted the means of a

luxurious existence from patrons upon whom he fawned. Yet he was

superior to the common herd of courtiers, in so far as he attached

himself to no master, and all his adulation masked a battery of

menaces. The social diseases which emasculated men of weaker fiber, he

turned to the account of his rapacious appetites. His force consisted

in the clear notion he had formed of his own aim in life, and the

sagacity with which he used the most efficient means for attaining it.

The future, whether of reputation or of literary fame, had no

influence over his imagination. He resolved to enjoy the present, and

he succeeded beyond expectation. Corruption is itself a kind of

superiority, when it is consummate, cynical, self-conscious. It

carries with it its own clairvoyance, its own philosophy of life, its

own good sense. More than this, it imposes on opinion and fascinates

society. Aretino did not suffer from a divided will. He never halted

between two courses, but realized the ideal of the _perfettamente

tristo_. He lived up to Guicciardini's conception of the final motive,

which may be described as the cult of self. Sneering at all men less

complete in purpose than himself, he disengaged his conduct from

contemporary rules of fashion; dictated laws to his betters in birth,

position, breeding, learning, morals, taste; and vindicated his

virility by unimpeded indulgence of his personal proclivities. He was

the last, the most perfect, if also the most vitiated product of

Renaissance manners. In the second half of the sixteenth century, when

hypocrisy descended like a cloud upon the ineradicable faults of

Italy, there was no longer any possibility for the formation of a hero

after Aretino's type.

Thus at the close of any estimate of Aretino, we are forced to do

justice to the man's vigor. It is not for nothing that even a debased

society bows to a dictatorship so autocratic; nor can eminence be

secured, even among the products of a decadent civilization, by

undiluted defects. Aretino owed his influence to genuine

qualities--to the independence which underlay his arrogance, to the

acute common sense which almost justified his vanity, to the

outspokenness which made him satirize the vices that he shared and

illustrated.[545] We have abundant and incontrovertible testimony to

the fact that his _Dialoghi_, when they were first published, passed

for powerful and drastic antidotes to social poisons[546]; and it is

clear that even his religious works were accepted by the pious world

as edifying. The majority of his contemporaries seem to have beheld in

him the fearless denouncer of ecclesiastical and civil tyrants, the

humble man's friend, and the relentless detective of vice. The

indescribable nastiness of the _Dialoghi_, the false feeling of the

_Vita di S. Catherina_, which makes us turn with loathing from their

pages, did not offend the taste of his century. While, therefore, he

comprehended and expressed his age in its ruffianism and

dissoluteness, he stood outside it and above it, dealing haughtily and

like a potentate with evils which subdued less hardened spirits, and

with personages before whom his equals groveled. We must not suffer

our hatred of his mendacity, uncleanliness, brutality, and arrogance

to blind us to the elements of strength and freedom which can be

discerned in him.[547]

[Footnote 545: I should not be surprised to see an attempt soon made

to whitewash Aretino. Balzac, in his _Catherine de Medicis_, has

already indicated the line to be followed: "L'Aretin, l'ami de Titien

et le Voltaire de son siecle, a, de nos jours, un renom en complete

opposition avec ses oeuvres, avec son caractere, et que lui vaut une

debauche d'esprit en harmonie avec les ecrits de ce siecle, ou le

drolatique etait en honneur, ou les reines et les cardinaux ecrivaient

des contes, dits aujourd'hui licentieux."]

[Footnote 546: I will only refer to a very curious epistle (_Lettere a

P. Aretino_, vol. iii. p. 193), which appears to me genuine, in which

Aretino is indicated as the poor man's friend against princely

tyrants; and another from Daniello Barbaro (_ibid._ p. 217), in which

the Dialogue on Courts is praised as a handbook for the warning and

instruction of would-be courtiers. The Pornographic Dialogues made

upon society the same impression as Zola's _Nana_ is now making,

although it is clear to us that they were written with a licentious,

and not an even ostensibly scientific, intention.]

[Footnote 547: While these sheets are passing through the press, I see

announced a forthcoming work by Antonio Virgili, _Francesco Berni con

nuovi documenti_. We may expect from this book more light upon

Aretino's relation to the Tuscan poet.]

CHAPTER XVI.

HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY.

Frivolity of Renaissance Literature--The Contrast presented

by Machiavelli--His Sober Style--Positive Spirit--The

Connection of his Works--Two Men in Machiavelli--His

Political Philosophy--The _Patria_--Place of Religion and

Ethics in his System--Practical Object of his

Writings--Machiavellism--His Conception of Nationality--His

Relation to the Renaissance--Contrast between Machiavelli

and Guicciardini--Guicciardini's Doctrine of

Self-interest--The Code of Italian Corruption--The

Connection between these Historians and the

Philosophers--General Character of Italian Philosophy--The

Middle Ages in Dissolution--Transition to Modern Thought and

Science--Humanism counterposed to

Scholasticism--Petrarch--Pico--Dialogues on

Ethics--Importance of Greek and Latin Studies--Classical

substituted for Ecclesiastical Authority--Platonism at

Florence--Ficino--Translations--New Interest in the Problem

of Life--Valla's Hedonism--The Dialogue _De

Voluptate_--Aristotle at Padua and Bologna--Arabian and

Greek Commentators--Life of Pietro Pomponazzi--His Book on

Immortality--His Controversies--Pomponazzi's

Standpoint--Unlimited Belief in Aristotle--Retrospect over

the Aristotelian Doctrine of God, the World, the Human

Soul--Three Problems in the Aristotelian

System--Universals--The First Period of Scholastic

Speculation--Individuality--The Second Period of

Scholasticism--Thomas Aquinas--The Nature of the Soul--New

Impulse given to Speculation by the

Renaissance--Averroism--The Lateran Council--Is the Soul

Immortal?--Pomponazzi reconstructs Aristotle's Doctrine by

help of Alexander Aphrodisius--The Soul is Material and

Mortal--Man's Place in Nature--Virtue is the End of

Man--Pomponazzi on Miracles and Spirits--His Distinction

between the Philosopher and the Christian--The Book on

Fate--Pomponazzi the Precursor--Coarse Materialism--The

School of Cosenza--Aristotle's Authority

Rejected--Telesio--Campanella--Bruno--The Church stifles

Philosophy in Italy--Italian Positivism.

The literature which has occupied us during the last nine chapters, is

a literature of form and entertainment. Whether treating chivalrous

romance, or the Arcadian ideal, or the conditions of contemporary

life, these poets, playwrights and novelists had but one serious

object--the perfection of their art, the richness and variety of their

pictures. In the conscious pursuit of beautiful form, Poliziano and

Ariosto, Bembo and Berni, Castiglione and Firenzuola, Il Lasca and

Molza, were alike earnest. For the rest, they sought to occupy their

own leisure, and to give polite society the pastime of refined

amusement. The content of this miscellaneous literature was of far

less moment to the authors and their audience than its mode of

presentation. Even when they undertook some theme involving the

realities of life, they dwelt by preference upon externals. In the

_Cortegiano_ and _Galateo_, for example, conduct is studied from an

aesthetical far more than from a moral point of view. The questions

which stirred and divided literary coteries, were questions of

scholarship, style, language. Matter is everywhere subordinated to

expression; the writer's interest in actuality is slight; the power or

the inclination to think is inferior to the faculty for harmonious

construction. These characteristics of literature in general, render

the exceptions noticeable, and force me, at some risk of repetition,

to devote a chapter to those men in whom the speculative vigor of the

race was concentrated. These were the historians and a small band of

metaphysicians, who may be fitly represented by a single philosopher,

Pietro Pomponazzi. Of the Florentine historiographers, from Villani to

Guicciardini, I have already treated at some length in a previous

portion of this work.[548] I shall therefore confine myself to

resuming those points in which Machiavelli and Guicciardini uttered

the reflections of their age on statecraft and the laws that govern

political life.

[Footnote 548: _Age of the Despots_, chaps. v. and vi.]

When we compare Machiavelli with his contemporaries, we are struck by

his want of sympathy with the prevalent artistic enthusiasms. Far from

being preoccupied with problems of diction, he wrote with the sole

object of making what he had to say plain. The result is that, without

thinking about expression, Machiavelli created Italian prose anew, and

was the first to form a monumental modern style. Language became,

beneath his treatment, a transparent and colorless medium for

presenting thoughts to the reader's mind; and his thoughts were always

removed as little as possible from the facts which suggested them. He

says himself that he preferred in all cases the essential reality of a

fact to its modification by fancy or by theory.[549] His style is,

therefore, the reverse of that which the purists cultivated. They

uttered generalities in ornamented and sonorous phrases. Machiavelli

scorned ornament, and ignored the cadence of the period. His boldest

abstractions are presented with the hard outline and relief of

concrete things. Each sentence is a crystal, formed of few but precise

words by a spontaneous process in his mind. It takes shape from the

thought; not from any preconceived type of rhythm, to which the

thought must be accommodated. It is perfect or imperfect according as

the thinking process has been completely or incompletely victorious

over the difficulties of language. It is figurative only when the fact

to be enforced derives new energy from the imagination. Beauty is

never sought, but comes unbidden, as upon the limbs and muscles of an

athlete, whose aim has been to gain agility and strength. These

qualities render Machiavelli's prose a model worthy of imitation by

all who study scientific accuracy.

[Footnote 549: "Mi e parso piu conveniente andare dietro alla verita

effettuale della cosa che all'immaginazione di essa" (_Principe_, cap.

xv.).]

The style is the man; and Machiavelli's style was the mirror of his

mind and character. While the literary world echoed to the cry of Art

for Art, he followed Science for the sake of Science. Occupied with

practical problems, smiling at the supra-mundane aspirations of the

middle ages, scorning the aesthetical ideals of the Renaissance, he

made the political action of man, _l'homme politique_, the object of

exclusive study. His resolute elimination of what he considered

irrelevant or distracting circumstances from this chosen field of

research, justifies our placing him among the founders or precursors

of the modern scientific method. We may judge his premises

insufficient, his conclusions false; but we cannot mistake the

positive quality of his mind in the midst of a rhetorical and artistic

generation.

There is a strict link of connection between Machiavelli's works.

These may be divided into four classes--official, historical,

speculative and literary. To the first belongs his correspondence with

the Florentine Government; to the second, his Florentine History and

several minor studies, the _Vita di Castruccio_, the _Ritratti_, and

the _Metodo tenuto dal Duca Valentino_; to the third, his _Discorsi_,

_Principe_, _Arte della Guerra_ and _Discorso sopra la Riforma di

Firenze_; to the fourth, his comedies, poems, novel of _Belfagor_,

and _Descrizione della Peste_. The familiar letters should be used as

a key to the more intimate understanding of his character. They

illustrate some points in his political philosophy, explain his

personal motives, and throw much light upon his purely literary

compositions. We learn from them to know him as a friend, the father

of a family, the member of a little social circle, and finally as the

ever-restless aspirant after public employment. Valuable as these

letters are for the student of Machiavelli's writings, his private

reputation would have gained by their destruction. They show that the

man was inferior to the thinker. In spite of his logical consistency

of intellect, we become convinced, while reading them, that there were

two persons in Machiavelli. The one was a faithful servant of the

State, a student of books and human nature, the inaugurator of

political philosophy for modern Europe. The other was a boon

companion, stooping to low pleasures, and soiling his correspondence

with gossip which breathes the tainted atmosphere of Florentine vice.

These letters force us to reject the theory that he wrote his comedies

with any profound ethical purpose, or that he personally abhorred the

moral corruption of which he pointed out the weakening results for

Italy. The famous epistle from San Casciano paints the man in his two

aspects--at one moment in a leathern jerkin, playing games of hazard

with the butcher, or scouring the streets of Florence with a Giuliano

Brancaccio; at another, attired in senatorial robes, conversing with

princes, approaching the writers of antiquity on equal terms, and

penning works which place him on a level with Ariosto and Galileo. The

second of these Machiavellis claims our exclusive attention at the

present moment. Yet it is needful to remember that the former existed,

and was no less real. Only by keeping this in mind can we avoid the

errors of those panegyrists who credit the _Mandragola_ with a

didactic purpose, and refuse to recognize the moral bluntness betrayed

in Machiavelli's theorization of human conduct. The man who thought

and felt in private what his familiar letters disclose, was no right

censor of the principles that rule society. We cannot trust his moral

tact or taste.

Machiavelli was not a metaphysician. He started with the conception of

the State as understood in Italy. His familiarity with the Latin

classics, and his acquaintance with the newly-formed monarchies of

Europe, caused him, indeed, to modify the current notion. But he did

not inquire into the final cause of political communities, or present

to his own mind a clear definition of what was meant by the phrase

_patria_. We are aware of a certain hesitancy between the ideas of the

Commune and the race, the State and the Government, which might have

been removed by a more careful preliminary analysis. Between the Roman

Republic, on the one hand, and the modern nation, on the other, we

always find an Italian city. From this point of view, it is to be

regretted that he did not appropriate Plato's _Republic_ or

Aristotle's _Politics_.[550] He might by such a course of study have

avoided the severance of politics from ethics, which renders his

philosophy unnatural. We must, however, remember that he did not

propose to plan a scientific system. His works have a practical aim in

view. They are directed toward the grand end of Italy's restoration

from weakness and degeneracy to a place among the powerful peoples of

the world. This purpose modifies them in the most minute particulars.

It is ever present to Machiavelli's mind. It makes his philosophy

assume the form of a critique. It explains the apparent discord

between the _Discorsi_ and the _Principe_. It enables us to comprehend

the nature of a patriotism which subordinates the interests of the

individual to the body politic, even though the State were in the

hands of an unscrupulous autocrat. The salvation of Italy, rather than

any metaphysical principle, is the animating motive of Machiavelli's

political writings. Yet we may note that if he had laid a more solid

philosophical basis, if he had striven more vigorously to work out his

own conception of the _patria_, and to understand the laws of national

health, instead of trusting to such occasional remedies as the almost

desperate state of Italy afforded, he would have deserved better of

his country and more adequately fulfilled his own end.

[Footnote 550: The section on the types of commonwealths in the

_Discorsi_ (cap. ii.) comes straight from Polybius. But I am not aware

of any signs in Machiavelli of a direct study of the elder Greek

philosophical writings.]

Though Machiavelli had not worked out the conception of a nation as an

organic whole, he was penetrated with the thought, familiar to his

age, that all human institutions, like men, have a youth, a manhood,

and a period of decline. Looking round him, he perceived that Italy,

of all the European nations, had advanced farthest on the path of

dissolution. He calls the Italians the reproach and corruption of the

world--_la corruttela, il vituperio del mondo_. When he inquires into

the causes of this ruin, he is led to assign (i) the moral debasement

of his country to the Roman Church; (ii) her sloth and inefficiency in

warfare to the despots and the mercenaries; (iii) her inability to

cope with greater nations to the want of one controlling power in the

peninsula. A nation, he argues, cannot be a nation while divided into

independent and antagonistic States. It needs to be united under a

monarch like France, reduced beneath the sway of a presiding

commonwealth like ancient Rome, or connected in a federation like the

Swiss. This doctrine of the nation, or, to use his own phrase, of the

_patria_, as distinguished from the Commune and the Empire, was highly

original in Italy at the time when Machiavelli gave it utterance. It

contained the first logically reasoned aspiration after that

independence in unity, which the Italians were destined to realize

between the years 1858 and 1871. He may be said to have formed it by

meditating on the Roman historians, and by comparing Italy with the

nascent modern nations. The notion of ethnology did not enter into it

so much as the notion of political and social cohesion. Yet

nationality was not excluded; for he conceived of no power, whether

Empire or Church, above the people who had strength to define

themselves against their neighbors. To secure for the population of

the Italian peninsula that unity which he rightly considered essential

to the _patria_, and the want of which constituted their main

inferiority, was the object of all his speculations.

The word _patria_ sounds the keynote of his political Army, and a

patriot is synonymous for him with a completely virtuous man. All

energies, public and private, are only valuable in so far as they

build up the fabric of the commonwealth. Religion is good because it

sustains the moral fiber of the people. It is a powerful instrument in

the hands of a wise governor; and the best religion is that which

develops hardy and law-loving qualities. He criticises Christianity

for exalting contemplative virtues above the energies of practical

life, and for encouraging a spirit of humility. He sternly condemns

the Church because she has been unfaithful even to the tame ideal of

her saints, and has set an example of licentious living. Religion is

needed as the basis of morality; and morality itself must be

encouraged as the safeguard of that discipline which constitutes a

nation's vigor. A moralized race is stronger than a corrupt one,

because it has a higher respect for law and social order, because it

accepts public burdens more cheerfully, because it is more obedient to

military ordinances. Thus both religion and morality are means to the

grand end of human existence, which is strenuous life in a united

nation. I need hardly point out how this conception runs counter to

the transcendentalism of the Middle Ages.

Machiavelli admires the Germans for their discipline and sobriety,

which he ascribes to the soundness of their religious instincts.

France and Spain, he says, have been contaminated by the same

corrupting influence as Italy; but they owe their present superiority

to the fact of their monarchical allegiance. This opens a second

indictment against the Church. Not only has the Church demoralized the

people; but it is chiefly due to the ambition of the Popes that Italy

has never passed beyond the stage of conflict and disunion.

An important element in this conception of the _patria_ is that it

should be militant. Races that have ceased from war, are on the road

to ruin; and only those are powerful which train the native population

to arms. The feebleness of Italy can be traced to the mercenary

system, introduced by despots adopted by commercial republics, and

favored by ecclesiastics. If the Italians desire to recover freedom,

they must form a national militia; and this can best be done by

adapting the principles of the Roman army to modern requirements. The

_Art of War_ is a development of this theme. At its close, Machiavelli

promises the scepter of Italy, together with the glory of creating

Italian nationality, to any State clear-sighted and self-denying

enough to arm its citizens and take the lead in the peninsula. That

State, he says, shall play the part of Macedon. Reading the peroration

of the _Art of War_ by the light of recent history, its paragraphs

sound like a prophecy. What Machiavelli there promised, has been

achieved, much in the way he indicated, by Piedmont, the Macedon of

United Italy.

When Machiavelli discusses the forms of constitutions, he is clearly

thinking of cities rather than of nations as we understand them. He

has no conception of representative government, but bases all his

observations on the principle of burghership. There is no sound

intermediate, he says, between a commonwealth and a principality. In

the former, the burghers have equal rights. In the latter there will

be a hierarchy of classes. Though his sympathies are with the former

(since he holds that the equality of the citizens is the best

safeguard for the liberties and law abiding virtues of the State), he

is yet by no means unfavorable to despotism. The decadence of Italy,

indeed, had gone so far that her best chance of restoration depended

on a prince. Therefore, while he suggests measures for converting

despotic States into republics by crushing the aristocracy, and for

creating principalities out of free commonwealths by instituting an

order of nobles, he regards the latter as the easier task of the two.

Upon such topics we must always bear in mind that what he says is

partly speculative, and partly meant to meet the actual conditions of

Italian politics. The point of view is never simply philosophical nor

yet simply practical. So long as the great end could be achieved, and

a strong military power could rise in Italy, he is indifferent to the

means employed. The peroration of the _Art of War_ is an appeal to

either prince or republic. The peroration of the _Riforma di Firenze_

is an appeal to a patriotic Nomothetes. He there says to Clement: You

have one of those singular opportunities offered to you, which confer

undying glory on a mortal; you may make Florence free, and, by wise

regulations, render her the bulwark of renascent Italy. The peroration

of the _Principe_ is an appeal to an ambitious autocrat. Follow the

suggestions of ancient and contemporary history, which all point to

the formation of a native army. Comprehend the magnitude of the task,

and use the right means for executing it; and you will earn the fame

of restoring your country to her place among the nations.

The case of Italy is almost desperate. Yet there is still hope. A

prudent lawgiver may infuse life into the decaying commonwealth of

Florence. A spirited despot may succeed in bringing the whole

peninsula by force of arms beneath his sway. Machiavelli will not

scrutinize the nature of the remedy too closely. He is ready to

sacrifice his republican sympathies, and to welcome the saviour who

comes even in the guise of Cesare Borgia. When the salvation of the

_patria_ is at stake, none but precisians can hesitate about the

choice of instruments.

This indifference to means, provided the end be secured, is

characteristic of the man. Machiavelli's Machiavellism consists in

regarding politics as a game of skill, where all ways are justified,

and fixity of purpose wins. He does not believe in Fortune, though he

admits the favorable circumstances which smoothed the way for men like

Cesare. With Juvenal, he says: _Nos te, nos facimus, Fortuna, deam_.

Again, he does not believe in Providence. Though a prophet speak with

the voice of God, he will not succeed unless, like Moses, he be

provided with a sword to ratify his revelation. History is a logical

sequence of events, the sole intelligible nexus between its several

links being the human will. Virtue is decision of character,

accompanied by intellectual sagacity; it is the strong man's

subordination of his passions, prejudices, predilections, energies, to

the chosen aim. We all admit that it is better to be good than bad.

Yet morality has little to do with political success. What lies in the

way of really great achievement, is the mediocrity of human nature.

Men will not be completely bad or perfectly good. They spoil their

best endeavors by vacillation and incompetence to guide their action

with regard to the sole end in view.

Enough has been said in different portions of this book about the

morality of Machiavelli's political essays. Yet this much may be here

repeated. Those who wish to understand it, must not forget the

Medieval background of the despots--Ezzelini, Visconti, Scaligeri,

Estensi, Carreresi--which lay behind Machiavelli. The sinfulness,

treason, masterful personality, Thyestean tragedies, enormous vices

and intolerable mischief of the Renaissance--all this was but a pale

reflex of the middle ages. In those earlier tyrants, the Centaur

progenitors of feebler broods, through generations in which men

gradually discriminated the twy-formed nature of their ancestry, the

lust and luxury of sin had been at their last apogee. _In istis

peccandi voluptas erat summa._ What followed in Machiavelli's age, was

reflection succeeding to action--evil philosophized in place of evil

energetic.

Though Machiavelli perceived that the decadence of Italy was due to

bad education, corrupt customs, and a habit of irreligion, he did not

insist on the necessity of reformation. He was satisfied with invoking

a Dictator, and he counseled this Dictator to meet the badness of his

age with fraud and violence. Thus he based his hope of national

regeneration upon those very vices which he indicated as the cause of

national degeneracy. Whether we ascribe this error to the spirit of

the times in which he lived, or to something defective in his own

character, it is clear he had not grasped the fundamental principle of

righteousness, as that which can alone be safely trusted by a people

or its princes. Perhaps he thought that, for practical purposes, the

method of radical reformation was too tardy. Perhaps he despaired of

seeing it attempted. Of all Italian institutions, the Church, in his

opinion, was the most corrupted. Yet the Church held religious

monopoly, and controlled education. And the Church had severed

morality from religion, religion from the State; making both the

private concern of individuals between their conscience and their God.

Just as Machiavelli proved himself incapable of transcending the

corruption of his age, though he denounced it; so, while he grasped

the notion of a _patria_ superior to the commune, he was not able to

disengage his mind from the associations of Italian diplomacy. He

perceived that the _debris_ of medieval society in Italy--the Papacy,

the nobles, the _condottieri_--afforded no foundation for the State he

dreamed of building. He relied on the masses of the people as the only

sound constituent of his ideal _patria_. He foresaw a united nation,

to which the individual should devote himself, and which should absorb

the dispersed forces of the race. And yet he had not conceived of the

nation as a living whole, obeying its own laws of evolution and

expansion. He regarded the State as a mechanical or artificial

product, to be molded by the will of a firm ruler. In his theory there

is always a Nomothetes, a Dictator, the intervenient skill of a

constructor, whom he imagines capable of altering the conditions of

political existence by a _coup d'etat_ or by a readjustment of

conflicting rights and interests. Even while praising the French

monarchy for its stability, in words that show a just appreciation of

constitutional government, he hypothesizes a lawgiver in the past.

_Chi ordino quello stato, volle che quelli re_--he who organized that

State, willed that those kings, etc. The _ordino_ and _volle_ are both

characteristic of his habitual point of view. Probably this faith in

manipulation arose from his lifelong habit of regarding small

political communities, where change was easily effected. In his works

we do not gain any broad prospect from the vantage-ground of

comprehensive principles, but a minutely analytical discussion of

statecraft, based in the last resort upon the observation of decadent

Italian cities. The question always presents itself: how, given

certain circumstances, ought a republic or a prince to use them to the

best advantage? The deeper problem, how a nation stirred by some

impulse, which combines all classes in a common heroism or a common

animosity, must act, hardly occurs to his mind. England, with forces

intellectual, emotional and practical at fullest strain, in combat

with the Spanish tyranny, adopting a course of conduct which reveals

the nation to itself by the act of its instinctive will--such a phase

of the larger, more magnetic life of peoples, which Milton compared to

the new youth of the eagle, had not been observed by Machiavelli. The

German Reformation, the French Revolution, the American War of

Independence, might have taught him to understand that conception of

the modern nation which he had divined, but which the conditions of

his experience prevented his appropriating. Had he fully grasped it,

we can scarcely believe that the _Principe_ would have been written.

The good faith of that essay depends upon a misconception.

In like manner Machiavelli discerned the weaknesses of the Renaissance

without escaping from its enthusiasms. He despised the aesthetical

ideal of his age. He was willing to sacrifice form, beauty, rhythm,

the arts of culture and learned leisure, to stern matters of fact and

stringent discipline. Yet he believed as firmly as any humanist, that

the regeneration of his country must proceed from a revival of the

past. It is the loss of antique virtues that has enervated our

character, he cries. It is the neglect of historical lessons that

renders our policy so suicidal. We need to recover the Roman military

system, the Roman craft of conquest, the Roman pride and poverty, the

Roman subordination of the individual to the State. What we want is a

dictator or a lawgiver after the Roman fashion--a Romulus, a Numa, a

Camillus, a Coriolanus. The _patria_, as he imagines it, is less the

modern nation than the Roman Commonwealth before the epoch of the

Empire. This unquestioning belief in the efficacy of classical revival

finds vent, at the close of the _Arte della Guerra_, in a sentence

highly characteristic of the Renaissance. "This province, Italy," he

says, "seems made to give new birth to things dead, as we have seen in

poetry, in painting, and in sculpture." Hence, he argues, it may be

her vocation to bring back the military system and supremacy of

ancient Rome.

Thus, to resume what has been said, Machiavelli ascribed the weakness

of the Italians to their loss of morality; but he was not logical

enough to insist that their regeneration must begin with a religious

revolution. He foresaw the modern nation; but he attempted to

construct it on the outlines of antiquity. Believing that States might

be formed or reformed by ingenious manipulation of machinery, he

acquired no true notion of constitutional development or national

evolution. His neglect to base his speculations on a thorough-going

definition of the State and its relation to man as a social being,

caused him to assume a severance between ethics and politics, which no

sound philosophy of human life will warrant.

On what, then, if these criticisms are just, is founded his claim to

rank among the inaugurators of historical and political science? The

answer has been already given. It was not so much what he taught, as

the spirit in which he approached the problems of his inquiry, which

was scientific in the modern sense. Practical, sincere and positive,

Machiavelli never raises points deficient in actuality. He does not

invite us to sympathize with the emotions of a visionary, or to follow

the vagaries of a dreamer. All that he presents, is hard, tangible

fact, wrought into precise uncompromising argument, expressed in

unmistakably plain language. Not only do his works cast floods of

light upon Italian history; but they suggest questions of vital

importance, which can still be discussed upon the ground selected by

their author. They are, moreover, so penetrated with the passion of a

patriot, however mistaken in his plan of national reconstitution, that

our first sense of repulsion yields to a warmer feeling of admiration

for the man who, from the depths of despair, could thus hope on

against hope for his country.

Studying Guicciardini, we remain within the same sphere of

conceptions, limited by the conditions of Italian politics in the

beginning of the sixteenth century. There is no less stringency of

minute analysis, an even sharper insight into motives, an equal purity

and precision of language.[551] But the moral atmosphere is different.

The corruption which Machiavelli perceived and criticised, is now

accepted. In the place of desperate remedies suggested by the dread of

certain ruin, Guicciardini has nothing to offer but indifference and

self-adjustment to the exigencies of the moment. Machiavelli was a

visionary and an idealist in spite of his positive bias. Guicciardini

is a practical diplomatist, bent on saving his own State and fortune

from the wreck which he contemplated. What gives grandeur to

Machiavelli's speculation is the conception of the _patria_, superior

to the individual, demanding unlimited self-sacrifice, and repaying

the devotion of the citizens by strength in union. This idea has

disappeared in Guicciardini's writings. In its stead he offers us

self-interested egotism. Where Machiavelli wrote _patria_, he

substituted _il particolare_. It follows from this cold acquiescence

in a base theory of public conduct, adapted to a recognized state of

social anarchy, that Guicciardini's philosophy is far more immoral

than Machiavelli's. The _Ricordi_, in which, under the form of

aphorisms, he condensed the results of his experience and observation,

have been well described as the "code of Italian corruption."

Resistance has to be abandoned. Remedies are hopeless. Let us sit down

and calmly criticise the process of decay. A wise man will seek to

turn the worst circumstances to his own profit; and what remains for

political sagacity is the accumulation of wealth, honors, offices of

power on the ambitious individual.

[Footnote 551: I refer to the _Opere Inedite_. In the _Isteria

d'Italia_, Guicciardini's style is inferior to Machiavelli's.]

Machiavelli and Guicciardini had this in common, that their mental

attitude was analytical, positive, critically scientific. It negatived

the _a priori_ idealism of medieval political philosophy, and

introduced a just conception of the method of inquiry. This quality

connects them on the one hand with the practical politicians of their

age, and on the other with its representative thinkers in the field of

metaphysics.

It is no part of my plan to attempt a general history of Italian

philosophy during the Renaissance period, or even to indicate its

leading moments. On the scale of my present work, any such endeavor

would of necessity be incomplete; for the material to be dealt with is

obscure, and the threads of thought to be interwoven are scattered,

requiring no little patience and no slight expenditure of exposition

on the part of one who seeks to place them in their proper relations.

Of philosophy, in the strict sense of the term, the Italian

Renaissance had not much to offer. We do not revert to that epoch,

expecting to meet with systematic theories of the universe, plausible

analyses of the laws of thought, or ingenious speculations upon the

nature of being. It is well known that the thinkers of the fifteenth

and sixteenth centuries can scarcely claim to have done more than lead

the revolt of reason against scholastic tyranny and obsolete

authorities, appealing with often misdirected enthusiasm to original

sources, and suggesting theories and methods which, in the hands of

abler speculators, at a more fortunate epoch, generated the

philosophies of modern Europe. Yet even so the movement of thought in

Italy was of no slight moment, and the work accomplished deserves to

be recorded with more honor than it has hitherto received from the

historians of philosophy.

The Renaissance in general may be called the Middle Ages in

dissolution. That the period was transitional in its chief aspects,

has often already been insisted on. The massive fabrics of feudalism

and the Church were breaking up. The vast edifice of scholastic

theology was being undermined by men who had the energy to free

themselves from orthodox tradition, but scarcely force enough or

opportunity to mold the thought of the new age. The Italians who

occupied themselves with philosophical problems, from Petrarch to

Campanella, hold an intermediate place between the schoolmen and the

founders of modern metaphysics. They accomplish the transition from S.

Thomas and Occam to Bacon, Descartes and Spinoza. It is possible to

mark three phases in this process of transition, each of which was

necessary in the progress of the mind from theological ontology to

science and free speculation. The thinkers of the first stage began by

questioning the authority of dogma. Those of the second stage accepted

the authority of the ancients. Those of the third appealed to Nature

against ecclesiastical and classical authority alike. Humanism was

thus intermediate between scholasticism and what, for want of a more

definite phrase, may be termed rationalism. Succeeding to the

schoolmen, the scholars cleared the groundwork of philosophy of old

encumbrances, and reappropriated antique systems of thought. After

them, the schools of Lower Italy, including Telesio, Campanella and

Bruno, prepared the path to be immediately followed; with what profit

is apparent to the dullest intellect. Clearly, and beyond the

possibility of question, they propounded the main problems which have

agitated all the scientific schools of modern Europe. To them belongs

the credit of having first speculated knowledge and reality from no

external standpoint, but from the immediate consciousness. The

_Interrogatio Naturae_ and the _Cogito, ergo sum_, which became the

watchwords of modern empiricism and rationalism, are theirs. But, at

the very moment when the Italians of the Revival had performed their

pioneering task-work, all vital vigor in the nation was extinguished

or suspended by the deadly influences of Spanish domination and Papal

terrorism.[552] It was left for other races to enter on the promised

land which they had conquered.

[Footnote 552: I cannot refrain from translating a paragraph in

Spaventa's Essay upon Bruno, which, no less truly than passionately,

states the pith of this Italian tragedy. "The sixteenth century was

the epoch, in which the human spirit burst the chains that up to then

had bound it, and was free. There is no more glorious age for Italy.

The heroes of thought and freedom, who then fought for truth, were

almost all her sons. They were persecuted and extinguished with sword

and fire. Would that the liberty of thought, the autonomy of the

reason, they gave to the other nations of Europe, had borne fruit in

Italy! From that time forward we remained as though cut off from the

universal life; it seemed as if the spirit which inspired the world

and pushed it onward, had abandoned us" (_Saggi di Critica_, Napoli,

1867, p. 140).]

Upon its first appearance, it was clear that humanism would run

counter to both currents of medieval thought, the orthodox and the

heretical, the Thomistic and Averroistic. Dante designed his epic in

accordance with the fixed outlines of Thomistic theology. The

freethinkers of the Lombard universities expressed a not uncertain

adhesion to the materialistic doctrines which passed for Averroism.

But Petrarch, the hero of the coming age, pronounced his contempt for

scholastic quibbles, and at the same time waged war against the

tenants of Averroes. He introduced a new spirit into philosophical

discussion, a new style of treatment, literary rather than scientific,

which tended to substitute humane culture for logical pedantry. The

departure from medieval lines of thought, thus signalized by Petrarch,

was followed by the students of the next two centuries. Questions

which had agitated Europe since the days of Roscelin, now seemed to

lose the interest of actuality. The distinctions of Nominalism and

Realism retained no attraction for men who were engaged in discovering

manuscripts, learning to write correct Latin, acquiring Greek, and

striving to penetrate the secret of antiquity. The very style of the

schoolmen became a byword for ineptitude and barbarism. It required no

little courage and a prestige as brilliant as Pico's to sustain the

cause of Albertus Magnus or Johannes Scotus.[553] Scholars of the type

of Poggio and Filelfo, Beccadelli and Poliziano, abhorred their

ponderous metaphysics, as though they were grotesque chimeras

generated by the indigestion of half-starved intellectual stomachs.

Orpheus had reappeared. He bade the world thenceforward move to music

and melodious rhythms both of thought and language. The barbarians

might harbor Mercury within their hearts, to quote Pico's apology;

they might display wisdom in unvarnished plainness; but what were

these claims worth in an age that required the lips rather than the

soul to be eloquent, and when a decorated fiction found more favor

than a naked truth? No more decided antithesis than that of scholastic

philosophy to the new classical ideal is conceivable.

[Footnote 553: _Epistolae Angeli Poliziani_, lib. ix. p. 269 (ed.

Gryphius, 1533).]

Thus the first movement of the Revival implied an uncompromising

abandonment of medieval thought as worse than worthless. If men

educated by the humanistic method were to speculate, they would do so

upon lines different from those suggested by the schoolmen. Cicero and

Seneca became their models; and the rhetorical treatment of moral

topics passed muster with them for philosophy. A garrulous colloquial

skimming in fair Latin over the well-trodden ground of ethics

supplanted the endeavor to think strictly upon difficult subjects.

Much of this literature--the dialogues of Alberti, for example, and

Landino's Camaldolese Disputations--can still be read with profit. But

regarded from the point of view of systematic thought, it has slight

importance. We value it principally for the light it casts upon

contemporary manners and modes of opinion.

The study of Greek and Latin texts revealed a world to the Italians

far wider than the regions where the medieval mind had moved in narrow

limits. The immediate effect of this discovery was not, however,

wholly salutary. The ancients began to exercise a kind of despotism;

and a new authority, no less stringent than that of dogma, bound the

scholars of the Revival beneath the tyranny of classical names. It was

impossible for the intellect to free itself from fetters at a single

leap. This second servitude seemed destined to be even more pernicious

than the first; for as yet there was no criticism, and the

superincumbent masses of antique literature, extending from the

earliest dawn of Greek history to the latest commentators of Byzantium

and Ravenna, underwent but little process of sifting. It was enough

for the Italians of that epoch to assimilate. Nothing which bore the

stamp of antiquity came amiss to their omnivorous appetite.

Compilations from second or third sources were valued as equally

precious with original texts. The testimony of hearsay reporters

passed for conclusive evidence in matters of history. Masters in

philosophy were confounded with expositors, who flourished at the

distance of some centuries. Athens and Alexandria, Rome and

Constantinople, were indiscriminately regarded as a single Holy Land

of wisdom.

While this fermentation of assimilative erudition was still at its

height, Gemistos Plethon preached his Neo-platonic mysticism at

Florence; and the first attempt at a new philosophy for Western

Europe, independent of the schoolmen, uninfluenced by orthodoxy,

proceeded from the Medicean academy. The Platonism of Ficino and Pico,

we now know, was of a very mixed and ill-determined quality.

Uncontrolled by critical insight, and paralyzed by the prestige

attaching to antiquity, the Florentine school produced little better

than an unintelligent eclecticism. Their so-called philosophical

writings were commonplace-books of citations, anthologies of

ill-digested abstracts, in which Greek and Asiatic and Christian

opinions issued in an incoherent theosophy. It must be reckoned a

great misfortune for Italian thought that the Platonists were able to

approach the masterpieces of their Attic teacher through a medium of

Alexandrian and Byzantine enthusiasm. Had they been forced to attack

the "Republic" without the intervention of Plotinus and Gemistos, they

might have started on some fruitful line of speculation. They would at

least have perceived that Plato's theology formed a background to his

psychological, ethical, educational and political theories, instead of

fastening upon those visionary systems which his later Greek

expositors extracted from the least important portions of his works.

At the same time, this Neo-platonic mysticism was only too sympathetic

to the feebler pietism of the middle ages for men who had discovered

it, to doubt its inspiration.