MACHIAVELLI

(March 1827) _Oeuvres completes de MACHIAVEL, traduites par J. V. PERIER

Paris: 1825._

|THOSE who have attended to the practice of our literary tribunal are

well aware that, by means of certain legal fictions similar to those of

Westminster Hall, we are frequently enabled to take cognisance of cases

lying beyond the sphere of our original jurisdiction. We need hardly

say, therefore, that in the present instance M. Perier is merely a

Richard Roe, who will not be mentioned in any subsequent stage of the

proceedings, and whose name is used for the sole purpose of bringing

Machiavelli into court.

We doubt whether any name in literary history be so generally odious as

that of the man whose character and writings we now propose to consider.

The terms in which he is commonly described would seem to import that

he was the Tempter, the Evil Principle, the discoverer of ambition

and revenge, the original inventor of perjury, and that, before the

publication of his fatal Prince, there had never been a hypocrite, a

tyrant, or a traitor, a simulated virtue, or a convenient crime.

One writer gravely assures us that Maurice of Saxony learned all his

fraudulent policy from that execrable volume. Another remarks that since

it was translated into Turkish, the Sultans have been more addicted

than formerly to the custom of strangling their brothers. Lord Lyttelton

charges the poor Florentine with the manifold treasons of the house of

Guise, and with the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Several authors have

hinted that the Gunpowder Plot is to be primarily attributed to his

doctrines, and seem to think that his effigy ought to be substituted for

that of Guy Faux, in those processions by which the ingenious youth of

England annually commemorate the preservation of the Three Estates. The

Church of Rome has pronounced his works accursed things. Nor have our

own countrymen been backward in testifying their opinion of his merits.

Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of

his Christian name a synonym for the Devil.=

````Nick Machiavel had ne’er a trick,

````Tho’ he gave his name to our old Nick.

`````Hudibras, Part iii. Canto i.=

[But, we believe, there is a schism on this subject among the

antiquarians.]

It is indeed scarcely possible for any person, not well acquainted

with the history and literature of Italy, to read without horror and

amazement the celebrated treatise which has brought so much obloquy on

the name of Machiavelli. Such a display of wickedness, naked yet not

ashamed, such cool, judicious, scientific atrocity, seemed rather to

belong to a fiend than to the most depraved of men. Principles which

the most hardened ruffian would scarcely hint to his most trusted

accomplice, or avow, without the disguise of some palliating

sophism, even to his own mind, are professed without the slightest

circumlocution, and assumed as the fundamental axioms of all political

science.

It is not strange that ordinary readers should regard the author of such

a book as the most depraved and shameless of human beings. Wise men,

however, have always been inclined to look with great suspicion on

the angels and daemons of the multitude: and in the present instance,

several circumstances have led even superficial observers to question

the justice of the vulgar decision. It is notorious that Machiavelli

was, through life, a zealous republican. In the same year in which he

composed his manual of King-craft, he suffered imprisonment and torture

in the cause of public liberty. It seems inconceivable that the martyr

of freedom should have designedly acted as the apostle of tyranny.

Several eminent writers have, therefore, endeavoured to detect in this

unfortunate performance some concealed meaning, more consistent with the

character and conduct of the author than that which appears at the first

glance.

One hypothesis is that Machiavelli intended to practise on the young

Lorenzo de Medici a fraud similar to that which Sunderland is said to

have employed against our James the Second, and that he urged his pupil

to violent and perfidious measures, as the surest means of accelerating

the moment of deliverance and revenge. Another supposition which Lord

Bacon seems to countenance, is that the treatise was merely a piece of

grave irony, intended to warn nations against the arts of ambitious men.

It would be easy to show that neither of these solutions is consistent

with many passages in The Prince itself. But the most decisive

refutation is that which is furnished by the other works of Machiavelli.

In all the writings which he gave to the public, and in all those

which the research of editors has, in the course of three centuries,

discovered, in his Comedies, designed for the entertainment of the

multitude, in his Comments on Livy, intended for the perusal of the most

enthusiastic patriots of Florence, in his History, inscribed to one of

the most amiable and estimable of the Popes, in his public despatches,

in his private memoranda, the same obliquity of moral principle for

which The Prince is so severely censured is more or less discernible. We

doubt whether it would be possible to find, in all the many volumes of

his compositions, a single expression indicating that dissimulation and

treachery had ever struck him as discreditable.

After this, it may seem ridiculous to say that we are acquainted with

few writings which exhibit so much elevation of sentiment, so pure and

warm a zeal for the public good, or so just a view of the duties and

rights of citizens, as those of Machiavelli. Yet so it is. And even

from The Prince itself we could select many passages in support of this

remark. To a reader of our age and country this inconsistency is, at

first, perfectly bewildering. The whole man seems to be an enigma,

a grotesque assemblage of incongruous qualities, selfishness and

generosity, cruelty and benevolence, craft and simplicity, abject

villainy and romantic heroism. One sentence is such as a veteran

diplomatist would scarcely write in cipher for the direction of his most

confidential spy; the next seems to be extracted from a theme composed

by an ardent schoolboy on the death of Leonidas. An act of dexterous

perfidy, and an act of patriotic self-devotion, call forth the same kind

and the same degree of respectful admiration. The moral sensibility of

the writer seems at once to be morbidly obtuse and morbidly acute. Two

characters altogether dissimilar are united in him. They are not merely

joined, but interwoven. They are the warp and the woof of his mind; and

their combination, like that of the variegated threads in shot silk,

gives to the whole texture a glancing and ever-changing appearance. The

explanation might have been easy, if he had been a very weak or a very

affected man. But he was evidently neither the one nor the other.

His works prove, beyond all contradiction, that his understanding was

strong, his taste pure, and his sense of the ridiculous exquisitely

keen.

This is strange: and yet the strangest is behind. There is no reason

whatever to think, that those amongst whom he lived saw anything

shocking or incongruous in his writings. Abundant proofs remain of the

high estimation in which both his works and his person were held by

the most respectable among his contemporaries. Clement the Seventh

patronised the publication of those very books which the Council of

Trent, in the following generation, pronounced unfit for the perusal

of Christians. Some members of the democratical party censured the

Secretary for dedicating The Prince to a patron who bore the unpopular

name of Medici. But to those immoral doctrines which have since called

forth such severe reprehensions no exception appears to have been taken.

The cry against them was first raised beyond the Alps, and seems to have

been heard with amazement in Italy. The earliest assailant, as far as we

are aware, was a countryman of our own, Cardinal Pole. The author of the

Anti-Machiavelli was a French Protestant.

It is, therefore, in the state of moral feeling among the Italians of

those times that we must seek for the real explanation of what seems

most mysterious in the life and writings of this remarkable man. As

this is a subject which suggests many interesting considerations, both

political and metaphysical, we shall make no apology for discussing it

at some length.

During the gloomy and disastrous centuries which followed the downfall

of the Roman Empire, Italy had preserved, in a far greater degree than

any other part of Western Europe, the traces of ancient civilisation.

The night which descended upon her was the night of an Arctic summer.

The dawn began to reappear before the last reflection of the preceding

sunset had faded from the horizon. It was in the time of the French

Merovingians and of the Saxon Heptarchy that ignorance and ferocity

seemed to have done their worst. Yet even then the Neapolitan provinces,

recognising the authority of the Eastern Empire, preserved something

of Eastern knowledge and refinement. Rome, protected by the sacred

character of her Pontiffs, enjoyed at least comparative security and

repose, Even in those regions where the sanguinary Lombards had fixed

their monarchy, there was incomparably more of wealth, of information,

of physical comfort, and of social order, than could be found in Gaul,

Britain, or Germany.

That which most distinguished Italy from the neighbouring countries

was the importance which the population of the towns, at a very early

period, began to acquire. Some cities had been founded in wild and

remote situations, by fugitives who had escaped from the rage of the

barbarians. Such were Venice and Genoa, which preserved their freedom

by their obscurity, till they became able to preserve it by their power.

Other cities seem to have retained, under all the changing dynasties of

invaders, under Odoacer and Theodoric, Narses and Alboin, the municipal

institutions which had been conferred on them by the liberal policy of

the Great Republic. In provinces which the central government was too

feeble either to protect or to oppress, these institutions gradually

acquired stability and vigour. The citizens, defended by their walls,

and governed by their own magistrates and their own by-laws, enjoyed a

considerable share of republican independence. Thus a strong democratic

spirit was called into action. The Carlovingian sovereigns were too

imbecile to subdue it. The generous policy of Otho encouraged it. It

might perhaps have been suppressed by a close coalition between

the Church and the Empire. It was fostered and invigorated by their

disputes. In the twelfth century it attained its full vigour, and, after

a long and doubtful conflict, triumphed over the abilities and courage

of the Swabian princes.

The assistance of the Ecclesiastical power had greatly contributed to

the success of the Guelfs. That success would, however, have been a

doubtful good, if its only effect had been to substitute a moral for

a political servitude, and to exalt the Popes at the expense of the

Caesars. Happily the public mind of Italy had long contained the

seeds of free opinions, which were now rapidly developed by the genial

influence of free institutions. The people of that country had observed

the whole machinery of the Church, its saints and its miracles, its

lofty pretensions and its splendid ceremonial, its worthless blessings

and its harmless curses, too long and too closely to be duped. They

stood behind the scenes on which others were gazing with childish awe

and interest. They witnessed the arrangement of the pulleys, and the

manufacture of the thunders. They saw the natural faces and heard the

natural voices of the actors. Distant nations looked on the Pope as the

Vicegerent of the Almighty, the oracle of the All-wise, the umpire from

whose decisions, in the disputes either of theologians or of kings, no

Christian ought to appeal. The Italians were acquainted with all the

follies of his youth, and with all the dishonest arts by which he had

attained power. They knew how often he had employed the keys of the

Church to release himself from the most sacred engagements, and its

wealth to pamper his mistresses and nephews. The doctrines and rites of

the established religion they treated with decent reverence. But though

they still called themselves Catholics, they had ceased to be Papists.

Those spiritual arms which carried terror into the palaces and camps

of the proudest sovereigns excited only contempt in the immediate

neighbourhood of the Vatican. Alexander, when he commanded our Henry the

Second to submit to the lash before the tomb of a rebellious subject,

was himself an exile. The Romans apprehending that he entertained

designs against their liberties, had driven him from their city; and

though he solemnly promised to confine himself for the future to his

spiritual functions, they still refused to readmit him.

In every other part of Europe, a large and powerful privileged class

trampled on the people and defied the Government. But in the most

flourishing parts of Italy, the feudal nobles were reduced to

comparative insignificance. In some districts they took shelter under

the protection of the powerful commonwealths which they were unable to

oppose, and gradually sank into the mass of burghers. In other places

they possessed great influence; but it was an influence widely different

from that which was exercised by the aristocracy of any Transalpine

kingdom. They were not petty princes, but eminent citizens. Instead of

strengthening their fastnesses among the mountains, they embellished

their palaces in the market-place. The state of society in the

Neapolitan dominions, and in some parts of the Ecclesiastical State,

more nearly resembled that which existed in the great monarchies of

Europe. But the Governments of Lombardy and Tuscany, through all their

revolutions, preserved a different character. A people, when assembled

in a town, is far more formidable to its rulers than when dispersed over

a wide extent of country. The most arbitrary of the Caesars found it

necessary to feed and divert the inhabitants of their unwieldy capital

at the expense of the provinces. The citizens of Madrid have more than

once besieged their sovereign in his own palace, and extorted from him

the most humiliating concessions. The Sultans have often been compelled

to propitiate the furious rabble of Constantinople with the head of

an unpopular Vizier. From the same cause there was a certain tinge of

democracy in the monarchies and aristocracies of Northern Italy.

Thus liberty, partially indeed and transiently, revisited Italy; and

with liberty came commerce and empire, science and taste, all the

comforts and all the ornaments of life. The Crusades, from which the

inhabitants of other countries gained nothing but relics and wounds,

brought to the rising commonwealths of the Adriatic and Tyrrhene seas

a large increase of wealth, dominion, and knowledge. The moral and

geographical position of those commonwealths enabled them to profit

alike by the barbarism of the West and by the civilisation of the East.

Italian ships covered every sea. Italian factories rose on every shore.

The tables of Italian moneychangers were set in every city. Manufactures

flourished. Banks were established. The operations of the commercial

machine were facilitated by many useful and beautiful inventions. We

doubt whether any country of Europe, our own excepted, have at the

present time reached so high a point of wealth and civilisation as some

parts of Italy had attained four hundred years ago. Historians rarely

descend to those details from which alone the real state of a community

can be collected. Hence posterity is too often deceived by the vague

hyperboles of poets and rhetoricians, who mistake the splendour of a

court for the happiness of a people. Fortunately, John Villani has given

us an ample and precise account of the state of Florence in the early

part of the fourteenth century. The revenue of the Republic amounted

to three hundred thousand florins; a sum which, allowing for the

depreciation of the precious metals, was at least equivalent to six

hundred thousand pounds sterling; a larger sum than England and Ireland,

two centuries ago, yielded annually to Elizabeth. The manufacture of

wool alone employed two hundred factories and thirty thousand workmen.

The cloth annually produced sold, at an average, for twelve hundred

thousand florins; a sum fully equal in exchangeable value to two

millions and a half of our money. Four hundred thousand florins were

annually coined. Eighty banks conducted the commercial operations,

not of Florence only but of all Europe. The transactions of these

establishments were sometimes of a magnitude which may surprise even the

contemporaries of the Barings and the Rothschilds. Two houses advanced

to Edward the Third of England upwards of three hundred thousand marks,

at a time when the mark contained more silver than fifty shillings of

the present day, and when the value of silver was more than quadruple

of what it now is. The city and its environs contained a hundred and

seventy thousand inhabitants. In the various schools about ten thousand

children were taught to read; twelve hundred studied arithmetic; six

hundred received a learned education.

The progress of elegant literature and of the fine arts was proportioned

to that of the public prosperity. Under the despotic successors of

Augustus, all the fields of intellect had been turned into arid wastes,

still marked out by formal boundaries, still retaining the traces of

old cultivation, but yielding neither flowers nor fruit. The deluge of

barbarism came. It swept away all the landmarks. It obliterated all the

signs of former tillage. But it fertilised while it devastated. When

it receded, the wilderness was as the garden of God, rejoicing on

every side, laughing, clapping its hands, pouring forth, in spontaneous

abundance, everything brilliant, or fragrant, or nourishing. A new

language, characterised by simple sweetness and simple energy, had

attained perfection. No tongue ever furnished more gorgeous and vivid

tints to poetry; nor was it long before a poet appeared who knew how

to employ them. Early in the fourteenth century came forth the Divine

Comedy, beyond comparison the greatest work of imagination which had

appeared since the poems of Homer. The following generation produced

indeed no second Dante: but it was eminently distinguished by general

intellectual activity. The study of the Latin writers had never been

wholly neglected in Italy. But Petrarch introduced a more profound,

liberal, and elegant scholarship, and communicated to his countrymen

that enthusiasm for the literature, the history, and the antiquities

of Rome, which divided his own heart with a frigid mistress and a more

frigid Muse. Boccaccio turned their attention to the more sublime and

graceful models of Greece.

From this time, the admiration of learning and genius became almost an

idolatry among the people of Italy. Kings and republics, cardinals

and doges, vied with each other in honouring and flattering Petrarch.

Embassies from rival States solicited the honour of his instructions.

His coronation agitated the Court of Naples and the people of Rome as

much as the most important political transaction could have done. To

collect books and antiques, to found professorships, to patronise men of

learning, became almost universal fashions among the great. The spirit

of literary research allied itself to that of commercial enterprise.

Every place to which the merchant princes of Florence extended their

gigantic traffic, from the bazars of the Tigris to the monasteries

of the Clyde, was ransacked for medals and manuscripts. Architecture,

painting, and sculpture, were munificently encouraged. Indeed it would

be difficult to name an Italian of eminence, during the period of which

we speak, who, whatever may have been his general character, did not at

least affect a love of letters and of the arts.

Knowledge and public prosperity continued to advance together. Both

attained their meridian in the age of Lorenzo the Magnificent. We

cannot refrain from quoting the splendid passage, in which the Tuscan

Thucydides describes the state of Italy at that period. “Ridotta tutta

in somma pace e tranquillita, coltivata non meno ne’ luoghi piu montuosi

e piu sterili che nelle pianure e regioni piu fertili, ne sottoposta

ad altro imperio che de’ suoi medesimi, non solo era abbondantissima d’

abitatori e di ricchezze; ma illustrata sommamente dalla magnificenza di

molti principi, dallo splendore di molte nobilissime e bellissime citta,

dalla sedia e maesta della religione, fioriva d’ uomini prestantissimi

nell’ amministrazione delle cose pubbliche, e d’ingegni molto nobili in

tutte le scienze, ed in qualunque arte preclara ed industriosa.” When

we peruse this just and splendid description, we can scarcely persuade

ourselves that we are reading of times in which the annals of England

and France present us only with a frightful spectacle of poverty,

barbarity, and ignorance. From the oppressions of illiterate masters,

and the sufferings of a degraded peasantry, it is delightful to turn to

the opulent and enlightened States of Italy, to the vast and magnificent

cities, the ports, the arsenals, the villas, the museums, the libraries,

the marts filled with every article of comfort or luxury, the factories

swarming with artisans, the Apennines covered with rich cultivation up

to their very summits, the Po wafting the harvests of Lombardy to the

granaries of Venice, and carrying back the silks of Bengal and the

furs of Siberia to the palaces of Milan. With peculiar pleasure,

every cultivated mind must repose on the fair, the happy, the glorious

Florence, the halls which rang with the mirth of Pulci, the cell where

twinkled the midnight lamp of Politian, the statues on which the young

eye of Michael Angelo glared with the frenzy of a kindred inspiration,

the gardens in which Lorenzo meditated some sparkling song for the

May-day dance of the Etrurian virgins. Alas for the beautiful city! Alas

for the wit and the learning, the genius and the love!=

```“Le donne, e i cavalier, gli affanni, e gli agi,

```Che ne ‘nvogliava amore e cortesia

```La dove i cuor son fatti si malvagi.”=

A time was at hand, when all the seven vials of the Apocalypse were to

be poured forth and shaken out over those pleasant countries, a time of

slaughter, famine, beggary, infamy, slavery, despair.

In the Italian States, as in many natural bodies, untimely decrepitude

was the penalty of precocious maturity. Their early greatness, and their

early decline, are principally to be attributed to the same cause, the

preponderance which the towns acquired in the political system.

In a community of hunters or of shepherds, every man easily and

necessarily becomes a soldier. His ordinary avocations are perfectly

compatible with all the duties of military service. However remote may

be the expedition on which he is bound, he finds it easy to transport

with him the stock from which he derives his subsistence. The whole

people is an army; the whole year a march. Such was the state of society

which facilitated the gigantic conquests of Attila and Tamerlane.

But a people which subsists by the cultivation of the earth is in a very

different situation. The husbandman is bound to the soil on which he

labours. A long campaign would be ruinous to him. Still his pursuits

are such as give to his frame both the active and the passive strength

necessary to a soldier. Nor do they, at least in the infancy of

agricultural science, demand his uninterrupted attention. At particular

times of the year he is almost wholly unemployed, and can, without

injury to himself, afford the time necessary for a short expedition.

Thus the legions of Rome were supplied during its earlier wars. The

season during which the fields did not require the presence of the

cultivators sufficed for a short inroad and a battle. These operations,

too frequently interrupted to produce decisive results, yet served

to keep up among the people a degree of discipline and courage which

rendered them, not only secure, but formidable. The archers and billmen

of the middle ages, who, with provisions for forty days at their backs,

left the fields for the camp, were troops of the same description.

But when commerce and manufactures begin to flourish a great change

takes place. The sedentary habits of the desk and the loom render the

exertions and hardships of war insupportable. The business of traders

and artisans requires their constant presence and attention. In such a

community there is little superfluous time; but there is generally much

superfluous money. Some members of the society are, therefore, hired

to relieve the rest from a task inconsistent with their habits and

engagements.

The history of Greece is, in this, as in many other respects, the

best commentary on the history of Italy. Five hundred years before the

Christian era, the citizens of the republics round the Aegean Sea formed

perhaps the finest militia that ever existed. As wealth and refinement

advanced, the system underwent a gradual alteration. The Ionian States

were the first in which commerce and the arts were cultivated, and the

first in which the ancient discipline decayed. Within eighty years

after the battle of Plataea, mercenary troops were everywhere plying for

battles and sieges. In the time of Demosthenes, it was scarcely possible

to persuade or compel the Athenians to enlist for foreign service.

The laws of Lycurgus prohibited trade and manufactures. The Spartans,

therefore, continued to form a national force long after their

neighbours had begun to hire soldiers. But their military spirit

declined with their singular institutions. In the second century

before Christ, Greece contained only one nation of warriors, the

savage highlanders of Aetolia, who were some generations behind their

countrymen in civilisation and intelligence.

All the causes which produced these effects among the Greeks acted still

more strongly on the modern Italians. Instead of a power like Sparta,

in its nature warlike, they had amongst them an ecclesiastical state,

in its nature pacific. Where there are numerous slaves, every freeman is

induced by the strongest motives to familiarise himself with the use of

arms. The commonwealths of Italy did not, like those of Greece, swarm

with thousands of these household enemies. Lastly, the mode in which

military operations were conducted during the prosperous times of Italy

was peculiarly unfavourable to the formation of an efficient militia.

Men covered with iron from head to foot, armed with ponderous lances,

and mounted on horses of the largest breed, were considered as composing

the strength of an army. The infantry was regarded as comparatively

worthless, and was neglected till it became really so. These tactics

maintained their ground for centuries in most parts of Europe. That

foot-soldiers could withstand the charge of heavy cavalry was thought

utterly impossible, till, towards the close of the fifteenth century,

the rude mountaineers of Switzerland dissolved the spell, and astounded

the most experienced generals by receiving the dreaded shock on an

impenetrable forest of pikes.

The use of the Grecian spear, the Roman sword, or the modern bayonet,

might be acquired with comparative ease. But nothing short of the daily

exercise of years could train the man-at-arms to support his ponderous

panoply, and manage his unwieldy weapon. Throughout Europe this most

important branch of war became a separate profession. Beyond the Alps,

indeed, though a profession, it was not generally a trade. It was the

duty and the amusement of a large class of country gentlemen. It was the

service by which they held their lands, and the diversion by which, in

the absence of mental resources, they beguiled their leisure. But in the

Northern States of Italy, as we have already remarked, the growing power

of the cities, where it had not exterminated this order of men, had

completely changed their habits. Here, therefore, the practice of

employing mercenaries became universal, at a time when it was almost

unknown in other countries.

When war becomes the trade of a separate class, the least dangerous

course left to a government is to force that class into a standing army.

It is scarcely possible, that men can pass their lives in the service of

one State, without feeling some interest in its greatness. Its victories

are their victories. Its defeats are their defeats. The contract loses

something of its mercantile character. The services of the soldier are

considered as the effects of patriotic zeal, his pay as the tribute of

national gratitude. To betray the power which employs him, to be even

remiss in its service, are in his eyes the most atrocious and degrading

of crimes.

When the princes and commonwealths of Italy began to use hired

troops, their wisest course would have been to form separate military

establishments. Unhappily this was not done. The mercenary warriors of

the Peninsula, instead of being attached to the service of different

powers, were regarded as the common property of all. The connection

between the State and its defenders was reduced to the most simple

and naked traffic. The adventurer brought his horse, his weapons, his

strength, and his experience, into the market. Whether the King of

Naples or the Duke of Milan, the Pope or the Signory of Florence, struck

the bargain, was to him a matter of perfect indifference. He was for the

highest wages and the longest term. When the campaign for which he had

contracted was finished, there was neither law nor punctilio to prevent

him from instantly turning his arms against his late masters. The

soldier was altogether disjoined from the citizen and from the subject.

The natural consequences followed. Left to the conduct of men who

neither loved those whom they defended, nor hated those whom they

opposed, who were often bound by stronger ties to the army against

which they fought than to the State which they served, who lost by

the termination of the conflict, and gained by its prolongation, war

completely changed its character. Every man came into the field of

battle impressed with the knowledge that, in a few days, he might be

taking the pay of the power against which he was then employed,

and, fighting by the side of his enemies against his associates. The

strongest interests and the strongest feelings concurred to mitigate the

hostility of those who had lately been brethren in arms, and who might

soon be brethren in arms once more. Their common profession was a bond

of union not to be forgotten even when they were engaged in the service

of contending parties. Hence it was that operations, languid and

indecisive beyond any recorded in history, marches and counter-marches,

pillaging expeditions and blockades, bloodless capitulations and equally

bloodless combats, make up the military history of Italy during the

course of nearly two centuries. Mighty armies fight from sunrise to

sunset. A great victory is won. Thousands of prisoners are taken; and

hardly a life is lost. A pitched battle seems to have been really less

dangerous than an ordinary civil tumult.

Courage was now no longer necessary even to the military character.

Men grew old in camps, and acquired the highest renown by their warlike

achievements, without being once required to face serious danger.

The political consequences are too well known. The richest and most

enlightened part of the world was left undefended to the assaults of

every barbarous invader, to the brutality of Switzerland, the insolence

of France, and the fierce rapacity of Arragon. The moral effects which

followed from this state of things were still more remarkable.

Among the rude nations which lay beyond the Alps, valour was absolutely

indispensable. Without it none could be eminent; few could be secure.

Cowardice was, therefore, naturally considered as the foulest reproach.

Among the polished Italians, enriched by commerce, governed by law, and

passionately attached to literature, everything was done by superiority

and intelligence. Their very wars, more pacific than the peace of their

neighbours, required rather civil than military qualifications. Hence,

while courage was the point of honour in other countries, ingenuity

became the point of honour in Italy.

From these principles were deduced, by processes strictly analogous, two

opposite systems of fashionable morality. Through the greater part of

Europe, the vices which peculiarly belong to timid dispositions, and

which are the natural defence Of weakness, fraud, and hypocrisy, have

always been most disreputable. On the other hand, the excesses of

haughty and daring spirits have been treated with indulgence, and even

with respect. The Italians regarded with corresponding lenity those

crimes which require self-command, address, quick observation, fertile

invention, and profound knowledge of human nature.

Such a prince as our Henry the Fifth would have been the idol of the

North. The follies of his youth, the selfish ambition of his manhood,

the Lollards roasted at slow fires the prisoners massacred on the

field of battle, the expiring lease of priestcraft renewed for another

century, the dreadful legacy of a causeless and hopeless war bequeathed

to a people who had no interest in its event, everything is forgotten

but the victory of Agincourt. Francis Sforza, on the other hand, was the

model of Italian heroes. He made his employers and his rivals alike his

tools. He first overpowered his open enemies by the help of faithless

allies; he then armed himself against his allies with the spoils taken

from his enemies. By his incomparable dexterity, he raised himself from

the precarious and dependent situation of a military adventurer to

the first throne of Italy. To such a man much was forgiven, hollow

friendship, ungenerous enmity, violated faith. Such are the opposite

errors which men commit, when their morality is not a science but a

taste, when they abandon eternal principles for accidental associations.

We have illustrated our meaning by an instance taken from history. We

will select another from fiction. Othello murders his wife; he gives

orders for the murder of his lieutenant; he ends by murdering himself.

Yet he never loses the esteem and affection of Northern readers.

His intrepid and ardent spirit redeems everything. The unsuspecting

confidence with which he listens to his adviser, the agony with which he

shrinks from the thought of shame, the tempest of passion with which

he commits his crimes, and the haughty fearlessness with which he avows

them, give an extraordinary interest to his character. Iago, on the

contrary, is the object of universal loathing. Many are inclined to

suspect that Shakspeare has been seduced into an exaggeration unusual

with him, and has drawn a monster who has no archetype in human nature.

Now we suspect that an Italian audience in the fifteenth century would

have felt very differently. Othello would have inspired nothing but

detestation and contempt. The folly with which he trusts the friendly

professions of a man whose promotion he had obstructed, the credulity

with which he takes unsupported assertions, and trivial circumstances,

for unanswerable proofs, the violence with which he silences the

exculpation till the exculpation can only aggravate his misery, would

have excited the abhorrence and disgust of the spectators. The conduct

of Iago they would assuredly have condemned; but they would have

condemned it as we condemn that of his victim. Something of interest and

respect would have mingled with their disapprobation. The readiness of

the traitor’s wit, the clearness of his judgment, the skill with which

he penetrates the dispositions of others and conceals his own, would

have ensured to him a certain portion of their esteem.

So wide was the difference between the Italians and their neighbours.

A similar difference existed between the Greeks of the second century

before Christ, and their masters the Romans. The conquerors, brave and

resolute, faithful to their engagements, and strongly influenced by

religious feelings, were, at the same time, ignorant, arbitrary, and

cruel. With the vanquished people were deposited all the art, the

science, and the literature of the Western world. In poetry, in

philosophy, in painting, in architecture, in sculpture, they had no

rivals. Their manners were polished, their perceptions acute, their

invention ready; they were tolerant, affable, humane; but of courage

and sincerity they were almost utterly destitute. Every rude centurion

consoled himself for his intellectual inferiority, by remarking that

knowledge and taste seemed only to make men atheists, cowards, and

slaves. The distinction long continued to be strongly marked, and

furnished an admirable subject for the fierce sarcasms of Juvenal.

The citizen of an Italian commonwealth was the Greek of the time of

Juvenal and the Greek of the time of Pericles, joined in one. Like the

former, he was timid and pliable, artful and mean. But, like the latter,

he had a country. Its independence and prosperity were dear to him. If

his character were degraded by some base crimes, it was, on the other

hand, ennobled by public spirit and by an honourable ambition.

A vice sanctioned by the general opinion is merely a vice. The evil

terminates in itself. A vice condemned by the general opinion produces a

pernicious effect on the whole character. The former is a local malady,

the latter a constitutional taint. When the reputation of the offender

is lost, he too often flings the remains of his virtue after it in

despair. The Highland gentleman who, a century ago, lived by taking

blackmail from his neighbours, committed the same crime for which Wild

was accompanied to Tyburn by the huzzas of two hundred thousand people.

But there can be no doubt that he was a much less depraved man than

Wild. The deed for which Mrs. Brownrigg was hanged sinks into nothing,

when compared with the conduct of the Roman who treated the public to a

hundred pair of gladiators. Yet we should greatly wrong such a Roman if

we supposed that his disposition was as cruel as that of Mrs. Brownrigg.

In our own country, a woman forfeits her place in society by what, in

a man, is too commonly considered as an honourable distinction, and,

at worst, as a venial error. The consequence is notorious. The moral

principle of a woman is frequently more impaired by a single lapse

from virtue than that of a man by twenty years of intrigues. Classical

antiquity would furnish us with instances stronger, if possible, than

those to which we have referred.

We must apply this principle to the case before us. Habits of

dissimulation and falsehood, no doubt, mark a man of our age and country

as utterly worthless and abandoned. But it by no means follows that a

similar judgment would be just in the case of an Italian of the middle

ages. On the contrary, we frequently find those faults which we are

accustomed to consider as certain indications of a mind altogether

depraved, in company with great and good qualities, with generosity,

with benevolence, with disinterestedness. From such a state of

society, Palamedes, in the admirable dialogue of Hume, might have drawn

illustrations of his theory as striking as any of those with which

Fourli furnished him. These are not, we well know, the lessons which

historians are generally most careful to teach, or readers most willing

to learn. But they are not therefore useless. How Philip disposed his

troops at Chaeronea, where Hannibal crossed the Alps, whether Mary blew

up Darnley, or Siquier shot Charles the Twelfth, and ten thousand other

questions of the same description, are in themselves unimportant. The

inquiry may amuse us, but the decision leaves us no wiser. He alone

reads history aright who, observing how powerfully circumstances

influence the feelings and opinions of men, how often vices pass

into virtues and paradoxes into axioms, learns to distinguish what is

accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and

immutable.

In this respect no history suggests more important reflections than that

of the Tuscan and Lombard commonwealths. The character of the Italian

statesman seems, at first sight, a collection of contradictions, a

phantom as monstrous as the portress of hell in Milton, half divinity,

half snake, majestic and beautiful above, grovelling and poisonous

below, We see a man whose thoughts and words have no connection with

each other, who never hesitates at an oath when he wishes to seduce,

who never wants a pretext when he is inclined to betray. His cruelties

spring, not from the heat of blood, or the insanity of uncontrolled

power, but from deep and cool meditation. His passions, like

well-trained troops, are impetuous by rule, and in their most headstrong

fury never forget the discipline to which they have been accustomed. His

whole soul is occupied with vast and complicated schemes of ambition:

yet his aspect and language exhibit nothing but philosophical

moderation. Hatred and revenge eat into his heart: yet every look is

a cordial smile, every gesture a familiar caress. He never excites

the suspicion of his adversaries by petty provocations. His purpose

is disclosed only when it is accomplished. His face is unruffled, his

speech is courteous, till vigilance is laid asleep, till a vital point

is exposed, till a sure aim is taken; and then he strikes for the first

and last time. Military courage, the boast of the sottish German, of the

frivolous and prating Frenchman, of the romantic and arrogant Spaniard,

he neither possesses nor values. He shuns danger, not because he is

insensible to shame, but because, in the society in which he lives,

timidity has ceased to be shameful. To do an injury openly is, in his

estimation, as wicked as to do it secretly, and far less profitable.

With him the most honourable means are those which are the surest,

the speediest, and the darkest. He cannot comprehend how a man should

scruple to deceive those whom he does not scruple to destroy. He would

think it madness to declare open hostilities against rivals whom he

might stab in a friendly embrace, or poison in a consecrated wafer.

Yet this man, black with the vices which we consider as most loathsome,

traitor, hypocrite, coward, assassin, was by no means destitute even

of those virtues which we generally consider as indicating superior

elevation of character. In civil courage, in perseverance, in presence

of mind, those barbarous warriors, who were foremost in the battle or

the breach, were far his inferiors. Even the dangers which he avoided

with a caution almost pusillanimous never confused his perceptions,

never paralysed his inventive faculties, never wrung out one secret from

his smooth tongue, and his inscrutable brow. Though a dangerous enemy,

and a still more dangerous accomplice, he could be a just and beneficent

ruler. With so much unfairness in his policy, there was an extraordinary

degree of fairness in his intellect. Indifferent to truth in the

transactions of life, he was honestly devoted to truth in the researches

of speculation. Wanton cruelty was not in his nature. On the contrary,

where no political object was at stake, his disposition was soft

and humane. The susceptibility of his nerves and the activity of his

imagination inclined him, to sympathise with the feelings of others, and

to delight in the charities and courtesies of social life. Perpetually

descending to actions which might seem to mark a mind diseased through

all its faculties, he had nevertheless an exquisite sensibility, both

for the natural and the moral sublime, for every graceful and every

lofty conception. Habits of petty intrigue and dissimulation might have

rendered him incapable of great general views, but that the expanding

effect of his philosophical studies counteracted the narrowing tendency.

He had the keenest enjoyment of wit, eloquence, and poetry. The

fine arts profited alike by the severity of his judgment, and by the

liberality of his patronage. The portraits of some of the remarkable

Italians of those times are perfectly in harmony with this description.

Ample and majestic foreheads, brows strong and dark, but not frowning,

eyes of which the calm full gaze, while it expresses nothing, seems to

discern everything, cheeks pale with thought and sedentary habits, lips

formed with feminine delicacy, but compressed with more than masculine

decision, mark out men at once enterprising and timid, men equally

skilled in detecting the purposes of others, and in concealing their

own, men who must have been formidable enemies and unsafe allies, but

men, at the same time, whose tempers were mild and equable, and who

possessed an amplitude and subtlety of intellect which would have

rendered them eminent either in active or in contemplative life, and

fitted them either to govern or to instruct mankind.

Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which

prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to

avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding

generations change the fashion of their morals, with the fashion of

their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under

their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors. Nor is

this all. Posterity, that high court of appeal which is never tired of

eulogising its own justice and discernment, acts on such occasions like

a Roman dictator after a general mutiny. Finding the delinquents too

numerous to be all punished, it selects some of them at hazard, to

bear the whole penalty of an offence in which they are not more deeply

implicated than those who escape, Whether decimation be a convenient

mode of military execution, we know not; but we solemnly protest against

the introduction of such a principle into the philosophy of history.

In the present instance, the lot has fallen on Machiavelli, a man whose

public conduct was upright and honourable, whose views of morality,

where they differed from those of the persons around him, seemed to have

differed for the better, and whose only fault was, that, having adopted

some of the maxims then generally received, he arranged them more

luminously, and expressed them more forcibly, than any other writer.

Having now, we hope, in some degree cleared the personal character of

Machiavelli, we come to the consideration of his works. As a poet he is

not entitled to a high place; but his comedies deserve attention.

The Mandragola, in particular, is superior to the best of Goldoni, and

inferior only to the best of Moliere. It is the work of a man who, if

he had devoted himself to the drama, would probably have attained the

highest eminence, and produced a permanent and salutary effect on the

national taste. This we infer, not so much from the degree, as from

the kind of its excellence. There are compositions which indicate still

greater talent, and which are perused with still greater delight, from

which we should have drawn very different conclusions. Books quite

worthless are quite harmless. The sure sign of the general decline of

an art is the frequent occurrence, not of deformity, but of misplaced

beauty. In general, Tragedy is corrupted by eloquence, and Comedy by

wit.

The real object of the drama is the exhibition of human character. This,

we conceive, is no arbitrary canon, originating in local and temporary

associations, like those canons which regulate the number of acts in

a play, or of syllables in a line. To this fundamental law every other

regulation is subordinate. The situations which most signally develop

character form the best plot. The mother tongue of the passions is the

best style.

This principle rightly understood, does not debar the poet from any

grace of composition. There is no style in which some man may not under

some circumstances express himself. There is therefore no style which

the drama rejects, none which it does not occasionally require. It is

in the discernment of place, of time, and of person, that the inferior

artists fail. The fantastic rhapsody of Mercutio, the elaborate

declamation of Antony, are, where Shakspeare has placed them, natural

and pleasing. But Dryden would have made Mercutio challenge Tybalt in

hyperboles as fanciful as those in which he describes the chariot of

Mab. Corneille would have represented Antony as scolding and coaxing

Cleopatra with all the measured rhetoric of a funeral oration.

No writers have injured the Comedy of England so deeply as Congreve and

Sheridan. Both were men of splendid wit and polished taste. Unhappily,

they made all their characters in their own likeness. Their works bear

the same relation to the legitimate drama which a transparency bears to

a painting. There are no delicate touches, no hues imperceptibly fading

into each other: the whole is lighted up with an universal glare.

Outlines and tints are forgotten in the common blaze which illuminates

all. The flowers and fruits of the intellect abound; but it is the

abundance of a jungle, not of a garden, unwholesome, bewildering,

unprofitable from its very plenty rank from its very fragrance. Every

fop, every boor, every valet, is a man of wit. The very butts and dupes,

Tattle, Witwould, Puff, Acres, outshine the whole Hotel of Rambouillet.

To prove the whole system of this school erroneous, it is only necessary

to apply the test which dissolved the enchanted Florimel, to place the

true by the false Thalia, to contrast the most celebrated characters

which have been drawn by the writers of whom we speak with the Bastard

in King John or the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. It was not surely from

want of wit that Shakspeare adopted so different a manner. Benedick

and Beatrice throw Mirabel and Millamant into the shade. All the good

sayings of the facetious houses of Absolute and Surface might have been

clipped from the single character of Falstaff, without being missed. It

would have been easy for that fertile mind to have given Bardolph and

Shallow as much wit as Prince Hal, and to have made Dogberry and Verges

retort on each other in sparkling epigrams. But he knew that such

indiscriminate prodigality was, to use his own admirable language, “from

the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was, and

is, to hold, as it were, the mirror up to Nature.”

This digression will enable our readers to understand what we mean when

we say that in the Mandragola, Machiavelli has proved that he completely

understood the nature of the dramatic art, and possessed talents which

would have enabled him to excel in it. By the correct and vigorous

delineation of human nature, it produces interest without a pleasing or

skilful plot, and laughter without the least ambition of wit. The lover,

not a very delicate or generous lover, and his adviser the parasite, are

drawn with spirit. The hypocritical confessor is an admirable portrait.

He is, if we mistake not, the original of Father Dominic, the best comic

character of Dryden. But old Nicias is the glory of the piece. We cannot

call to mind anything that resembles him. The follies which Moliere

ridicules are those of affection, not those of fatuity. Coxcombs and

pedants, not absolute simpletons, are his game. Shakspeare has indeed a

vast assortment of fools; but the precise species of which we speak is

not, if we remember right, to be found there. Shallow is a fool. But his

animal spirits supply, to a certain degree, the place of cleverness. His

talk is to that of Sir John what soda water is to champagne. It has the

effervescence though not the body or the flavour. Slender and Sir Andrew

Aguecheek are fools, troubled with an uneasy consciousness of their

folly, which in the latter produces meekness and docility, and in the

former, awkwardness, obstinacy, and confusion. Cloten is an arrogant

fool, Osric a foppish fool, Ajax a savage fool; but Nicias is, as

Thersites says of Patroclus, a fool positive. His mind is occupied by no

strong feeling; it takes every character, and retains none; its aspect

is diversified, not by passions, but by faint and transitory semblances

of passion, a mock joy, a mock fear, a mock love, a mock pride, which

chase each other like shadows over its surface, and vanish as soon as

they appear. He is just idiot enough to be an object, not of pity or

horror, but of ridicule. He bears some resemblance to poor Calandrino,

whose mishaps, as recounted by Boccaccio, have made all Europe merry for

more than four centuries. He perhaps resembles still more closely

Simon da Villa, to whom Bruno and Buffalmacco promised the love of the

Countess Civillari. Nicias is, like Simon, of a learned profession;

and the dignity with which he wears the doctoral fur, renders his

absurdities infinitely more grotesque. The old Tuscan is the very

language for such a being. Its peculiar simplicity gives even to the

most forcible reasoning and the most brilliant wit an infantine air,

generally delightful, but to a foreign reader sometimes a little

ludicrous. Heroes and statesmen seem to lisp when they use it. It

becomes Nicias incomparably, and renders all his silliness infinitely

more silly. We may add, that the verses with which the Mandragola is

interspersed, appear to us to be the most spirited and correct of all

that Machiavelli has written in metre. He seems to have entertained the

same opinion; for he has introduced some of them in other places.

The contemporaries of the author were not blind to the merits of this

striking piece. It was acted at Florence with the greatest success. Leo

the Tenth was among its admirers, and by his order it was represented at

Rome.

[Nothing can be more evident than that Paulus Jovius designates the

Mandragola under the name of the Nicias. We should not have noticed

what is so perfectly obvious, were it not that this natural and palpable

misnomer has led the sagacious and industrious Bayle into a gross

error.]

The Clizia is an imitation of the Casina of Plautus, which is itself

an imitation of the lost kleroumenoi of Diphilus. Plautus was,

unquestionably, one of the best Latin writers; but the Casina is by no

means one of his best plays; nor is it one which offers great facilities

to an imitator. The story is as alien from modern habits of life, as the

manner in which it is developed from the modern fashion of composition.

The lover remains in the country and the heroine in her chamber during

the whole action, leaving their fate to be decided by a foolish father,

a cunning mother, and two knavish servants. Machiavelli has executed

his task with judgment and taste. He has accommodated the plot to a

different state of society, and has very dexterously connected it with

the history of his own times. The relation of the trick put on the

doting old lover is exquisitely humorous. It is far superior to the

corresponding passage in the Latin comedy, and scarcely yields to the

account which Falstaff gives of his ducking.

Two other comedies without titles, the one in prose, the other in verse,

appear among the works of Machiavelli. The former is very short, lively

enough, but of no great value. The latter we can scarcely believe to

be genuine. Neither its merits nor its defects remind us of the reputed

author. It was first printed in 1796, from a manuscript discovered in

the celebrated library of the Strozzi. Its genuineness, if we have been

rightly informed, is established solely by the comparison of hands.

Our suspicions are strengthened by the circumstance, that the same

manuscript contained a description of the plague of 1527, which has

also, in consequence, been added to the works of Machiavelli. Of this

last composition the strongest external evidence would scarcely induce

us to believe him guilty. Nothing was ever written more detestable

in matter and manner. The narrations, the reflections, the jokes, the

lamentations, are all the very worst of their respective kinds, at once

trite and affected, threadbare tinsel from the Rag Fairs and Monmouth

Streets of literature. A foolish schoolboy might write such a piece,

and, after he had written it, think it much finer than the incomparable

introduction of the Decameron. But that a shrewd statesman, whose

earliest works are characterised by manliness of thought and language,

should, at near sixty years of age, descend to such puerility, is

utterly inconceivable.

The little novel of Belphegor is pleasantly conceived and pleasantly

told. But the extravagance of the satire in some measure injures its

effect. Machiavelli was unhappily married; and his wish to avenge his

own cause and that of his brethren in misfortune, carried him beyond

even the licence of fiction. Jonson seems to have combined some hints

taken from this tale, with others from Boccaccio, in the plot of The

Devil is an Ass, a play which, though not the most highly finished of

his compositions, is perhaps that which exhibits the strongest proofs of

genius.

The Political Correspondence of Machiavelli, first published in 1767, is

unquestionably genuine, and highly valuable. The unhappy circumstances

in which his country was placed during the greater part of his public

life gave extraordinary encouragement to diplomatic talents. From

the moment that Charles the Eighth descended from the Alps, the whole

character of Italian politics was changed. The governments of the

Peninsula ceased to form an independent system. Drawn from their old

orbit by the attraction of the larger bodies which now approached them,

they became mere satellites of France and Spain. All their disputes,

internal and external, were decided by foreign influence. The

contests of opposite factions were carried on, not as formerly in the

senate-house or in the marketplace, but in the antechambers of Louis

and Ferdinand. Under these circumstances, the prosperity of the Italian

States depended far more on the ability of their foreign agents, than

on the conduct of those who were intrusted with the domestic

administration. The ambassador had to discharge functions far more

delicate than transmitting orders of knighthood, introducing tourists,

or presenting his brethren with the homage of his high consideration. He

was an advocate to whose management the dearest interests of his clients

were intrusted, a spy clothed with an inviolable character. Instead of

consulting, by a reserved manner and ambiguous style, the dignity of

those whom he represented, he was to plunge into all the intrigues of

the Court at which he resided, to discover and flatter every weakness

of the prince, and of the favourite who governed the prince, and of the

lacquey who governed the favourite. He was to compliment the mistress

and bribe the confessor, to panegyrise or supplicate, to laugh or weep,

to accommodate himself to every caprice, to lull every suspicion, to

treasure every hint, to be everything, to observe everything, to endure

everything. High as the art of political intrigue had been carried in

Italy, these were times which required it all.

On these arduous errands Machiavelli was frequently employed. He

was sent to treat with the King of the Romans and with the Duke of

Valentinois. He was twice ambassador of the Court of Rome, and thrice

at that of France. In these missions, and in several others of inferior

importance, he acquitted himself with great dexterity. His despatches

form one of the most amusing and instructive collections extant. The

narratives are clear and agreeably written; the remarks on men and

things clever and judicious. The conversations are reported in a

spirited and characteristic manner. We find ourselves introduced into

the presence of the men who, during twenty eventful years, swayed the

destinies of Europe. Their wit and their folly, their fretfulness and

their merriment, are exposed to us. We are admitted to overhear their

chat, and to watch their familiar gestures. It is interesting and

curious to recognise, in circumstances which elude the notice of

historians, the feeble violence and shallow cunning of Louis the

Twelfth; the bustling insignificance of Maximilian, cursed with an

impotent pruriency for renown, rash yet timid, obstinate yet fickle,

always in a hurry, yet always too late; the fierce and haughty energy

which gave dignity to the eccentricities of Julius; the soft and

graceful manners which masked the insatiable ambition and the implacable

hatred of Caesar Borgia.

We have mentioned Caesar Borgia. It is impossible not to pause for a

moment on the name of a man in whom the political morality of Italy was

so strongly personified, partially blended with the sterner lineaments

of the Spanish character. On two important occasions Machiavelli was

admitted to his society; once, at the moment when Caesar’s splendid

villainy achieved its most signal triumph, when he caught in one snare

and crushed at one blow all his most formidable rivals; and again when,

exhausted by disease and overwhelmed by misfortunes, which no human

prudence could have averted, he was the prisoner of the deadliest enemy

of his house. These interviews between the greatest speculative and

the greatest practical statesman of the age are fully described in the

Correspondence, and form perhaps the most interesting part of it.

From some passages in The Prince, and perhaps also from some indistinct

traditions, several writers have supposed a connection between those

remarkable men much closer than ever existed. The Envoy has even been

accused of prompting the crimes of the artful and merciless tyrant. But

from the official documents it is clear that their intercourse, though

ostensibly amicable, was in reality hostile. It cannot be doubted,

however, that the imagination of Machiavelli was strongly impressed, and

his speculations on government coloured, by the observations which he

made on the singular character and equally singular fortunes of a man

who under such disadvantages had achieved such exploits; who, when

sensuality, varied through innumerable forms, could no longer stimulate

his sated mind, found a more powerful and durable excitement in the

intense thirst of empire and revenge; who emerged from the sloth and

luxury of the Roman purple the first prince and general of the age; who,

trained in an unwarlike profession, formed a gallant army out of the

dregs of an unwarlike people; who, after acquiring sovereignty by

destroying his enemies, acquired popularity by destroying his tools; who

had begun to employ for the most salutary ends the power which he had

attained by the most atrocious means; who tolerated within the sphere of

his iron despotism no plunderer or oppressor but himself; and who fell

at last amidst the mingled curses and regrets of a people of whom his

genius had been the wonder, and might have been the salvation. Some of

those crimes of Borgia which to us appear the most odious would not,

from causes which we have already considered, have struck an Italian of

the fifteenth century with equal horror. Patriotic feeling also might

induce Machiavelli to look with some indulgence and regret on the memory

of the only leader who could have defended the independence of Italy

against the confederate spoilers of Cambray.

On this subject Machiavelli felt most strongly. Indeed the expulsion of

the foreign tyrants, and the restoration of that golden age which had

preceded the irruption of Charles the Eighth, were projects which, at

that time, fascinated all the master-spirits of Italy. The magnificent

vision delighted the great but ill-regulated mind of Julius. It divided

with manuscripts and sauces, painters, and falcons, the attention of the

frivolous Leo. It prompted the generous treason of Morone. It imparted

a transient energy to the feeble mind and body of the last Sforza. It

excited for one moment an honest ambition in the false heart of

Pescara. Ferocity and insolence were not among the vices of the national

character. To the discriminating cruelties of politicians, committed

for great ends on select victims, the moral code of the Italians was

too indulgent. But though they might have recourse to barbarity as an

expedient, they did not require it as a stimulant. They turned with

loathing from the atrocity of the strangers who seemed to love blood

for its own sake, who, not content with subjugating, were impatient to

destroy, who found a fiendish pleasure in razing magnificent cities,

cutting the throats of enemies who cried for quarter, or suffocating an

unarmed population by thousands in the caverns to which it had fled

for safety. Such were the cruelties which daily excited the terror and

disgust of a people among whom, till lately, the worst that a soldier

had to fear in a pitched battle was the loss of his horse and the

expense of his ransom. The swinish intemperance of Switzerland, the

wolfish avarice of Spain, the gross licentiousness of the French,

indulged in violation of hospitality, of decency, of love itself, the

wanton inhumanity which was common to all the invaders, had made them

objects of deadly hatred to the inhabitants of the Peninsula. The wealth

which had been accumulated during centuries of prosperity and repose

was rapidly melting away. The intellectual superiority of the oppressed

people only rendered them more keenly sensible of their political

degradation. Literature and taste, indeed, still disguised with a flush

of hectic loveliness and brilliancy the ravages of an incurable decay.

The iron had not yet entered into the soul. The time was not yet come

when eloquence was to be gagged, and reason to be hoodwinked, when the

harp of the poet was to be hung on the willows of Arno, and the right

hand of the painter to forget its cunning. Yet a discerning eye might

even then have seen that genius and learning would not long survive the

state of things from which they had sprung, and that the great men whose

talents gave lustre to that melancholy period had been formed under the

influence of happier days, and would leave no successors behind them.

The times which shine with the greatest splendour in literary history

are not always those to which the human mind is most indebted. Of this

we may be convinced, by comparing the generation which follows them with

that which had preceded them. The first fruits which are reaped under a

bad system often spring from seed sown under a good one. Thus it was, in

some measure, with the Augustan age. Thus it was with the age of Raphael

and Ariosto, of Aldus and Vida.

Machiavelli deeply regretted the misfortunes of his country, and clearly

discerned the cause and the remedy. It was the military system of the

Italian people which had extinguished their value and discipline, and

left their wealth an easy prey to every foreign plunderer. The Secretary

projected a scheme alike honourable to his heart and to his intellect,

for abolishing the use of mercenary troops, and for organising a

national militia.

The exertions which he made to effect this great object ought alone to

rescue his name from obloquy. Though his situation and his habits were

pacific, he studied with intense assiduity the theory of war. He made

himself master of all its details. The Florentine Government entered

into his views. A council of war was appointed. Levies were decreed. The

indefatigable minister flew from place to place in order to superintend

the execution of his design. The times were, in some respects,

favourable to the experiment. The system of military tactics had

undergone a great revolution. The cavalry was no longer considered as

forming the strength of an army. The hours which a citizen could

spare from his ordinary employments, though by no means sufficient to

familiarise him with the exercise of a man-at-arms, might render him an

useful foot-soldier. The dread of a foreign yoke, of plunder, massacre,

and conflagration, might have conquered that repugnance to military

pursuits which both the industry and the idleness of great towns

commonly generate. For a time the scheme promised well. The new troops

acquitted themselves respectably in the field. Machiavelli looked with

parental rapture on the success of his plan, and began to hope that the

arms of Italy might once more be formidable to the barbarians of the

Tagus and the Rhine. But the tide of misfortune came on before the

barriers which should have withstood it were prepared. For a time,

indeed, Florence might be considered as peculiarly fortunate. Famine

and sword and pestilence had devastated the fertile plains and stately

cities of the Po. All the curses denounced of old against Tyre seemed to

have fallen on Venice. Her merchants already stood afar off, lamenting

for their great city. The time seemed near when the sea-weed should

overgrow her silent Rialto, and the fisherman wash his nets in her

deserted arsenal. Naples had been four times conquered and reconquered

by tyrants equally indifferent to its welfare and equally greedy for its

spoils. Florence, as yet, had only to endure degradation and extortion,

to submit to the mandates of foreign powers, to buy over and over again,

at an enormous price, what was already justly her own, to return thanks

for being wronged, and to ask pardon for being in the right. She was

at length deprived of the blessings even of this infamous and servile

repose. Her military and political institutions were swept away

together. The Medici returned, in the train of foreign invaders, from

their long exile. The policy of Machiavelli was abandoned; and his

public services were requited with poverty, imprisonment, and torture.

The fallen statesman still clung to his project with unabated ardour.

With the view of vindicating it from some popular objections and of

refuting some prevailing errors on the subject of military science, he

wrote his seven books on The Art of War. This excellent work is in the

form of a dialogue. The opinions of the writer are put into the mouth of

Fabrizio Colonna, a powerful nobleman of the Ecclesiastical State, and

an officer of distinguished merit in the service of the King of Spain.

Colonna visits Florence on his way from Lombardy to his own domains.

He is invited to meet some friends at the house of Cosimo Rucellai,

an amiable and accomplished young man, whose early death Machiavelli

feelingly deplores. After partaking of an elegant entertainment,

they retire from the heat into the most shady recesses of the garden.

Fabrizio is struck by the sight of some uncommon plants. Cosimo says

that, though rare, in modern days, they are frequently mentioned by the

classical authors, and that his grandfather, like many other Italians,

amused himself with practising the ancient methods of gardening.

Fabrizio expresses his regret that those who, in later times, affected

the manners of the old Romans should select for imitation the most

trifling pursuits. This leads to a conversation on the decline

of military discipline and on the best means of restoring it. The

institution of the Florentine militia is ably defended; and several

improvements are suggested in the details.

The Swiss and the Spaniards were, at that time, regarded as the best

soldiers in Europe. The Swiss battalion consisted of pikemen, and bore a

close resemblance to the Greek phalanx. The Spaniards, like the soldiers

of Rome, were armed with the sword and the shield. The victories of

Flamininus and Aemilius over the Macedonian kings seem to prove the

superiority of the weapons used by the legions. The same experiment had

been recently tried with the same result at the battle of Ravenna, one

of those tremendous days into which human folly and wickedness compress

the whole devastation of a famine or a plague. In that memorable

conflict, the infantry of Arragon, the old companions of Gonsalvo,

deserted by all their allies, hewed a passage through the thickest of

the imperial pikes, and effected an unbroken retreat, in the face of the

gendarmerie of De Foix, and the renowned artillery of Este. Fabrizio,

or rather Machiavelli, proposes to combine the two systems, to arm the

foremost lines with the pike for the purpose of repulsing cavalry, and

those in the rear with the sword, as being a weapon better adapted

for every other purpose. Throughout the work, the author expresses the

highest admiration of the military science of the ancient Romans, and

the greatest contempt for the maxims which had been in vogue amongst the

Italian commanders of the preceding generation. He prefers infantry

to cavalry, and fortified camps to fortified towns. He is inclined to

substitute rapid movements and decisive engagements for the languid

and dilatory operations of his countrymen. He attaches very little

importance to the invention of gunpowder. Indeed he seems to think that

it ought scarcely to produce any change in the mode of arming or of

disposing troops. The general testimony of historians, it must be

allowed, seems to prove that the ill-constructed and ill-served

artillery of those times, though useful in a siege, was of little value

on the field of battle.

Of the tactics of Machiavelli we will not venture to give an opinion:

but we are certain that his book is most able and interesting. As a

commentary on the history of his times, it is invaluable. The ingenuity,

the grace, and the perspicuity of the style, and the eloquence and

animation of particular passages, must give pleasure even to readers who

take no interest in the subject.

The Prince and the Discourses on Livy were written after the fall of the

Republican Government. The former was dedicated to the young Lorenzo di

Medici. This circumstance seems to have disgusted the contemporaries of

the writer far more than the doctrines which have rendered the name of

the work odious in later times. It was considered as an indication

of political apostasy. The fact however seems to have been that

Machiavelli, despairing of the liberty of Florence, was inclined to

support any government which might preserve her independence. The

interval which separated a democracy and a despotism, Soderini and

Lorenzo, seemed to vanish when compared with the difference between

the former and the present state of Italy, between the security, the

opulence, and the repose which she had enjoyed under her native rulers,

and the misery in which she had been plunged since the fatal year in

which the first foreign tyrant had descended from the Alps. The noble

and pathetic exhortation with which The Prince concludes shows how

strongly the writer felt upon this subject.

The Prince traces the progress of an ambitious man, the Discourses the

progress of an ambitious people. The same principles on which, in the

former work, the elevation of an individual is explained, are applied

in the latter, to the longer duration and more complex interest of a

society. To a modern statesman the form of the Discourses may appear to

be puerile. In truth Livy is not an historian on whom implicit reliance

can be placed, even in cases where he must have possessed considerable

means of information. And the first Decade, to which Machiavelli has

confined himself, is scarcely entitled to more credit than our Chronicle

of British Kings who reigned before the Roman invasion. But the

commentator is indebted to Livy for little more than a few texts which

he might as easily have extracted from the Vulgate or the Decameron. The

whole train of thought is original.

On the peculiar immorality which has rendered The Prince unpopular, and

which is almost equally discernible in the Discourses, we have already

given our opinion at length. We have attempted to show that it belonged

rather to the age than to the man, that it was a partial taint, and by

no means implied general depravity. We cannot, however, deny that it is

a great blemish, and that it considerably diminishes the pleasure which,

in other respects, those works must afford to every intelligent mind.

It is, indeed, impossible to conceive a more healthful and vigorous

constitution of the understanding than that which these works indicate.

The qualities of the active and the contemplative statesman appear to

have been blended in the mind of the writer into a rare and exquisite

harmony. His skill in the details of business had not been acquired at

the expense of his general powers. It had not rendered his mind less

comprehensive; but it had served to correct his speculations and to

impart to them that vivid and practical character which so widely

distinguishes them from the vague theories of most political

philosophers.

Every man who has seen the world knows that nothing is so useless as

a general maxim. If it be very moral and very true, it may serve for a

copy to a charity-boy. If, like those of Rochefoucault, it be sparkling

and whimsical, it may make an excellent motto for an essay. But few

indeed of the many wise apophthegms which have been uttered, from

the time of the Seven Sages of Greece to that of Poor Richard, have

prevented a single foolish action. We give the highest and the most

peculiar praise to the precepts of Machiavelli when we say that they

may frequently be of real use in regulating conduct, not so much because

they are more just or more profound than those which might be culled

from other authors, as because they can be more readily applied to the

problems of real life.

There are errors in these works. But they are errors which a writer,

situated like Machiavelli, could scarcely avoid. They arise, for the

most part, from a single defect which appears to us to pervade his

whole system. In his political scheme, the means had been more deeply

considered than the ends. The great principle, that societies and laws

exist only for the purpose of increasing the sum of private happiness,

is not recognised with sufficient clearness. The good of the body,

distinct from the good of the members, and sometimes hardly compatible

with the good of the members, seems to be the object which he proposes

to himself. Of all political fallacies, this has perhaps had the widest

and the most mischievous operation. The state of society in the little

commonwealths of Greece, the close connection and mutual dependence of

the citizens, and the severity of the laws of war, tended to encourage

an opinion which, under such circumstances, could hardly be called

erroneous. The interests of every individual were inseparably bound

up with those of the State. An invasion destroyed his corn-fields and

vineyards, drove him from his home, and compelled him to encounter all

the hardships of a military life. A treaty of peace restored him to

security and comfort. A victory doubled the number of his slaves.

A defeat perhaps made him a slave himself. When Pericles, in the

Peloponnesian war, told the Athenians, that, if their country triumphed,

their private losses would speedily be repaired, but, that, if their

arms failed of success, every individual amongst them would probably

be ruined, he spoke no more than the truth, He spoke to men whom the

tribute of vanquished cities supplied with food and clothing, with

the luxury of the bath and the amusements of the theatre, on whom the

greatness of their Country conferred rank, and before whom the members

of less prosperous communities trembled; to men who, in case of a change

in the public fortunes, would, at least, be deprived of every comfort

and every distinction which they enjoyed. To be butchered on the smoking

ruins of their city, to be dragged in chains to a slave-market. To see

one child torn from them to dig in the quarries of Sicily, and another

to guard the harams of Persepolis, these were the frequent and probable

consequences of national calamities. Hence, among the Greeks, patriotism

became a governing principle, or rather an ungovernable passion.

Their legislators and their philosophers took it for granted that, in

providing for the strength and greatness of the state, they sufficiently

provided for the happiness of the people. The writers of the Roman

empire lived under despots, into whose dominion a hundred nations

were melted down, and whose gardens would have covered the little

commonwealths of Phlius and Plataea. Yet they continued to employ the

same language, and to cant about the duty of sacrificing everything to a

country to which they owed nothing.

Causes similar to those which had influenced the disposition of the

Greeks operated powerfully on the less vigorous and daring character

of the Italians. The Italians, like the Greeks, were members of small

communities. Every man was deeply interested in the welfare of the

society to which he belonged, a partaker in its wealth and its

poverty, in its glory and its shame. In the age of Machiavelli this was

peculiarly the case. Public events had produced an immense sum of misery

to private citizens. The Northern invaders had brought want to their

boards, infamy to their beds, fire to their roofs, and the knife to

their throats. It was natural that a man who lived in times like these

should overrate the importance of those measures by which a nation is

rendered formidable to its neighbours, and undervalue those which make

it prosperous within itself.

Nothing is more remarkable in the political treatises of Machiavelli

than the fairness of mind which they indicate. It appears where the

author is in the wrong, almost as strongly as where he is in the right.

He never advances a false opinion because it is new or splendid,

because he can clothe it in a happy phrase, or defend it by an ingenious

sophism. His errors are at once explained by a reference to the

circumstances in which he was placed. They evidently were not sought

out; they lay in his way, and could scarcely be avoided. Such mistakes

must necessarily be committed by early speculators in every science.

In this respect it is amusing to compare The Prince and the Discourses

with the Spirit of Laws. Montesquieu enjoys, perhaps, a wider celebrity

than any political writer of modern Europe. Something he doubtless owes

to his merit, but much more to his fortune. He had the good luck of a

Valentine.

He caught the eye of the French nation, at the moment when it was

waking from the long sleep of political and religious bigotry; and,

in consequence, he became a favourite. The English, at that time,

considered a Frenchman who talked about constitutional checks and

fundamental laws as a prodigy not less astonishing than the learned

pig or the musical infant. Specious but shallow, studious of effect,

indifferent to truth, eager to build a system, but careless of

collecting those materials out of which alone a sound and durable system

can be built, the lively President constructed theories as rapidly

and as slightly as card-houses, no sooner projected than completed, no

sooner completed than blown away, no sooner blown away than forgotten.

Machiavelli errs only because his experience, acquired in a very

peculiar state of society, could not always enable him to calculate the

effect of institutions differing from those of which he had observed the

operation. Montesquieu errs, because he has a fine thing to say, and is

resolved to say it. If the phaenomena which lie before him will not suit

his purpose, all history must be ransacked. If nothing established by

authentic testimony can be racked or chipped to suit his Procrustean

hypothesis, he puts up with some monstrous fable about Siam, or Bantam,

or Japan, told by writers compared with whom Lucian and Gulliver were

veracious, liars by a double right, as travellers and as Jesuits.

Propriety of thought, and propriety of diction, are commonly found

together. Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of

style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion

of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle at any cost which produces

affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry

in his reasonings. The judicious and candid mind of Machiavelli shows

itself in his luminous, manly, and polished language. The style of

Montesquieu, on the other hand, indicates in every page a lively and

ingenious, but an unsound mind. Every trick of expression, from the

mysterious conciseness of an oracle to the flippancy of a Parisian

coxcomb, is employed to disguise the fallacy of some positions, and the

triteness of others. Absurdities are brightened into epigrams; truisms

are darkened into enigmas. It is with difficulty that the strongest

eye can sustain the glare with which some parts are illuminated, or

penetrate the shade in which others are concealed.

The political works of Machiavelli derive a peculiar interest from the

mournful earnestness which he manifests whenever he touches on topics

connected with the calamities of his native land. It is difficult to

conceive any situation more painful than that of a great man, condemned

to watch the lingering agony of an exhausted country, to tend it

during the alternate fits of stupefaction and raving which precede its

dissolution, and to see the symptoms of vitality disappear one by one,

till nothing is left but coldness, darkness, and corruption. To this

joyless and thankless duty was Machiavelli called. In the energetic

language of the prophet, he was “mad for the sight of his eye which

he saw,” disunion in the council, effeminacy in the camp, liberty

extinguished, commerce decaying, national honour sullied, an enlightened

and flourishing people given over to the ferocity of ignorant savages.

Though his opinions had no escaped the contagion of that political

immorality which was common among his countrymen, his natural

disposition seem to have been rather stern and impetuous than pliant and

artful When the misery and degradation of Florence and the foul outrage

which he had himself sustained recur to his mind, the smooth craft of

his profession and his nation is exchanged for the honest bitterness

of scorn and anger. He speaks like one sick of the calamitous times and

abject people among whom his lot is cast. He pines for the strength

and glory of ancient Rome, for the fasces of Brutus, and the sword of

Scipio, the gravity of the curule chair, and the bloody pomp of the

triumphal sacrifice. He seems to be transported back to the days when

eight hundred thousand Italian warriors sprung to arms at the rumour

of a Gallic invasion. He breathes all the spirit of those intrepid and

haughty senators who forgot the dearest ties of nature in the claims of

public duty, who looked with disdain on the elephants and on the gold of

Pyrrhus, and listened with unaltered composure to the tremendous tidings

of Cannae. Like an ancient temple deformed by the barbarous architecture

of a later age, his character acquires an interest from the very

circumstances which debase it. The original proportions are rendered

more striking by the contrast which they present to the mean and

incongruous additions.

The influence of the sentiments which we have described was not apparent

in his writings alone. His enthusiasm, barred from the career which it

would have selected for itself, seems to have found a vent in desperate

levity. He enjoyed a vindictive pleasure in outraging the opinions of

a society which he despised. He became careless of the decencies which

were expected from a man so highly distinguished in the literary and

political world. The sarcastic bitterness of his conversation disgusted

those who were more inclined to accuse his licentiousness than their

own degeneracy, and who were unable to conceive the strength of those

emotions which are concealed by the jests of the wretched, and by the

follies of the wise.

The historical works of Machiavelli still remain to be considered. The

Life of Castruccio Castracani will occupy us for a very short time, and

would scarcely have demanded our notice, had it not attracted a much

greater share of public attention than it deserves. Few books, indeed,

could be more interesting than a careful and judicious account, from

such a pen, of the illustrious Prince of Lucca, the most eminent of

those Italian chiefs who, like Pisistratus and Gelon, acquired a power

felt rather than seen, and resting, not on law or on prescription, but

on the public favour and on their great personal qualities. Such a work

would exhibit to us the real nature of that species of sovereignty,

so singular and so often misunderstood, which the Greeks denominated

tyranny, and which, modified in some degree by the feudal system,

reappeared in the commonwealths of Lombardy and Tuscany. But this

little composition of Machiavelli is in no sense a history. It has

no pretensions to fidelity. It is a trifle, and not a very successful

trifle. It is scarcely more authentic than the novel of Belphegor, and

is very much duller.

The last great work of this illustrious man was the history of his

native city. It was written by command of the Pope, who, as chief of the

house of Medici, was at that time sovereign of Florence. The characters

of Cosmo, of Piero, and of Lorenzo, are, however, treated with a freedom

and impartiality equally honourable to the writer and to the patron. The

miseries and humiliations of dependence, the bread which is more bitter

than every other food, the stairs which are more painful than every

other ascent, had not broken the spirit of Machiavelli. The most

corrupting post in a corrupting profession had not depraved the generous

heart of Clement.

The History does not appear to be the fruit of much industry or

research. It is unquestionably inaccurate. But it is elegant, lively,

and picturesque, beyond any other in the Italian language. The reader,

we believe, carries away from it a more vivid and a more faithful

impression of the national character and manners than from more correct

accounts. The truth is, that the book belongs rather to ancient than to

modern literature. It is in the style, not of Davila and Clarendon, but

of Herodotus and Tacitus. The classical histories may almost be

called romances founded in fact. The relation is, no doubt, in all its

principal points, strictly true. But the numerous little incidents which

heighten the interest, the words, the gestures, the looks, are evidently

furnished by the imagination of the author. The fashion of later times

is different. A more exact narrative is given by the writer. It may be

doubted whether more exact notions are conveyed to the reader. The

best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of

caricature, and we are not certain that the best histories are not

those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is

judiciously employed. Something is lost in accuracy; but much is gained

in effect. The fainter lines are neglected but the great characteristic

features are imprinted on the mind for ever.

The History terminates with the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici. Machiavelli

had, it seems, intended to continue his narrative to a later period. But

his death prevented the execution of his design; and the melancholy task

of recording the desolation and shame of Italy devolved on Guicciardini.

Machiavelli lived long enough to see the commencement of the last

struggle for Florentine liberty. Soon after his death monarchy was

finally established, not such a monarchy as that of which Cosmo had laid

the foundations deep in the institution and feelings of his countryman,

and which Lorenzo had embellished with the trophies of every science and

every art; but a loathsome tyranny, proud and mean, cruel and feeble,

bigoted and lascivious. The character of Machiavelli was hateful to the

new masters of Italy; and those parts of his theory which were in

strict accordance with their own daily practice afforded a pretext for

blackening his memory. His works were misrepresented by the learned,

misconstrued by the ignorant, censured by the Church, abused with all

the rancour of simulated virtue by the tools of a base government, and

the priests of a baser superstition. The name of the man whose genius

had illuminated all the dark places of policy, and to whose patriotic

wisdom an oppressed people had owed their last chance of emancipation

and revenge, passed into a proverb of infamy. For more than two hundred

years his bones lay undistinguished. At length, an English nobleman paid

the as honours to the greatest statesman of Florence. In the church of

Santa Croce a monument was erected to his memory, which is contemplated

with reverence by all who can distinguish the virtues of a great

mind through the corruptions of a degenerate age, and which will be

approached with still deeper homage when the object to which his public

life was devoted shall be attained, when the foreign yoke shall be

broken, when a second Procida shall avenge the wrongs of Naples, when a

happier Rienzi shall restore the good estate of Rome, when the streets

of Florence and Bologna shall again resound with their ancient war-cry,

Popolo; popolo; muoiano i tiranni!