MACHIAVELLI AND THE PROSE WRITERS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI, the profoundest thinker and the keenest politician
of his century, was born in Florence on the third of May, 1469. In 1498
he was made Secretary of State of the Florentine Republic. But this
dignity was the cause of his subsequent adversity. When the Medici
family was restored to power in Florence, he was imprisoned, fined, and
even put to the torture. He profited by an amnesty issued by Leo X on
his accession, but he was relegated to poverty and obscurity. Impatient
of both, he curried favour with the reigning dynasty, but such was the
ill-luck that steadily pursued him through life, that no sooner had he
acquired a certain degree of favour than the Medici were again expelled
from Florence, and he, as one of their adherents, was regarded by the
triumphant party with suspicion and hostility. He did not long survive
the wreck of all his hopes, dying on the twenty-second of June, 1527.
In his generation, Italy had fallen on evil days. The invasion
of Charles VIII of France opened the flood-gates of a deluge of
disasters; and the devastations of the King were succeeded by the
crushing despotism of the Emperor. The immense wealth, accumulated
during centuries of prosperity, was rapidly melting away. The
Republic of Venice lost much of her trade owing to the rivalry of
Holland and Portugal, and the stream of commerce was directed from
the Adriatic by the discovery of the new passage to India round the
Cape of Good Hope. The reckless extravagance of Leo X exhausted the
Papal Treasury; a great religious schism cut off abundant supplies
from distant countries; and the terrible sack of Rome, with the
ruinous ransom demanded from Clement VII, completed, in the year of
Machiavelli's death, a long series of disasters. Freedom was crushed
by native tyrants and foreign oppressors. The present was ghastly with
innumerable wounds, the future looked blacker than the grave. What
wonder was it, therefore, that men sought refuge from such horrors
in every finesse that diplomacy could suggest? This is the true
explanation and the one excuse of Machiavelli's tortuous policy. He is
utterly unscrupulous, but it is the unscrupulousness of a patriot at
bay who has exhausted all other means of self-defence.
Still, it cannot be denied that Machiavelli is anything but a
sympathetic figure. We admire the keenness of his intellect as we
admire the keenness of a sharp-edged sword; but where is the love of
humanity, the enthusiasm for great ideals, the indignation of a noble
mind at the iniquities of an evil age? Wonderful is the penetration
of his remarks; unrivalled his insight; above praise the clearness
and precision of his thoughts. No historian has ever surpassed him in
unrolling a panorama of past events. No politician has ever laid down
more sagacious rules for attaining an object in view. No statesman has
ever discerned with a keener eye the symptoms of the times.
But if we ask what profit has been derived from the exertions of this
most acute and logical of minds, what is the answer? His name has
become a byeword as the symbol of a heartless intriguer, and his works
glare like a meteor of evil in the dark and troubled sky of his century.
Great praise is due to his _History of Florence._ In the first book,
with a concise lucidity which later historians have emulated without
surpassing, he surveys the events of ten centuries, and that noble
introduction is followed by a work which displays to the fullest
advantage the great powers of its author.
The _Discourses on the First Decade of Livy_ and _The Art of War_ both
treat of the same subject; the necessity of a freedom-loving nation to
attain and preserve a high standard of military efficiency. The system
of hiring venal condottieri had profoundly demoralised the forces of
Italy, indeed, it had paved the way for the invasion of France and the
dominion of Spain, and its effects were felt even to the middle of the
present century, for no other explanation suffices to account for the
submission of a nation with such a history as Italy to the oppression
of foreign garrisons. So clear-sighted a patriot as Machiavelli could
not fail to see the evil and to point out the remedy. His despatches
and correspondence are also invaluable for the history of his times.
But the work pre-eminently associated with his name is the treatise,
entitled _Il Principe,_ a manual for a ruler who desires to keep an
unsteady throne and to outwit unscrupulous enemies. He advocates, it is
true, a policy regardless of all mercy and morality in the pursuit of
its object; but injustice to Machiavelli, we must bear in mind what his
object was. He had seen his country desolated for years by cruel and
rapacious invaders, and he thought, most justly, that the only chance
of Italy against her enemies was the establishment of the dominion of
one powerful and politic prince over the whole Peninsula, and it was
to establish a standard of conduct for such a prince that he wrote his
book.
His story, _Belphegor,_ and his plays, among which the _Mandragora_
stands pre-eminent, are witty and lively, but they frequently overstep
the limits of decorum. All his works are interspersed with innumerable
proofs of the keenness of his observation, and the style is clear and
forcible, but somewhat wanting in colour. He wrote a few poems, but
they are of no great value or interest.
Machiavelli is as undoubtedly the first prose writer of the age as
Ariosto is the first poet, Second to him as an historian, though at a
wide interval, we may place his friend and fellow-townsman, FRANCESCO
GUICCIARDINI, born in 1480, died in 1540. He studied law to such good
purpose at Florence, Ferrara and Padua, that at the early age of
twenty-two he was chosen to lecture on the Institutes of Justinian,
and at the age of thirty-one he was sent as Ambassador to Ferdinand of
Aragon, which post he occupied for two years. With the help of that
King, Julius the Second forced the Florentines to submit again to the
rule of the Medici family. Guicciardini was suspected by the friends
of liberty of having a hand in the negotiations between the Pope and
the King, and of being a tool of that ambitious dynasty. Such, in
truth, he proved himself; and harshness, rancour, and vindictiveness
characterised his conduct towards his political opponents. When Leo
X visited Florence in 1515, Guicciardini was sent by the Republic
to receive him at Cortona. No circumstance could have proved more
favourable to the historian's career. Leo X looked upon him with
the utmost favour, and nominated him to high and important offices,
which his successor, Adrian VI, continued, and to which Clement VII
subsequently added others. When the "Holy League," headed by the Duke
of Urbino, was formed against the Emperor Charles V, Guicciardini was
one of its leading spirits. But the Imperial arms prevailed; Clement
VII had to take refuge in the Castle of St. Angelo, and had the agony
of seeing Rome stormed and plundered under his very eyes. Atrocious
were the cruelties committed. St. Peter's itself was stained with
the blood of the slaughtered. Huge contributions were levied on the
citizens, and an enormous ransom exacted from the Pope. Seeing Clement,
himself a Medici, deprived of liberty and even in danger of his life,
the Florentines took to arms and expelled the obnoxious dynasty. But
the unexpected happened. The injured Pope and the tyrannical Emperor
became reconciled; and probably to atone for the atrocities committed
by his forces, Charles V lent effective aid to Alexander de Medici in
his endeavour to regain his lost dominion over Florence. Guicciardini
became the instrument of Alexander, a cruel and relentless tyrant, who
was subsequently assassinated by his kinsman Lorenzino. Guicciardini
was an active agent in the election of Cosimo I, and when he was
reproached for imposing another tyrant on his country, he answered that
the more princes were assassinated, the more would arise. But Cosimo
was ungrateful when Guicciardini demanded the reward of his services;
bitter disappointment was in store for him; he withdrew from public
affairs, and lived in retirement at Arcetri, where he died.
It was in the leisure hours of this retirement that he wrote the
history on which his literary reputation is founded. It embraces the
period from the invasion of Charles VIII to the year 1532. It is a
valuable and important work; but, as may be gathered from the details
of his life, the author shows no elevation or purity of mind. His view
of human nature is low; his estimate of his fellow-creatures harsh and
cynical. But if the colours are unpleasing, the picture is valuable,
and it would have been a great loss had it not been preserved for
posterity.
Guicciardini is often heavy and prolix, and many ludicrous stories
have been told of the sufferings of those readers who conscientiously
plodded through the entire work. Thus it is related of the jocular
Governor of a Province, that he promised a free pardon to a convict if
he would read Guicciardini's History from the first page to the last.
The prisoner gladly embraced this opportunity of regaining his liberty.
He little knew the task that was imposed upon him. As he turned over
page after page of the ponderous tomes, a deadly weariness overpowered
him, until at last the endless details of the Siege of Pisa exhausted
his patience. "Take me back to the galleys," he exclaimed. "Rather that
than the misery of toiling through this awful book."
AGNOLO FIRENZUOLA was a good prose writer, out a very inferior poet;
indeed, so great is the contrast between the two classes of his works,
that it is difficult to believe that they can emanate from the same
pen. The most striking of his works is a _Dialogue on the Beauty of
Women._
PIER FRANCESCO GIAMBULLARI wrote a _History of Europe_ from the
accession of Charlemagne to the year 913. The history is unfinished,
the author dying in 1555. He was one of the founders of the Florentine
Accademia della Crusca. He has been highly praised for the dignity and
finish of his style. Vasari and CELLINI are names renowned in the
annals of Art, the former for his invaluable biographies of painters,
and the latter as a sculptor and a worker in gold and bronze. His
biography is a striking memorial of the man and the age.
BENEDETTO VARCHI had many qualities of an able historian, but as he was
in the pay of the Grand Duke Cosimo I, his independence may be more
than suspected.
In contrast to him, JACOPO NARDI was a bitter opponent of the Medici
family, and in his _History of Florence_ from 1494 to 1531 he paints
them in the blackest colours. So determined an adversary of the ruling
dynasty could not be suffered to remain in Florence. He was driven into
banishment, and took refuge in Venice, where he died after the middle
of the Century. As a biographer he distinguished himself by his life of
Antonio Giacomini.
The Sixteenth Century was fertile in historians, for we have to
chronicle the name of another in BERNARDO SEGNI. He wrote the _History
of Italy_ from 1527 to 1555, or three years before his death. Dealing
with contemporary events, he could not treat his subject with the
requisite independence, and living a quiet and studious life, it is
difficult to see how he could gather reliable information, or have
access to important documents.
VINCENZO BORGHINI was a laborious antiquarian, who wrote a book on the
_Origin of the City of Florence._
GIAMBATTISTA ADRIANI professed to continue Guicciardini's work in his
_History of his Own Times,_ but it is complete in itself, and has many
merits, both of style and subject. Adriani was celebrated in his day as
a public speaker, and his _Latin Orations_ were so much admired that
they were translated into Italian as soon as they were held. He died in
1579.
CAMILLO PORZIO who survived until 1603, wrote several historical
monographs concerning the Kingdom of Naples.
Skilful as they were in all the arts of composition, the writers of
the Sixteenth Century too frequently indulged in redundant prolixity.
Conscious of this defect, BERNARDO DAVANZATI determined to cultivate
the opposite quality of laconic conciseness. He was brilliantly
successful. He translated Tacitus, that great model of brevity, and
boasted that his rendering contained fewer words than the original
without sacrificing a particle of the sense. He wrote a book on the
Reformation in England, a Funeral Oration on Cosimo I, and several
treatises on finance and agriculture.
In reviewing the writers of this Epoch, we are struck with the
number and merit of the historians. The other Prose Writers appeal
but faintly to modern readers. With the exception of BALDASSARE
CASTIGLIONE, who, in his _Cortegiano_ gives us a pleasing picture
of the more refined circles of Italian society, and of Vasari and
Benvenuto Cellini, they do not disclose much of the manners and customs
of their age. No Boccaccio arose to portray for future times the men
and women of his day.
The stories of BANDELLO and of LUIGI DA PORTO have but little to
recommend them except the fact that they supplied Shakespeare with some
of his plots. Bandello, however, is by no means destitute of vivacity.
STRAPAROLA, the author of _Tredici Piacevoli Notti,_ and FIORENTINI,
the author of _Il Pecorone,_ also had the honour of furnishing hints to
the great dramatist. Too often it happens that the extreme prolixity of
the writers of the Sixteenth Century drowns their thoughts in an ocean
of words. It is strange that the great convulsion of the Reformation
did not produce any theological work written in the Italian language.
The controversies were all carried on in Latin, but even in Latin
nothing was produced in the Peninsula that is now remembered. Indeed,
the great Catholic reaction had the effect of making writers fearful
of giving offence. It restricted them more and more within academic
grooves, thus unhappily fostering that tendency to conventionality and
unreality which immersed Italian literature deeper and deeper into a
morass of mediocrity.