Traces, indeed, of the peculiar character of Milton may be found in

all his works; but it is most strongly displayed in the Sonnets.

Those remarkable poems have been undervalued by critics who have not

understood their nature. They have no epigrammatic point. There is

none of the ingenuity of Filicaja in the thought, none of the hard and

brilliant enamel of Petrarch in the style. They are simple but majestic

records of the feelings of the poet; as little tricked out for the

public eye as his diary would have been. A victory, an expected attack

upon the city, a momentary fit of depression or exultation, a jest

thrown out against one of his books, a dream which for a short time

restored to him that beautiful face over which the grave had closed for

ever, led him to musings, which, without effort, shaped themselves into

verse. The unity of sentiment and severity of style which characterise

these little pieces remind us of the Greek Anthology, or perhaps still

more of the Collects of the {233}English Liturgy. The noble poem on the

Massacres of Piedmont is strictly a Collect in verse.

The Sonnets are more or less striking, according as the occasions which

gave birth to them are more or less interesting. But they are, almost

without exception, dignified by a sobriety and greatness of mind to

which we know not where to look for a parallel. It would, indeed, be

scarcely safe to draw any decided inferences as to the character of a

writer from passages directly egotistical. But the qualities which we

have ascribed to Milton, though perhaps most strongly marked in

those parts of his works which treat of his personal feelings, are

distinguishable in every page, and impart to all his writings, prose and

poetry, English, Latin, and Italian, a strong family likeness.

His public conduct was such as was to be expected from a man of a spirit

so high and of an intellect so powerful. He lived at one of the most

memorable eras in the history of mankind, at the very crisis of the

great conflict between Oromasdes and Arimanes, liberty and despotism,

reason and prejudice. That great battle was fought for no single

generation, for no single land. The destinies of the human race were

staked on the same cast with the freedom of the English people. Then

were first proclaimed those mighty principles which have since worked

their way into the depths of the American forests, which have roused

Greece from the slavery and degradation of two thousand years, and

which, from one end of Europe to the other, have kindled an unquenchable

fire in the hearts of the oppressed, and loosed the knees of the

oppressors with an unwonted fear.

Of those principles, then struggling for their infant existence, Milton

was the most devoted and eloquent literary {234}champion. We need not

say how much we admire his public conduct. But we cannot disguise

from ourselves that a large portion of his countrymen still think it

unjustifiable. The civil war, indeed, has been more discussed, and

is less understood, than any event in English history. The friends of

liberty laboured under the disadvantage of which the lion in the fable

complained so bitterly. Though they were the conquerors, their enemies

were the painters. As a body, the Roundheads had done their utmost to

decry and ruin literature; and literature was even with them, as, in the

long run, it always is with its enemies. The best book on their side of

the question is the charming narrative of Mrs. Hutchinson. May’s History

of the Parliament is good; but it breaks off at the most interesting

crisis of the struggle. The performance of Ludlow is foolish and

violent; and most of the later writers who have espoused the same cause,

Oldmixon for instance, and Catherine Macaulay, have, to say the least,

been more distinguished by zeal than either by candour or by skill.

On the other side are the most authoritative and the most popular

historical works in our language, that of Clarendon, and that of Hume.

The former is not only ably written and full of valuable information,

but has also an air of dignity and sincerity which makes even the

prejudices and errors with which it abounds respectable. Hume, from

whose fascinating narrative the great mass of the reading public are

still contented to take their opinions, hated religion so much that he

hated liberty for having been allied with religion, and has pleaded the

cause of tyranny with the dexterity of an advocate while affecting the

impartiality of a judge.

The public conduct of Milton must be approved or {235}condemned

according as the resistance of the people to Charles the First shall

appear to be justifiable or criminal. We shall therefore make no apology

for dedicating a few pages to the discussion of that interesting and

most important question. We shall not argue it on general grounds. We

shall not recur to those primary principles from which the claim of any

government to the obedience of its subjects is to be deduced. We are

entitled to that vantage ground; but we will relinquish it. We are, on

this point, so confident of superiority, that we are not unwilling to

imitate the ostentatious generosity of those ancient knights, who vowed

to joust without helmet or shield against all enemies, and to give

their antagonists the advantage of sun and wind. We will take the naked

constitutional question. We confidently affirm, that every reason which

can be urged in favour of the Revolution of 1688 may be urged with at

least equal force in favour of what is called the Great Rebellion.

In one respect, only, we think, can the warmest admirers of Charles

venture to say that he was a better sovereign than his son. He was not,

in name and profession, a Papist; we say in name and profession, because

both Charles himself and his creature Laud, while they abjured the

innocent badges of Popery, retained all its worst vices, a complete

subjection of reason to authority, a weak preference of form to

substance, a childish passion for mummeries, an idolatrous veneration

for the priestly character, and, above all, a merciless intolerance.

This, however, we waive. We will concede that Charles was a good

Protestant; but we say that his Protestantism does not make the

slightest distinction between his case and that of James.

The principles of the Revolution have often been {236}grossly

misrepresented, and never more than in the course of the present year.

There is a certain class of men, who, while they profess to hold in

reverence the great names and great actions of former times never look

at them for any other purpose than in order to find in them some excuse

for existing abuses. In every venerable precedent they pass by what is

essential, and take only what is accidental: they keep out of sight what

is beneficial, and hold up to public imitation all that is defective.

If, in any part of any great example, there be any thing unsound, these

flesh-flies detect it with an unerring instinct, and dart upon it with

a ravenous delight. If some good end has been attained in spite of them,

they feel, with their prototype, that

“Their labour must be to pervert that end,

And out of good still to find means of evil."

To the blessings which England has derived from the Revolution these

people are utterly insensible. The expulsion of a tyrant, the solemn

recognition of popular rights, liberty, security, toleration, all go for

nothing with them. One sect there was, which, from unfortunate temporary

causes, it was thought necessary to keep under close restraint. One part

of the empire there was so unhappily circumstanced, that at that time

its misery was necessary to our happiness, and its slavery to our

freedom. These are the parts of the Revolution which the politicians of

whom we speak, love to contemplate, and which seem to them not indeed

to vindicate, but in some degree to palliate, the good which it has

produced. Talk to them of Naples, of Spain, or of South America. They

stand forth zealots for the doctrine of Divine Right which has now come

back to us, like a thief from transportation, {237}under the _alias_ of

Legitimacy. But mention the miseries of Ireland. Then William is a

hero. Then Somers and Shrewsbury are great men. Then the Revolution is a

glorious era. The very same persons who, in this country, never omit an

opportunity of reviving every wretched Jacobite slander respecting the

Whigs of that period, have no sooner crossed St. George’s Channel, than

they begin to fill their bumpers to the glorious and immortal memory.

They may truly boast that they look not at men, but at measures. So that

evil be done, they care not who does it; the arbitrary Charles, or the

liberal William, Ferdinand the Catholic, or Frederic the Protestant. On

such occasions their deadliest opponents may reckon upon their candid

construction. The bold assertions of these people have of late impressed

a large portion of the public with an opinion that James the Second was

expelled simply because he was a Catholic, and that the Revolution was

essentially a Protestant Revolution.

But this certainly was not the case; nor can any person who has acquired

more knowledge of the history of those times than is to be found in

Goldsmith’s Abridgment believe that, if James had held his own religious

opinions without wishing to make proselytes, or if, wishing even to

make proselytes, he had contented himself with exerting only his

constitutional influence for that purpose, the Prince of Orange would

ever have been invited over. Our ancestors, we suppose, knew their own

meaning; and, if we may believe them, their hostility was primarily not

to popery, but to tyranny. They did not drive out a tyrant because he

was a Catholic; but they excluded Catholics from the crown, because they

thought them likely {238}to be tyrants. The ground on which they, in

their famous resolution, declared the throne vacant, was this, “that

James had broken the fundamental laws of the kingdom.” Every man,

therefore, who approves of the Revolution of 1688 must hold that the

breach of fundamental laws on the part of the sovereign justifies

resistance. The question, then, is this; Had Charles the First broken

the fundamental laws of England?

No person can answer in the negative, unless he refuses credit, not

merely to all the accusations brought against Charles by his opponents,

but to the narratives of the warmest Royalists, and to the confessions

of the King himself. If there be any truth in any historian of any party

who has related the events of that reign, the conduct of Charles,

from his accession to the meeting of the Long Parliament, had been a

continued course of oppression and treachery. Let those who applaud

the Revolution, and condemn the Rebellion, mention one act of James

the Second to which a parallel is not to be found in the history of

his father. Let them lay their fingers on a single article in the

Declaration of Right, presented by the two Houses to William and Mary,

which Charles is not acknowledged to have violated. He had, according

to the testimony of his own friends, usurped the functions of the

legislature, raised taxes without the consent of parliament, and

quartered troops on the people in the most illegal and vexatious

manner. Not a single session of parliament had passed without some

unconstitutional attack on the freedom of debate; the right of petition

was grossly violated; arbitrary judgments, exorbitant fines, and

unwarranted imprisonments, were grievances of daily occurrence. If these

things do not justify resistance, {239}the Revolution was treason; if

they do, the Great Rebellion was laudable.

But, it is said, why not adopt milder measures? Why, after the King

had consented to so many reforms, and renounced so many oppressive

prerogatives, did the parliament continue to rise in their demands at

the risk of provoking a civil war? The ship-money had been given up.

The Star Chamber had been abolished. Provision had been made for the

frequent, convocation and secure deliberation of parliaments. Why not

pursue an end confessedly good by peaceable and regular means? We recur

again to the analogy of the Revolution. Why was James driven from the

throne? Why was he not retained upon conditions? He too had offered to

call a free parliament and to submit to its decision all the matters

in dispute. Yet we are in the habit of praising our forefathers, who

preferred a revolution, a disputed succession, a dynasty of strangers,

twenty years of foreign and intestine war, a standing army, and a

national debt, to the rule, however restricted, of a tried and proved

tyrant. The Long Parliament acted on the same principle, and is entitled

to the same praise. They could not trust the King. He had no doubt

passed salutary laws; but what assurance was there that he would not

break them? He had renounced oppressive prerogatives; but where was the

security that he would not resume them? The nation had to deal with a

man whom no tie could bind, a man who made and broke promises with equal

facility, a man whose honour had been a hundred times pawned, and never

redeemed.

Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands on still stronger ground

than the Convention of 1688. No action of James can be compared to the

conduct of {240}Charles with respect to the Petition of Right. The Lords

and Commons present him with a bill in which the constitutional limits

of his power are marked out. He hesitates; he evades; at last he

bargains to give his assent for five subsidies. The bill receives his

solemn assent; the subsidies are voted; but no sooner is the tyrant

relieved, than he returns at once to all the arbitrary measures which he

had bound himself to abandon, and violates all the clauses of the very

Act which he had been paid to pass.

For more than ten years the people had seen the rights which were theirs

by a double claim, by immemorial inheritance and by recent purchase,

infringed by the perfidious king who had recognised them. At length

circumstances compelled Charles to summon another parliament: another

chance was given to our fathers: were they to throw it away as they had

thrown away the former? Were they again to be cozened by le Roi le

vent? Were they again to advance their money on pledges which had been

forfeited over and over again? Were they to lay a second Petition of

Right at the foot of the throne, to grant another lavish aid in exchange

for another unmeaning ceremony, and then to take their departure, till,

after ten years more of fraud and oppression, their prince should again

require a supply, and again repay it with a perjury? They were compelled

to choose whether they would trust a tyrant or conquer him. We think

that they chose wisely and nobly.

The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other malefactors

against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline

all controversy about the facts, and content themselves with calling

testimony to character. He had so many private virtues! And {241}had

James the Second no private virtues? Was Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest

enemies themselves being judges, destitute of private virtues? And what,

after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles? A religious zeal, not

more sincere than that of his son, and fully as weak and narrow-minded,

and a few of the ordinary household decencies which half the tombstones

in England claim for those who lie beneath them. A good father! A

good husband! Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of persecution,

tyranny and falsehood!

We charge him with having broken his coronation oath; and we are told

that he kept his marriage vow! We accuse him of having given up

his people to the merciless inflictions of the most hot-headed and

hard-hearted of prelates; and the defence is, that he took his little

son on his knee and kissed him! We censure him for having violated the

articles of the Petition of Right, after having, for good and valuable

consideration, promised to observe them; and we are informed that he was

accustomed to hear prayers at six o’clock in the morning! It is to such

considerations as these, together with his Vandyke dress, his handsome

face, and his peaked beard, that he owes, we verily believe, most of his

popularity with the present generation.

For ourselves, we own that we do not understand the common phrase, a

good man, but a bad king. We can as easily conceive a good man and an

unnatural father, or a good man and a treacherous friend. We cannot,

in estimating the character of an individual, leave out of our

consideration his conduct in the most important of all human relations;

and if in that relation we find him to have been selfish, cruel, and

deceitful, we shall take the liberty to call him a bad {242}man, in

spite of all his temperance at table, and all his regularity at chapel.

We cannot refrain from adding a few words respecting a topic on which

the defenders of Charles are fond of dwelling. If, they say, he governed

his people ill, he at least governed them after the example of his

predecessors. If he violated their privileges, it was because those

privileges had not been accurately defined. No act of oppression has

ever been imputed to him which has not a parallel in the annals of

the Tudors. This point Hume has laboured, with an art which is as

discreditable in a historical work as it would be admirable in a

forensic address. The answer is short, clear, and decisive. Charles

had assented to the Petition of Right. He had renounced the oppressive

powers said to have been exercised by his predecessors, and he had

renounced them for money He was not entitled to set up his antiquated

claims against his own recent release.

These arguments are so obvious, that it may seem superfluous to dwell

upon them. But those who have observed how much the events of that time

are misrepresented and misunderstood will not blame us for stating

the case simply. It is a case of which the simplest statement is the

strongest.

The enemies of the Parliament, indeed, rarely choose to take issue on

the great points of the question. They content themselves with exposing

some of the crimes and follies to which public commotions necessarily

give birth. They bewail the unmerited fate of Stafford. They execrate

the lawless violence of the army. They laugh at the Scripitural names

of the preachers. Major-generals fleecing their districts; soldiers

revelling on the spoils of a ruined peasantry; upstarts, enriched by

{243}the public plunder, taking possession of the hospitable firesides

and hereditary trees of the old gentry; boys smashing the beautiful

windows of cathedrals; Quakers riding naked through the market-place;

Fifth-monarchy men shouting for King Jesus; agitators lecturing from

the tops of tubs on the fate of Agag; all these, they tell us, were the

offspring of the Great Rebellion.

Be it so. We are not careful to answer in this matter. These charges,

were they infinitely more important, would not alter our opinion of

an event which alone has made us to differ from the slaves who crouch

beneath despotic sceptres. Many evils, no doubt, were produced by the

civil war. They were the price of our liberty. Has the acquisition been

worth the sacrifice? It is the nature of the Devil of tyranny to

tear and rend the body which he leaves. Are the miseries of continued

possession less horrible than the struggles of the tremendous exorcism?

If it were possible that a people brought up under an intolerant and

arbitrary system could subvert that system without acts of cruelty

and folly, half the objections to despotic power would be removed.

We should, in that case, be compelled to acknowledge that it at least

produces no pernicious effects on the intellectual and moral character

of a nation. We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions.

But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a

revolution was necessary. The violence of those outrages will always

be proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of the people; and

the ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the

oppression and degradation under which they have been accustomed to

live. Thus it was in our civil war. The heads of the church and state

reaped only that {244}which they had sown. The government had prohibited

free discussion: it had done its best to keep the people unacquainted

with their duties and their rights. The retribution was just and

natural. If our rulers suffered from popular ignorance, it was because

they had themselves taken away the key of knowledge. If they were

assailed with blind fury, it was because they had exacted an equally

blind submission.

It is the character of such revolutions that we always see the worst of

them at first. Till men have been some time free, they know not how to

use their freedom. The natives of wine countries are generally sober. In

climates where wine is a rarity intemperance abounds. A newly liberated

people may be compared to a northern army encamped on the Rhine or the

Xeres. It is said that, when soldiers in such a situation first

find themselves able to indulge without restraint in such a rare and

expensive luxury, nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon, however,

plenty teaches discretion; and, after wine has been for a few months

their daily fare, they become more temperate than they had ever been in

their own country. In the same manner, the final and permanent fruits

of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate effects are

often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, scepticism on points the

most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is just at

this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down the

scaffolding from the half-finished edifice: they point to the flying

dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful

irregularity of the whole appearance; and then ask in scorn where

the promised splendour and comfort is to be found. If such miserable

sophisms were to prevail there would never be a good house or a good

government in the world. {245}Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy,

who, by some mysterious law of her nature, was condemned to appear at

certain seasons in the form of a foul and poisonous snake. Those who

injured her during the period of her disguise were for ever excluded

from participation in the blessings which she bestowed. But to those

who, in spite of her loathsome aspect, pitied and protected her, she

afterwards revealed herself in the beautiful and celestial form which

was natural to her, accompanied their steps, granted all their wishes,

filled their houses with wealth, made them happy in love and victorious

in war. Such a spirit is Liberty. At times she takes the form of a

hateful reptile. She grovels, she hisses, she stings. But woe to those

who in disgust shall venture to crush her! And happy are those who,

having dared to receive her in her degraded and frightful shape, shall

at length be rewarded by her in the time of her beauty and her glory!

There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom

produces; and that cure is freedom. When a prisoner first leaves his

cell he cannot bear the light of day: he is unable to discriminate

colours, or recognise faces. But the remedy is, not to remand him into

his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze of

truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which have

become half blind in the house of bondage. But let them gaze on, and

they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to reason.

The extreme violence of opinions subsides. Hostile theories correct each

other. The scattered elements of truth cease to contend, and begin to

coalesce. And at length a system of justice and order is educed out of

the chaos.

Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying {246}it down as

a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they

are fit to use their freedom? The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old

story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to

swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in

slavery, they may indeed wait for ever.

Therefore it is that we decidedly approve of the conduct of Milton and

the other wise and good men who, in spite of much that was ridiculous

and hateful in the conduct of their associates, stood firmly by the

cause of Public Liberty. We are not aware that the poet has been charged

with personal participation in any of the blameable excesses of that

time. The favourite topic of his enemies is the line of conduct which

he pursued with regard to the execution of the King. Of that celebrated

proceeding we by no means approve. Still we must say, in justice to

the many eminent persons who concurred in it, and in justice more

particularly to the eminent person who defended it, that nothing can be

more absurd than the imputations which, for the last hundred and sixty

years, it has been the fashion to cast upon the Regicides. We have,

throughout, abstained from appealing to first principles. We will

not appeal to them now. We recur again to the parallel case of the

Revolution. What essential distinction can be drawn between

the execution of the father and the deposition of the son? What

constitutional maxim is there which applies to the former and not to

the latter? The King can do no wrong. If so, James was as innocent as

Charles could have been. The minister only ought to be responsible for

the acts of the Sovereign. If so, why not impeach Jefferies and retain

James? The person of a King is sacred. Was the person of {247}James

considered sacred at the Boyne? To discharge cannon against an army

in which a King is known to be posted is to approach pretty near to

regicide. Charles, too, it should always be remembered, was put to death

by men who had been exasperated by the hostilities of several years,

and who had never been bound to him by any other tie than that which

was common to them with all their fellow-citizens. Those who drove James

from his throne, who seduced his army, who alienated his friends, who

first imprisoned him in his palace, and then turned him out of it, who

broke in upon his very slumbers by imperious messages, who pursued him

with fire and sword from one part of the empire to another, who hanged,

drew, and quartered his adherents, and attainted his innocent heir, were

his nephew and his two daughters. When we reflect on all these things,

we are at a loss to conceive how the same persons who, on the fifth of

November, thank God for wonderfully conducting his servant William, and

for making all opposition fall before him until he became our King and

Governor, can, on the thirtieth of January, contrive to be afraid that

the blood of the Royal Martyr may be visited on themselves and their

children.

We disapprove, we repeat, of the execution of Charles; not because the

constitution exempts the King from responsibility, for we know that all

such maxims, however excellent, have their exceptions; nor because

we feel any peculiar interest in his character, for we think that his

sentence describes him with perfect justice as “a tyrant, a traitor,

a murderer, and a public enemy;” but because we are convinced that the

measure was most injurious to the cause of freedom, He whom it removed

was a captive and a hostage: his {248}heir, to whom the allegiance

of every Royalist was instantly transferred, was at large. The

Presbyterians could never have been perfectly reconciled to the father:

they had no such rooted enmity to the son. The great body of the

people, also, contemplated that proceeding with feelings which, however

unreasonable, no government could safely venture to outrage.

But though we think the conduct of the Regicides blameable, that of

Milton appears to us in a very different light. The deed was done. It

could not be undone. The evil was incurred; and the object was to render

it as small as possible. We censure the chiefs of the army for not

yielding to the popular opinion; but we cannot censure Milton for

wishing to change that opinion. The very feeling which would have

restrained us from committing the act would have led us, after it

had been committed, to defend it against the ravings of servility and

superstition. For the sake of public liberty, we wish that the thing had

not been done, while the people disapproved of it. But, for the sake of

public liberty, we should also have wished the people to approve of it

when it was done. If any thing more were wanting to the justification

of Milton, the book of Salmasius would furnish it. That miserable

performance is now with justice considered only as a beacon to

word-catchers, who wish to become statesmen. The celebrity of the man

who refuted it, the “Æneæ magni dextra,” gives it all its fame with the

present generation. In that age the state of things was different. It

was not then fully understood how vast an interval separates the mere

classical scholar from the political philosopher. Nor can it be doubted

that a treatise which, bearing the name of so eminent a critic, attacked

the fundamental principles of all free {249}governments, must, if

suffered to remain unanswered, have produced a most pernicious effect on

the public mind.

We wish to add a few words relative to another subject, on which

the enemies of Milton delight to dwell, his conduct during the

administration of the Protector. That an enthusiastic votary of liberty

should accept office under a military usurper seems, no doubt, at first

sight, extraordinary. But all the circumstances in which the country was

then placed were extraordinary. The ambition of Oliver was of no vulgar

kind. He never seems to have coveted despotic power. He at first fought

sincerely and manfully for the Parliament, and never deserted it, till

it had deserted its duty. If he dissolved it by force, it was not

till he found that the few members who remained after so many deaths,

secessions, and expulsions, were desirous to appropriate to themselves

a power which they held only in trust, and to inflict upon England the

curse of a Venetian oligarchy. But even when thus placed by violence

at the head of affairs, he did not assume unlimited power. He gave the

country a constitution far more perfect than any which had at that time

been known in the world. He reformed the representative system in a

manner which has extorted praise even from Lord Clarendon. For himself

he demanded indeed the first place in the commonwealth; but with powers

scarcely so great as those of a Dutch stadtholder, or an American

president. He gave the Parliament a voice in the appointment of

ministers, and left to it the whole legislative authority, not even

reserving; to himself a veto on its enactments; and he did not require

that the chief magistracy should be hereditary in his family. Thus far,

we think, if the circumstances of the time {250}and the opportunities

which he had of aggrandizing himself he fairly considered, he will not

lose by comparison with Washington or Bolivar. Had his moderation been

met by corresponding moderation, there is no reason to think that he

would have overstepped the line which he had traced for himself. But

when he found that his parliaments questioned the authority under which

they met, and that he was in danger of being deprived of the restricted

power which was absolutely necessary to his personal safety, then, it

must be acknowledged, he adopted a more arbitrary policy.

Yet, though we believe that the intentions of Cromwell were at first

honest, though we believe that he was driven from the noble course

which he had marked out for himself by the almost irresistible force of

circumstances, though we admire, in common with all men of all parties,

the ability and energy of his splendid administration, we are not

pleading for arbitrary and lawless power, even in his hands. We know

that a good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.

But we suspect, that at the time of which we speak, the violence of

religious and political enmities rendered a stable and happy settlement

next to impossible. The choice lay, not between Cromwell and liberty,

but between Cromwell and the Stuarts. That Milton chose well, no man can

doubt who fairly compares the events of the protectorate with those of

the thirty years which succeeded it, the darkest and most disgraceful

in the English annals. Cromwell was evidently laying, though in an

irregular manner, the foundations of an admirable system. Never before

had religious liberty and the freedom of discussion been enjoyed in a

greater degree. Never had the national honour been better upheld abroad,

or the seat of justice {251}better filled at home. And it was rarely

that any opposition which stopped short of open rebellion provoked the

resentment of the liberal and magnanimous usurper. The institutions

which he had established, as set down in the Instrument of Government,

and the Humble Petition and Advice, were excellent. His practice, it is

true, too often departed from the theory of these institutions. But, had

he lived a few years longer, it is probable that his institutions would

have survived him, and that his arbitrary practice would have died with

him. His power had not been consecrated by ancient prejudices. It was

upheld only by his great personal qualities. Little, therefore, was to

be dreaded from a second protector, unless he were also a second Oliver

Cromwell. The events which followed his decease are the most complete

vindication of those who exerted themselves to uphold his authority. His

death dissolved the whole frame of society. The army rose against the

parliament, the different corps of the army against each other. Sect

raved against sect. Party plotted against party. The Presbyterians, in

their eagerness to be revenged on the Independents, sacrificed their

own liberty, and deserted all their old principles. Without casting one

glance on the past, or requiring one stipulation for the future, they

threw down their freedom at the feet of the most frivolous and heartless

of tyrants.

Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush, the days

of servitude without loyalty and sensuality without love, of dwarfish

talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow

minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The King

cringed to his rival that he might trample on his people, sank into

a viceroy of France, and pocketed, {252}with complacent infamy, her

degrading insults, and her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots,

and the jests of buffoons, regulated the policy of the state. The

government had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough

to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning

courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. In every

high place, worship was paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch;

and England propitiated those obscene and cruel idols with the blood of

her best and bravest children. Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace to

disgrace, till the race accursed of God and man was a second time driven

forth, to wander on the face of the earth, and to be a by-word and a

shaking of the head to the nations.

Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made on the public character

of Milton, apply to him only as one of a large body. We shall proceed

to notice some of the peculiarities which distinguished him from his

contemporaries. And, for that purpose, it is necessary to take a short

survey of the parties into which the political world was at that time

divided. We must premise, that our observations are intended to apply

only to those who adhered, from a sincere preference, to one or to the

other side. In days of public commotion, every fiction, like an Oriental

army, is attended by a crowd of camp-followers, an useless and heartless

rabble, who prowl round its line of march in the hope of picking up

something under its protection, but desert it in the day of battle, and

often join to exterminate it after a defeat. England, at the time of

which we are treating, abounded with fickle and selfish politicians, who

transferred their support to every government as it rose, who kissed the

hand of the King in 1640, and {253}spat in his face in 1649, who shouted

with equal glee when Cromwell was inaugurated in Westminster Hall, and

when he was dug up to be hanged at Tyburn, who dined on calves’

heads, or stuck up oak-branches, as circumstances altered, without the

slightest shame or repugnance. These we leave out of the account. We

take our estimate of parties from those who really deserve to be called

partisans.

We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men,

perhaps, which the world has ever produced. The odious and ridiculous

parts of their character lie on the surface. He that runs may read them;

nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to point

them out. For many years after the Restoration, they were the theme

of unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to the utmost

licentiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time when the press

and the stage were most licentious. They were not men of letters; they

were, as a body, unpopular; they could not defend themselves; and the

public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore

abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists

and dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour

aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, their

Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which they introduced on every

occasion, their contempt of human learning, their detestation of polite

amusements, were indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from

the laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be learnt.

And he who approaches this subject should carefully guard against the

influence of that potent ridicule which has already misled so many

excellent writers.

“Ecco {254}il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio

Che mortali perigli in se contiene:

Hor qui teuer a fren nostro desio,

Ed esser cauti niolto a noi conviene."

Those who roused the people to resistance, who directed their measures

through a long series of eventful years, who formed, out of the most

unpromising materials, the finest army that Europe had ever seen, who

trampled down King, Church, and Aristocracy, who, in the short intervals

of domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name of England terrible to

every nation on the face of the earth, were no vulgar fanatics. Most

of their absurdities were mere external badges, like the signs of

freemasonry, or the dresses of friars. We regret that these badges were

not more attractive. We regret that a body to whose courage and talents

mankind has owed inestimable obligations had not the lofty elegance

which distinguished some of the adherents of Charles the First, or

the easy good-breeding for which the court of Charles the Second was

celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, we shall, like Bassanio in

the play, turn from the specious caskets which contain only the Death’s

head and the Fool’s head, and fix on the plain leaden chest which

conceals the treasure.

The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from

the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not

content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling Providence,

they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for

whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too

minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great

end of existence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage

which other sects substituted {255}for the pure worship of the soul.

Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an

obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on his intolerable brightness,

and to commune with him face to face. Hence originated their contempt

for terrestrial distinctions. The difference between the greatest

and the meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with the

boundless interval which separated the whole race from him on whom their

own eyes were constantly fixed. They recognised no title to superiority

but his favour; and, confident of that favour, they despised all

the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If they were

unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were

deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the

registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their

steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of

ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not

made with hands; their diadems crowns of glory which should never fade

away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests they looked

down with contempt: for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious

treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by the right

of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier

hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious

and terrible importance belonged, on whose slightest action the spirits

of light and darkness looked with anxious interest, who had been

destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity

which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away.

Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes, had

been ordained on his {256}account. For his sake empires had risen, and

flourished, and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his

will by the pen of the Evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. He had

been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He

had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no

earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that

the rocks had been rent, that the dead had risen, that all nature had

shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God.

Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all

self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion, the other proud, calm,

inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his

Maker: but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional

retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was

half-maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres

of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the

Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. Like

Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millennial

year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that God

had hid his face from him. But when he took his seat in the council, or

girt on his sword for war, these impestuous workings of the soul had

left no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the

godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but their

groans and their whining hymns, yet laugh at them. But those had little

reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate or in the

field of battle. These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a

coolness of judgment and an immutability of purpose which some writers

have thought {257}inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were

in fact the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings

on one subject made them tranquil on every other. One overpowering

sentiment had subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear.

Death had lost its terrors and pleasure its charms. They had their

smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sorrows, but not for

the things of this world. Enthusiasm had made them Stoics, had cleared

their minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them

above the influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead

them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. They went

through the world, like Sir Artegal’s iron man Talus with his flail,

crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling with human beings, but

having neither part nor lot in human infirmities, insensible to fatigue,

to pleasure, and to pain, not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be

withstood by any barrier.

Such we believe to have been the character of the Puritans. We perceive

the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their

domestic habits. We acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often

injured by straining after things too high for mortal reach: and we know

that, in spite of their hatred of Popery, they too often fell into the

worst vices of that bad system, intolerance and extravagant austerity,

that they had their anchorites and their crusades, their Dunstans and

their De Monforts, their Dominies and their Escobars. Yet, when all

circumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to

pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and an useful body.

The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty {258}mainly because

it was the cause of religion. There was another party, by no means

numerous, but distinguished by learning and ability, which acted with

them on very different principles. We speak of those whom Cromwell was

accustomed to call the Heathens, men who were, in the phraseology

of that time, doubting; Thomases or careless Gallios with regard to

religious subjects, but passionate worshippers of freedom. Heated by the

study of ancient literature, they set up their country as their idol,

and proposed to themselves the heroes of Plutarch as their examples.

They seem to have borne some resemblance to the Brissotines of

the French Revolution. But it is not very easy to draw the line of

distinction between them and their devout associates, whose tone and

manner they sometimes found it convenient to affect, and sometimes, it

is probable, imperceptibly adopted.

We now come to the Royalists. We shall attempt to speak of them, as we

have spoken of their antagonists, with perfect candour. We shall not

charge upon a whole party the profligacy and baseness of the horseboys,

gamblers and bravoes, whom the hope of license and plunder attracted

from all the dens of Whitefriars to the standard of Charles, and

who disgraced their associates by excesses which, under the stricter

discipline of the Parliamentary armies, were never tolerated. We will

select a more favourable specimen. Thinking as we do that the cause of

the King was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we yet cannot refrain

from looking with complacency on the character of the honest old

Cavaliers. We feel a national pride in comparing them with the

instruments which the despots of other countries are compelled

to employ, with the mutes who throng their antechambers, and the

Janissaries who {259}mount guard at their gates. Our royalist countrymen

were not heartless, dangling courtiers, bowing at every step, and

simpering at every word. They were not mere machines for destruction,

dressed up in uniforms, caned into skill, intoxicated into valour,

defending without love, destroying without hatred. There was a freedom

in them subserviency, a nobleness in their very degradation. The

sentiment of individual independence was strong within them. They were

indeed misled, but by no base or selfish motive. Compassion and romantic

honour, the prejudices of childhood, and the venerable names of

history, threw over them a spell potent as that of Duessa; and, like

the Red-Cross Knight, they thought that they were doing battle for an

injured beauty, while they defended a false and loathsome sorceress.

In truth they scarcely entered at all into the merits of the political

question. It was not for a treacherous king or an intolerant church that

they fought, but for the old banner which had waved in so many battles

over the heads of their fathers, and for the altars at which they

had received the hands of their brides. Though nothing could be more

erroneous than their political opinions, they possessed, in a far

greater degree than their adversaries, those qualities which are the

grace of private life. With many of the vices of the Round Table,

they had also many of its virtues, courtesy, generosity, veracity,

tenderness, and respect for women. They had far more both of profound

and of polite learning than the Puritans. Their manners were more

engaging, their tempers more amiable, their tastes more elegant, and

their households more cheerful.

Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes which we have

described. He was not a Puritan. He {260}was not a freethinker. He was

not a Royalist. In his character the noblest qualities of every party

were combinée! in harmonious union. From the Parliament and from the

Court, from the conventicle and from the Gothic cloister, from the

gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and from the Christmas

revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to

itself whatever was great and good, while it rejected all the base and

pernicious ingredients by which those finer elements were defiled. Like

the Puritans, he lived

“As ever in his great task-master’s eye."

Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on an Almighty Judge and

an eternal reward. And hence he acquired their contempt of external

circumstances, their fortitude, their tranquillity, their inflexible

resolution. But not the coolest sceptic or the most profane scoffer was

more perfectly free from the contagion of their frantic delusions, their

savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of science, and

their aversion to pleasure. Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred, he

had nevertheless all the estimable and ornamental qualities which were

almost entirely monopolised by the party of the tyrant. There was none

who had a stronger sense of the value of literature, a finer relish for

every elegant amusement, or a more chivalrous delicacy of honour

and love. Though his opinions were democratic, his tastes and his

associations were such as harmonise best with monarchy and aristocracy.

He was under the influence of all the feelings by which the gallant

Cavaliers were misled. But of those feelings he was the master and

not the slave. Like the hero of Homer, he enjoyed all the pleasures of

fascination; but he was not fascinated. {261}He listened to the song of

the Syrens; yet he glided by without being seduced to their fatal

shore. He tasted the cup of Circe; but he bore about him a sure antidote

against the effects of its bewitching sweetness. The allusions which

captivated his imagination never impaired his reasoning powers. The

statesman was proof against the splendour, the solemnity, and the

romance which enchanted the poet. Any person who will contrast the

sentiments expressed in his treatises on Prelacy with the exquisite

lines on ecclesiastical architecture and music in the Penseroso, which

was published about the same time, will understand our meaning. This is

an inconsistency which, more than any thing else, raises his character

in our estimation, because it shows how many private tastes and feelings

he sacrificed, in order to do what he considered his duty to mankind.

It is the very struggle of the noble Othello. His heart relents; but his

hand is firm. He does nought in hate, but all in honour. He kisses the

beautiful deceiver before he destroys her.

That from which the public character of Milton derives its great and

peculiar splendour, still remains to be mentioned. If he exerted himself

to overthrow a forsworn king and a persecuting hierarchy, he exerted

himself in conjunction with others. But the glory of the battle which he

fought for the species of freedom which is the most valuable, and which

was then the least understood, the freedom of the human mind, is all

his own. Thousands and tens of thousands among his contemporaries raised

their voices against Ship-money and the Star-chamber. But there were few

indeed who discerned the more fearful evils of moral and intellectual

slavery, and the benefits which would result from the liberty of the

press and the unfettered {262}exercise of private judgment. These were

the objects which Milton justly conceived to be the most important. He

was desirous that the people should think for themselves as well as tax

themselves, and should be emancipated from the dominion of prejudice

as well as from that of Charles. He knew that those who, with the best

intentions, overlooked these schemes of reform, and contented themselves

with pulling down the King and imprisoning the malignants, acted like

the heedless brothers in his own poem, who, in their eagerness to

disperse the train of the sorcerer, neglected the means of liberating

the captive. They thought only of conquering when they should have

thought of disenchanting.

“Oh, ye mistook! Ye should have snatched his wand

And bound him fast. Without the rod reversed,

And backward mutters of dissevering power,

We cannot free the lady that sits here

Bound in strong fetters fixed and motionless."

To reverse the rod, to spell the charm backward, to break the ties which

bound a stupefied people to the seat of enchantment, was the noble aim

of Milton. To this all his public conduct was directed. For this he

joined the Presbyterians; for this he forsook them. He fought their

perilous battle; but he turned away with disdain from their insolent

triumph. He saw that they, like those whom they had vanquished, were

hostile to the liberty of thought. He therefore joined the Independents,

and called upon Cromwell to break the secular chain, and to save free

conscience from the paw of the Presbyterian wolf. With a view to the

same great object, he attacked the licensing system, in that sublime

treatise which every statesman should wear as a sign upon his hand and

as frontlets between his eyes. His attacks were, in general, directed

less {263}against particular abuses than against those deeply-seated

errors on which almost all abuses are founded, the servile worship of

eminent men and the irrational dread of innovation.

That he might shake the foundations of these debasing sentiments

more effectually, he always selected for himself the boldest literary

services. He never came up in the rear, when the outworks had been

carried and the breach entered. He pressed into the forlorn hope. At

the beginning of the changes, he wrote with incomparable energy and

eloquence against the bishops. But, when his opinion seemed likely to

prevail, he passed on to other subjects, and abandoned prelacy to the

crowd of writers who now hastened to insult a falling party. There is no

more hazardous enterprise than that of bearing the torch of truth into

those dark and infected recesses in which no light has ever shone. But

it was the choice and the pleasure of Milton to penetrate the noisome

vapours, and to brave the terrible explosion. Those who most disapprove

of his opinions must respect the hardihood with which he maintained

them. He, in general, left to others the credit of expounding and

defending the popular parts of his religious and political creed. He

took his own stand upon those which the great body of his countrymen

reprobated as criminal, or derided as paradoxical. He stood up for

divorce and regicide. He attacked the prevailing systems of education.

His radiant and beneficent career resembled that of the god of light and

fertility.

” Nitor in adversum; nec me, qui caetera, vincit

Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi."

It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton should, in

our time, be so little read. As compositions, {264}they deserve the

attention of every man who wishes to become acquainted with the full

power of the English language. They abound with passages compared with

which the finest declamations of Burke sink into insignificance. They

are a perfect field of cloth of gold. The style is stiff with gorgeous

embroidery. Not even in the earlier hooks of the Paradise Lost has the

great poet ever risen higher than in those parts of his controversial

works in which his feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts

of devotional and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow his own majestic

language, “a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies.”

We had intended to look more closely at these performances, to analyse

the peculiarities of the diction, to dwell at some length on the sublime

wisdom of the Areopagitica and the nervous rhetoric of the Iconoclast,

and to point out some of those magnificent passages which occur in the

Treatise of Reformation, and the Animadversions on the Remonstrant.

But the length to which our remarks have already extended renders this

impossible.

We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely tear ourselves away from the

subject. The days immediately following the publication of this relic of

Milton appear to be peculiarly set apart, and consecrated to his memory.

And we shall scarcely be censured if, on this his festival, we be found

lingering near his shrine, how worthless soever may be the offering

which we bring to it. While this book lies on our table, we seem to be

contemporaries of the writer. We are transported a hundred and fifty

years back. We can almost fancy that we are visiting him in his small

lodging; that we see him sitting at the old organ beneath {265}the

faded green hangings; that we can catch the quick twinkle of his eyes,

rolling in vain to find the day; that we are reading in the lines of his

noble countenance the proud and mournful history of his glory and his

affliction. We image to ourselves the breathless silence in which we

should listen to his slightest word, the passionate veneration with

which we should kneel to kiss his hand and weep upon it, the earnestness

with which we should endeavour to console him, if indeed such a spirit

could need consolation, for the neglect of an age unworthy of his

talents and his virtues, the eagerness with which we should contest

with his daughters, or with his Quaker friend Elwood, the privilege

of reading Homer to him, or of taking down the immortal accents which

flowed from his lips.

These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we cannot be ashamed of them;

nor shall we be sorry if what we have written shall in any degree excite

them in other minds. We are not much in the habit of idolizing either

the living or the dead. And we think that there is no more certain

indication of a weak and ill-regulated intellect than that propensity

which, for want of a better name, we will venture to christen

Boswellism. But there are a few characters which have stood the closest

scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried in the furnace

and have proved pure, which have been weighed in the balance and have

not been found wanting, which have been declared sterling by the general

consent of mankind, and which are visibly stamped with the image and

superscription of the Most High. These great men we trust that we know

how to prize; and of these was Milton. The sight of his books, the

sound of his name, are pleasant to us. His thoughts resemble {266}those

celestial fruits and flowers which the Virgin Martyr of Massinger

sent down from the gardens of Paradise to the earth, and which were

distinguished from the productions of other soils, not only by superior

bloom and sweetness, but by miraculous efficacy to invigorate and to

heal. They are powerful, not only to delight, but to elevate and purify.

Nor do we envy the man who can study either the life or the writings of

the great poet and patriot, without aspiring to emulate, not indeed the

sublime works with which his genius has enriched our literature, but

the zeal with which he laboured for the public good, the fortitude with

which he endured every private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he

looked down on temptations and dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore

to bigots and tyrants, and the faith which he so sternly kept with his

country and with his fame.

MACHIAVELLI. (1)

{267}(_Edinburgh Review_, March 1827.)

Those who have attended to this 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. Périer 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

(1) Ouvres completes de Machiavel, traduites par J. V.

Perier. Paris: 1825.

{268}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 synonyme for the Devil. (1)

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 winch 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

(1) 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. {269}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 dæmons 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

{270}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

dispatches, 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

villany 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 {271}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 any thing

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, {272}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 {273}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 Otlio 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

Cæsars. 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 pullies, 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 {274}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 {275}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 Cæsars found it

necessary to feed and divert the inhabitants of their unwieldly 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 the

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 money-changers were set in every city.

Manufactures flourished. Banks were established. {276}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

{277}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 the 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, every thing 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, had 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 {278}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 tranquillità, coltivata non meno ne’ luoghi più montuosi

e pin sterili che nelle pianure e regîoni più fertili, ne sottoposta ad

altro imperio che de’ suoi medesimi, non solo era abbon-dantissima d’

abitatori c di ricchezze; ma illustrata, sommamente dalla magnificenza

di molti principi, dallo {279}splendore cli moite nobilissime e

bellissime città, dalla sedia e maestà della religione, fioriva d’

nomini prestantissimi ela amministrazione delle cose publiche, e d’

ingegni molto nobili in tutte le scienze, ed in qua-lunque arte preelara

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,

Clie ne’nvogliava amore e cortesia

Là dove i cuor son fatti si malvagi."

A time was at hand, when all the seven vials of the {280}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 {281}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 Ægean 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 Platæa, mercenary troops were every where 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 {282}the second century

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

highlanders of Ætolia, 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 {283}Europe this

most important branch of war became a separate profession. Beyond the

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

unknown in other countries.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

of crimes.

When the princes and commonwealths of Italy began to use hired

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

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

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

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

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

naked traffic. The adventurer brought his horse, {284}his weapons,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

strongest interests and the strongest feelings concurred to mitigate the

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

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

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

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

indecisive beyond any recorded in history, marches and countermarches,

pillaging expeditions and blockades, bloodless capitulations and equally

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

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

sunset. A great {285}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, every thing was done by superiority

of 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 {286}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, every thing 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 every thing. The unsuspecting

confidence {287}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 insured 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. {288}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

black mail from his neighbours, committed the same crime for which Wild

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

{289}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 in the middle

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

accustomed to consider as certain indications of a mind altogether

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

with benevolence, with disinterestedness. From such a state of

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

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

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

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

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

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

{290}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 {291}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. {292}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 every thing, 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 {293}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

hear 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 Machavelli, 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 Molière. It is the work of a man who, if he

had devoted himself to the drama, would probably have attained {294}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.