familiarize himself with the use of arms. The commonwealths of Italy did not, like those of Greece, swarm with thousands of these household enemies. Lastly, the mode in which military operations were conducted, during the prosperous times of Italy, was peculiarly 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 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 in lif ference. 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 turring 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 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 The use of the Grecian spear, the Roman then employed, and fighting by the side of his word, or the modern bayonet, might be acquir-enemies against his associates. The strongest ed with comparative ease. But nothing short interest and the strongest feelings concurred to of the daily exercise of years could train the mitigate the hostility of those who had lately man at arms to support his ponderous panoply been brethren in arms, and who might soon be and manage his unwieldy weapon. Through-brethren in arms once more. Their common cut Europe, this most important branch of war profession was a bond of union not to be for became a separate profession. Beyond the gotten, even when they were engaged in the Alps, indeed, though a profession, it was not service of contending parties. Hence it was generally a trade. It was the duty and the that operations, languid and indecisive beyond amusement of a large class of country gentle- any recorded in history, marches and countermen. It was the service by which they held marches, pillaging expeditions and blockades, their lands, and the diversion by which, in the bloodless capitulations and equally bloodless absence of mental resources, they beguiled combats, make up the military history of Italy their leisure. But, in the Northern States of during the course of nearly two centuries. Italy, as we have already remarked, the grow- Mighty armies fight from sunrise to sunset. A ing power of the cities, where it had not exter- great victory is won. Thousands of prisoners minated this order of men, had completely are taken; and hardly a life is lost! pitched changed their habits. Here, therefore, the prac- battle seems to have been really less dangerous tice of employing mercenaries became univer- than an ordinary civil tumult. sal, at a time when it was almost unknown in other countries. 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 Courage was now no longer necessary even to the military character. Men grew old in When war becomes the trade of a separate camps, and acquired the highest renown by class, the least dangerous course left to a their warlike achievements, without being government is to form that class into a stand-once required to face serious danger. ing army. It is scarcely possible, that men can pass their lives in the service of a single 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 tri-still more remarkable. bute 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 commou property of all. The connection between the state and its defenders was reduced to the mos simple naked traffic. The adventurer brought his horse, his weapons, his strength, and his experience into the market. Whether 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 pro cesses strictly analogous, two opposite sys tems of fashiorable morality.-Through the greater part of Europe, the vices which peculiarly belong to timid dispositions, and which are the natural defence of weakness, fraud, and hypocrisy, have always been most disreputable. On the other hand, the excesses of haughty and daring spirits have been treated with indulgence, and even with respect. The Italians regarded with corresponding lenity those crimes which require self-command, address, quick observation, fertile invention, and profound knowledge of human nature. Such a prince as our Henry the Fifth would have been the idol of the North. The follies of his youth, the selfish and desolating 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 the Italian hero. 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 com nit, when their morality is not a science, but a ta ste; 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 a Northern reader-his intrepid and ardent spirit redeeming every thing. The unsuspecting confidence with which he listens to his adviser, the agony with which he shrinks from the thought of shame, the tempest of passion with which he commits his crimes, and the haughty fearlessness with which he avows them, give an extraordinary interest to his character. Iago, on the contrary, is the object of universal loathing. Many are inclined to suspect that Shakspeare has been seduced into an exaggeration unusual with him, and has drawn a monster who has no archetype in human nature. Now we suspect, that an Italian audience, in the fifteenth century, would have felt very differently. Othello would have inspired nothing but detestation and contempt. The folly with which he trusts to 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 disap probation. The readiness of his 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 dif ference existed between the Greeks of the se cond century before Christ, and their masters the Romans. The conquerors, brave and resolute, faithful to their engagements, and strongly influenced by religious feelings, were, at the same time, ignorant, arbitrary, and cruel. With the vanquished people were deposited all the art, the science, and the literature of the Western world. In poetry, in philosophy, in painting, in architecture, in sculpture, they had no rivals. Their manners were polished, their perceptions acute, their invention ready; they were tolerant, affable, humane. But of courage and sincerity they were almost utterly destitute. The rude warriors who had subdued them consoled themselves for their 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 sarcasm 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 unscrupulous. But, like the latter, he had a country. Its independence and prosperity were dear to him. If his character were de graded by some mean 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 charac ter. 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 buzzas cf two hundred thousand people. But there can be no doubt that he was a much less depraved man thar. 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 probably wrong such a Roman if we supposed that his disposi tion was so cruel as that of Mrs. Brownrigg. In our own country, a woman forfeits her place in society, by what, in a man, is toe commonly considered as an honourable dis tinction, and, at worst, as a venial error. The consequence is notorious. The moral prin ciple of a woman is frequently more impaired by a single lapse from virtue, than that of a man by twenty years of intrigue. Classical antiquity would furnish us with instances stronger, if possible, than those to which we have referred. is insensible to shame, but because, in the so ciety in which he lives, timidity has ceased to We must apply this principle to the case be- be shameful. To do an injury openly is, in his fore us. Habits of dissimulation and falsehood, estimation, as wicked as to do it secretly, and no doubt, mark a man of our age and country far less profitable. With him the most honour as utterly worthless and abandoned. But it by able means are-the surest, the speediest, and no means follows that a similar judgment the darkest. He cannot comprehend how a would be just in the case of an Italian of the man should scruple to deceive him whom he middle ages. On the contrary, we frequently does not scruple to destroy. He would think find those faults, which we are accustomed to it madness to declare open hostilities against consider as certain indications of a mind alto- a rival whom he might stab in a friendly emgether depraved, in company with great and brace, or poison in a consecrated wafer. good qualities, with generosity, with benevo- Yet this man, black with the vices which we lence, with disinterestedness. From such a consider as most loathsome-traitor, hypocrite, state of society, Palamedes, in the admirable coward, assassin-was by no means destitute dialogue of Hume, might have drawn illustra- even of those virtues which we generally contions of his theory as striking as any of those sider as indicating superior elevation of characwith which Fourli furnished him. These are ter. In civil courage, in perseverance, in prenot, we well know, the lessons which historians sence of mind, those barbarous warriors who are generally most careful to teach, or readers were foremost in the battle or the breach, were most willing to learn. But they are not there- far his inferiors. Even the dangers which he fore useless. How Philip disposed his troops avoided, with a caution almost pusillanimous, at Charonea, where Hannibal crossed the Alps, never confused his perceptions, never parawhether Mary blew up Darnley, or Siquier shot lyzed his inventive faculties, never wrung out Charles the Twelfth, and ten thousand other one secret from his ready tongue and his inquestions of the same description, are in them-scrutable brow. Though a dangerous enemy, selves unimportant. The inquiry may amuse and a still more dangerous accomplice, he was us, but the decision leaves us no wiser. He a just and beneficent ruler. With so much unalone reads history aright, who, observing how fairness in his policy, there was an extraordipowerfully circumstances influence the feel-nary degree of fairness in his intellect. Indif ings 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 philosophic 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 adversary by petty provocations. His purpose is disclosed only when it is accomplished. His face is unruffled, his speech is courteous, till vigilance is laid asieep, 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, the frivolous and prating Frenchman, the romantic and arrogant Spaniard, he neither possesses nor values. He shuns danger, not because he ferent to truth in the transactions of life, he them eminent either in active or in contempla- | from it. But they no longer produce their tive life, and fitted them either to govern or to wonted effect. Virgil advises the husbandmen instruct mankind. who removes a plant from one spot to another to mark its bearings on the cork, and to place it in the same position with regard to the dif ferent points of the heaven in which it for merly stood. A similar care is necessary in poetical transplantation. Where it is neglected, we perpetually see the flowers of language, which have bloomed on one soil, wither on another. Yet the Golden Ass is not altogether destitute of merit. There is considerable ingenuity in the allegory, and some vivid colour. Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universal y, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure.. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals, with their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors. Nor is this all. Posterity, that high court of appeal which is never tired of eulogizing its own jus-ing in the descriptions. tice and discernment, acts, on such occasions, like a Roman dictator after a general mutiny. Finding the delinquents too numerous to be all punished, it selects some of them at hazard to bear the whole penalty of an offence in which they are not more deeply implicated than those who escape. Whether decimation be a convenient mode of military execution, we know not: but we solemnly protest against the introduction of such a principle into the philoso-excellence. phy of history. The Comedies deserve more 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 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 There are compositions which indicate still greater talent, and which are In the present instance, the lot has fallen on perused with still greater delight, from which Machiavelli: a man whose public conduct was we should have drawn very different conclu upright and honourable, whose views of mo- sions. Books quite worthless are quite harm rality, where they differed from those of the less. The sure sign of the general decline of persons around him, seem to have differed for an art is the frequent occurrence, not of de the better, and whose only fault was, that, hav-formity, but of misplaced beauty. In general, ing adopted some of the maxims then generally tragedy is corrupted by eloquence, and comedy received, he arranged them more luminously, by wit. and expressed them more forcibly than any other writer. The real object of the drama is the exhibi tion of the human character. This, we conceive, is no arbitrary canon, originating in local and temporary associations, like those which regulate the number of acts in a play, or syllables in a line. It is the very essence of a species of composition, in which every idea is coloured by passing through the medium of an imagined mind. To this fundamental law every other regulation is subor dinate. The situations which most signally develope character form the best plot. The mother tongue of the passions is the best style Having now, we hope, in some degree cleared the personal character of Machiavelli, we come to the consideration of his works. As a poet, he is not entitled to a very high place. The Decennali are merely abstracts of the history of his own times in rhyme. The style and versification are sedulously modelled on those of Dante. But the manner of Dante, like that of every other great original poet, was suited only to his own genius, and to his own subject. The distorted and rugged diction which gives to his unearthly imagery a yet The principle, rightly understood, does not more unearthly character, and seems to pro-debar the poet from any grace of composition. ceed from a man labouring to express that which is inexpressible, is at once mean and extravagant when misemployed by an imitator. The moral poems are in every point superior. That on Fortune, in particular, and that on Opportunity exhibit both justness of thought and fertility of fancy. The Golden Ass has nothing but the name in common with the Romance of Apuleius, a book which, in spite of its irregular plan and its detestable style, is among the most fascinating in the Latin language, and in which the merits of Le Sage and Radcliffe, Bunyan and Crébillon, are singularly anite 1. The Poem of Machiavelli, which is evidently unfinished, is carefully copied from the earlier Cantos of the Inferno. The writer loses himself in a wood. He is terrified by monsters, and relieved by a beautiful damsel. His protectress conducts him to a large menagerie of emblematical beasts, whose peculiarities are described at length. The manner as well as the plan of the Divine Comedy is carefully imitated. Whole lines are transferred There is no style in which some man may not, under some circumstances, express himself. There is therefore no style which the drama rejects, none which it does not occasionally require. It is in the discernment of place, of time, and of person, that the inferior artists fail. The brilliant rodomontade of Mercutio, the elaborate declamation of Antony, are, where Shakspeare has placed them, natura and pleasing. But Dryden would have made Mercutio challenge Tybalt, in hyperboles as fanciful as those in which he describes the chariot of Mab.-Corneille would have repre. sented Antony as scolding and coaxing Cleo patra w th all the measured rhetoric of a fune ral oration. No writers have injured the Comedy cl Eng land so deeply as Congreve and Sheridan. Both were men of splendid wit and polished taste. Unhappily they made all their characters in their own likeness. Their works bear the same relation to the legitimate drama which a transparency bears to a painting n delicate touches; no hues imperceptibly fad- Nicias is, as Thersites says of Patroclus, a ing into each other; the whole is lighted up fool positive. His mind is occupied by no with an universal glare. Outlines and tints strong feeling; it takes every character, and are forgotten, in the common blaze which retains none; its aspect is diversified, not by illuminates all. The flowers and fruits of the passions, but by faint and transitory semblances intellect abound; but it is the abundance of a of passion, a mock joy, a mock fear, a mock jungle, not of a garden-un wholesome, be- love, a mock pride, which chase each other wildering, unprofitable from its very plenty, like shadows over its surface, and vanish as rank from its very fragrance. Every fop, soon as they appear. He is just idiot enough every boor, every valet, is a man of wit. The to be an object, not of pity or horror, but of very butts and dupes, Tattie, Urkwould, Puff, ridicule. He bears some resemblance to poor Acres, outshine the whole Hôtel de Rambouil- Calandrino, whose mishaps, as recounted by let. To prove the whole system of this school Boccaccio, have made all Europe merry for absurd, it is only necessary to apply the test more than four centuries. He perhaps resem which dissolved the enchanted Florimel-to bles still more closely Simon de Villa, to whom place the true by the false Thalia, to contrast Bruno and Buffulmacco promised the love of the most celebrated characters which have the Countess Civillari. Nicias is, like Simon, been drawn by the writers of whom we speak, of a learned profession; and the dignity with with the Bastard in King John, or the Nurse in which he wears the doctoral fur renders his Romeo and Juliet. It was not surely from absurdities infinitely more grotesque. The want of wit that Shakspeare adopted so differ-old Tuscan is the very language for such a ent a manner. Benedick and Beatrice throw being. Its peculiar simplicity gives even to Mirabel and Millamant into the shade. All the most forcible reasoning and the most bril. the good sayings of the facetious hours of Ab-liant wit an infantine air, generally delightful, solute and Surface might have been clipped from the single character of Falstaff without being missed. It would have been easy for that fertile mind to have given Bardolph and Shallow as much wit as Prince Hal, and to have made Dogberry and Verges retort on each other in sparkling epigrams. But he knew, to use his own admirable language, that such indiscriminate prodigality was "from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, as it were, the mirror up to Nature." but to a foreign reader sometimes a little ludicrous. Heroes and statesmen seem to lisp when they use it. It becomes Nicias incomparably, and renders all his silliness infinitely more silly. We may add, that the verses, with which the Mandragola is interspersed, appear to us to be the most spirited and correct of all that Machiavelli has written in metre. He seems to have entertained the same opinion; for he has introduced some of them in other places. The contemporaries of the author were not blind to the merits of this striking piece. It was acted at Florence with the greatest success. Leo the Tenth was among its admirers, and by his order it was represented at Rome.t This digression will enable our readers to understand what we mean when we say that, in the Mandragola, Machiavelli has proved that he completely understood the nature of the dramatic art, and possessed talents which The Clizia is an imitation of the Casina of would have enabled him to excel in it. By the Plautus, which is itself an imitation of the lost correct and vigorous delineation of human na- Kanpura of Diphilus. Plautus was, unquesture, it produces interest without a pleasing or tionably, one of the best Latin writers. His skilful plot, and laughter without the least am- works are copies; but they have in an extrabition of wit. The lover, not a very delicate ordinary degree the air of originals. We inor generous lover, and his adviser the parasite, finitely prefer the slovenly exuberance of his are drawn with spirit. The hypocritical con- fancy, and the clumsy vigour of his diction, to fessor is an admirable portrait. He is, if we the artfully disguised poverty and elegant lanmistake not, the original of Father Dominic, guor of Terence. But the Casina is by no the best comic character of Dryden. But old means one of his best plays; nor is it one Nicias is the glory of the piece. We cannot which offers great facilities to an imitator. call to mind any thing that resembles him. The The story is as alien from modern habits of follies which Molière ridicules are those of life, as the manner in which it is developed affectation, not those of fatuity. Coxcombs from the modern fashion of composition. The and pedants, not simpletons, are his game. lover remains in the country, and the heroine Shakspeare has indeed a vast assortment of is locked up in her chamber during the whole fools; but the precise species of which we action, leaving their fate to be decided by a speak is not, if we remember right, to be found foolish father, a cunning mother, and two knathere. Shallow is a fool. But his animal spi-vish servants. Machiavelli has executed his rits supply, to a certain degree, the place of cleverness. His talk is to that of Sir John what soda-water is to champagne. It has the effervescence, though not the body or the flavour. Slender and Sir Andrew Aguecheek are fools, troubled with an uneasy consciousness of their folly, which, in the latter, produce a most edifying meekness and docility, and in the former, awkwardness, obstinacy, and confusion. Cioten is an arrogant fool, sric a foppish fool, Ajax a savage fool: but task with judgment and taste. He has accom modated the plot to a different state of society, and has very dexterously connected it with the history of his own times. The relation of the trick put on the doating old lover is ex Decameron, Giorn. viii. Nov. 9. Nothing can be more evident than that Paulus Jo vius designates the Mandragola under the name of the Nicias. We should not have noticed what is so perfectly obvious, were it not that this natural and palpable misnomer has led the sagacious and industrious Bayle into a gross error. |