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-unwholesome, 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, Tattle, 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 resemwhich 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 brilthe good sayings of the facetious hours of Ab- liant wit an infantine air, generally delightful, solute and Surface might have been clipped but to a foreign reader sometimes a little ludifrom the single character of Falstaff without crous. Heroes and statesmen seem to lisp being missed. It would have been easy for when they use it. It becomes Nicias incomthat fertile mind to have given Bardolph and parably, and renders all his silliness infinitely Shallow as much wit as Prince Hal, and to more silly. 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." 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 This digression will enable our readers to blind to the merits of this striking piece. It understand what we mean when we say that, was acted at Florence with the greatest sucin the Mandragola, Machiavelli has proved cess. Leo the Tenth was among its admirers, that he completely understood the nature of and by his order it was represented at Rome.t 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-Kaapse of Diphilus. Plautus was, unquestare, 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 or generous lover, and his adviser the parasite, are drawn with spirit. The hypocritical confessor is an admirable portrait. He is, if we mistake not, the original of Father Dominic, the best comic character of Dryden. But old Nicias is the glory of the piece. We cannot call to mind any thing that resembles him. The follies which Molière ridicules are those of affectation, not those of fatuity. Coxcombs and pedants, not simpletons, are his game. Shakspeare has indeed a vast assortment of fools; but the precise species of which we speak is not, if we remember right, to be found there. Shallow is a fool. But his animal spirits supply, to a certain degree, the place of cleverness. His talk is to that of Sir John what soda-water is to champagne. It has the effervescence, though not the body or the flavour. Slender and Sir Andrew Aguecheek are fools, troubled with an uneasy consciousness of their folly, which, in the latter, produces a most edifying meekness and docility, and in the former, awkwardness, obstinacy, and confusion. Cloten is an arrogant fool, Osric a foppish fool, Ajax a savage fool; but ordinary degree the air of originals. We infinitely prefer the slovenly exuberance of his fancy, and the clumsy vigour of his diction, to the artfully disguised poverty and elegant languor of Terence. But the Casina is by no means one of his best plays; nor is it one which offers great facilities to an imitator. The story is as alien from modern habits of life, as the manner in which it is developed from the modern fashion of composition. The lover remains in the country, and the heroine is locked up in her chamber during the whole action, leaving their fate to be decided by a foolish father, a cunning mother, and two knavish servants. Machiavelli has executed his task with judgment and taste. He has accommodated the plot to a different state of society, and has very dexterously connected it with the history of his own times. The relation of the trick put on the doating old lover is ex * Decameron, Giorn. viii. Nov. 9. + Nothing can be more evident than that Paulus Jovius designates the Mandragola under the name of the Nicias. We should not have noticed what is so perfectly obvious, were it not that this natural and palpable misnomer has led the sagacious and industrious Bayle into a gross error. quisitely humorous. It is far superior to the corresponding passage in the Latin comedy, and scarcely yields to the account which Falstaff gives of his ducking. conduct of those who were intrusted with the domestic administration. The ambassador had to discharge functions far more delicate than transmitting orders of knighthood, introducing tourists, or presenting his brethren with the homage of his high consideration. He was an advocate, to whose management the dearest interests of his clients were intrusted; a spy, clothed with an inviolable character. Instead of consulting the dignity of those whom he represented by a reserved manner and an ambiguous style, he was to plunge into all the intrigues of the court at which he resided, to discover and flatter every weakness of the prince who governed his employers, of the favourite who governed the prince, and of the lacquey who governed the favourite. He was to compliment the mistress and bribe the confessor, to panegyrize or supplicate, to laugh or weep, to accommodate himself to every caprice, to lull every suspicion, to treasure every hint, to be every thing, to observe every thing, to endure every thing. High as the art of political intrigue had been carried in Italy, these were times which required it all. Two other comedies without titles, the one in prose, the other in verse, appear among the works of Machiavelli. The former is very short, lively enough, but of no great value. The latter we can scarcely believe to be genuine. Neither its merits nor its defects remind us of the reputed author. It was first printed in 1796, from a manuscript discovered in the celebrated library of the Strozzi. Its genuineness, if we have been rightly informed, is established solely by the comparison of hands. Our suspicions are strengthened by the circumstance, that the same manuscript contained a description of the plague of 1527, which has also, in consequence, been added to the works of Machiavelli. Of this last composition the strongest external evidence would scarcely induce us to believe him guilty. Nothing was ever written more detestable, in matter and manner. The narrations, the reflections, the jokes, the lamentations, are all the very worst of their respective kinds, at once On these arduous errands Machiavelli was trite and affected-threadbare tinsel from the frequently employed. He was sent to treat Ragfairs and Monmouth-streets of literature. with the King of the Romans and with the A foolish school-boy might perhaps write it, Duke of Valentinois. He was twice ambassaand, after he had written it, think it much finer dor at the court of Rome, and thrice at that of than the incomparable introduction of the De-France. In these missions, and in several cameron. But that a shrewd statesman, whose earliest works are characterized by manliness of thought and language, should at nearly sixty years of age, descend to such puerility, is utterly inconceivable. The little Novel of Belphegor is pleasantly conceived and pleasantly told. But the extravagance of the satire in some measure injures its effect. Machiavelli was unhappily married; and his wish to avenge his own cause and that of his brethren in misfortune, carried him beyond even the license of fiction. Jonson seems to have combined some hints taking from this tale with others from Boccaccio, in the plot of The Devil is an Ass-a play which, though not the most highly finished of his compositions, is perhaps that which exhibits the strongest proofs of genius. others of inferior importance, he acquitted himself with great dexterity. His despatches form one of the most amusing and instructive collections extant. We meet with none of the mysterious jargon so common in modern state papers, the flash-language of political robbers and sharpers. The narratives are clear and agreeably written; the remarks on men and things clever and judicious. The conversa tions are reported in a spirited and characteristic manner. We find ourselves introduced into the presence of the men who, during twenty eventful years, swayed the destinies of Europe. Their wit and their folly, their fretfulness and their merriment are exposed to us. We are admitted to overhear their chat, and to watch their familiar gestures. It is interesting and curious to recognise, in circumstances which elude the notice of historians, the feeble violence and shallow cunning of Louis the Twelfth; the bustling insignificance of Maximilian, cursed with an impotent pruriency for renown, rash yet timid, obstinate yet fickle, always in a hurry, yet always too late;-the fierce and haughty energy which gave dignity to the eccentricities of Julius; the soft and graceful manners which masked the insatiable ambition and the implacable hatred of Borgia. The political correspondence of Machiavelli, first published in 1767, is unquestionably genuine and highly valuable. The unhappy circumstances in which his country was placed, during the greater part of his public life, gave extraordinary encouragement to diplomatic talents. From the moment that Charles the Eighth descended from the Alps, the whole character of Italian politics was changed. The governments of the Peninsula cease to form an independent system. Drawn from their old We have mentioned Borgia. It is impossiorbit by the attraction of the larger bodies ble not to pause for a moment on the name of which now approached them, they became a man in whom the political morality of Italy mere satellites of France and Spain. All their was so strongly personified, partially blended disputes, internal and external, were decided with the sterner lineaments of the Spanish by foreign influence. The contests of oppo- character. On two important occasions Masite factions were carried on, not as formerly chiavelli was admitted to his society; once, at in the Senate-house, or in the market-place, the moment when his splendid villany achievbut in the antechambers of Louis and Ferdi-ed its most signal triumph, when he caught in nand. Under these circumstances, the pros- one snare and crushed at one blow all his most perity of the Italian States depended far more on formidable rivals, and again when, exhausted the ability of their foreign agents than on the by disease and overwhelmed by misfortunes, his house. as a stimulant. They turned with loathing from the atrocity of the strangers who seemed to love blood for its own sake, who, not content with subjugating, were impatient to destroy; who found a fiendish pleasure in razing magnificent cities, cutting the throats of enemies who cried for quarter, or suffocating an unarmed people by thousands in the caverns to which they had fled for safety. Such were the scenes which daily excited the terror and disgust of a people, amongst whom, till lately, the worst that a soldier had to fear in a pitched battle was the loss of his horse, and the expense of his ransom. The swinish intemper which no human prudence could have averted, he was the prisoner of the deadliest enemy of These interviews, between the greatest speculative and the greatest practical statesmen of the age, are fully described in the correspondence, and form perhaps the most interesting part of it. From some passages in the Prince, and perhaps also from some indistinct traditions, several writers have supposed a connection between those remarkable men much closer than ever existed. The Envoy has even been accused of promoting the crimes of the artful and merciless tyrant. But from the official documents it is clear that their intercourse, though ostensibly amicable, was in reality hos-ance of Switzerland, the wolfish avarice of tile. It cannot be doubted, however, that the Spain, the gross licentiousness of the French, imagination of Machiavelli was strongly im- indulged in violation of hospitality, of decency, pressed and his speculations on government of love itself, the wanton inhumanity which coloured, by the observations which he made was common to all the invaders, had rendered on the singular character, and equally singular them subjects of deadly hatred to the inhabifortunes, of a man who, under such disadvan- tants of the Peninsula.* The wealth which tages, had achieved such exploits; who, when had been accumulated during centuries of sensuality, varied through innumerable forms, prosperity and repose was rapidly melting could no longer stimulate his sated mind, away. The intellectual superiority of the opfound a more powerful and durable excitement pressed people only rendered them more in the intense thirst of empire and revenge ;- keenly sensible of their political degradation. who emerged from the sloth and luxury of the Literature and taste, indeed, still disguised, Roman purple, the first prince and general of with a flush of hectic loveliness and brilliancy, the age-who, trained in an unwarlike profes- the ravages of an incurable decay. The iron sion, formed a gallant army out of the dregs of had not yet entered into the soul. The time an unwarlike people :-who, after acquiring was not yet come when eloquence was to be sovereignty by destroying his enemies, ac- gagged and reason to be hoodwinked-when quired popularity by destroying his tools; the harp of the poet was to be hung on the who had begun to employ for the most saluta- willows of Arno, and the right hand of the ry ends the power which he had attained by the painter to forget its cunning. Yet a discerning most atrocious means; who tolerated within eye might even then have seen that genius the sphere of his iron despotism no plunderer and learning would not long survive the state or oppressor but himself;-and who fell at last of things from which they had sprung-that amidst the mingled curses and regrets of a the great men whose talents gave lustre to that people, of whom his genius had been the won-melancholy period had been formed under the der, and might have been the salvation. Some of those crimes of Borgia, which to us appear the most odious, would not, from causes which we have already considered, have struck an Italian of the fifteenth century with equal horror. Patriotic feeling also might induce Machiavelli to look, with some indulgence and regret, on the memory of the only leader who could have defended the independence of Italy against the confederate spoilers of Cambray. On this subject Machiavelli felt most strongly. Indeed the expulsion of the foreign tyrants, and the restoration of that golden age which had preceded the irruption of Charles the Eighth, were projects which, at that time, fascinated all the master-spirits of Italy. The magnificent vision delighted the great but illregulated mind of Julius. It divided with manuscripts and sauces, painters and falcons, the attention of the frivolous Leo. It prompted the generous treason of Morone. It imparted a transient energy to the feeble mind and body of the last Sforza. It excited for one moment an honest ambition in the false heart of Pescara. Ferocity and insolence were not among the vices of the national character. To the discriminating cruelties of politicians, committed for great ends on select victims, the moral code of the Italians was too indulgent. But though they might have recourse to barbarity as an expedient, they did not require it influence of happier days, and would leave no successors behind them. The times which shine with the greatest splendour in literary history are not always those to which the human mind is most indebted. Of this we may be convinced, by comparing the generation which follows them with that which preceded them. The first fruits which are reaped under a bad system often spring from seed sown under a good one. Thus it was, in some measure, with the Augustan age. Thus it was with the age of Raphael and Ariosto, of Aldus and Vida. Machiavelli deeply regretted the misfortunes of his country, and clearly discerned the cause and the remedy. It was the military system of the Italian people which had extinguished their valour and discipline, and rendered their wealth an easy prey to every foreign plunderer. The Secretary projected a scheme alike honourable to his heart and to his intellect, for abolishing the use of mercenary troops, and organizing a national militia. The exertions which he made to effect this great object ought alone to rescue his name from obloquy. Though his situation and his The opening stanzas of the Fourteenth Canto of the habits were pacific, he studied with intense amiable and accomplished young man, whose assiduity the theory of war. He made himself early death Machiavelli feelingly deplores. master of all its details. The Florentine go- After partaking of an elegant entertainment, vernment entered into his views. A council they retire from the heat into the most shady of war was appointed. Levies were decreed. recesses of the garden. Fabrizio is struck by The indefatigable minister flew from place to the sight of some uncommon plants. His host place in order to superintend the execution of informs him that, though rare in modern days, his design. The times were, in some respects, they are frequently mentioned by the classical favourable to the experiment. The system of authors, and that his grandfather, like many military tactics had undergone a great revolu- other Italians, amused himself with practising tion. The cavalry was no longer considered the ancient methods of gardening. Fabrizio as forming the strength of an army. The hours expresses his regret that those who, in later which a citizen could spare from his ordinary times, affected the manners of the old Romans, employments, though by no means sufficient to | should select for imitation their most trifling familiarize him with the exercise of a man-at-pursuits. This leads to a conversation on the arms, might render him a useful foot-soldier. decline of military discipline, and on the best The dread of a foreign yoke, of plunder, mas- means of restoring it. The institution of the sacre, and conflagration, might have conquered Florentine militia is ably defended; and sethat repugnance to military pursuits, which veral improvements are suggested in the both the industry and the idleness of great details. towns commonly generate. For a time the scheme promised well. The new troops acquitted themselves respectably in the field. Machiavelli looked with parental rapture on the success of his plan; and began to hope that the arms of Italy might once more be formidable to the barbarians of the Tagus and the Rhine. But the tide of misfortune came on before the barriers which should have withstood it were prepared. For a time, indeed, Florence might be considered as peculiarly fortunate. Famine and sword and pestilence had devastated the fertile plains and stately cities of the Po. All the curses denounced of old against Tyre seemed to have fallen on Venice. Her merchants already stood afar off, lamenting for their great city. The time seemed near when the sea-weed should overgrow her silent Rialto, and the fisherman wash his nets in her deserted arsenal. Naples had been four times conquered and reconquered, by tyrants equally indifferent to its welfare, and equally greedy for its spoils. Florence, as yet, had only to endure degradation and extortion, to submit to the mandate of foreign powers, to buy over and over again, at an enormous price, what was already justly her own, to return thanks for being wronged, and to ask pardon for being in the right. She was at length deprived of the blessings even of this infamous and servile repose. Her military and political institutions were swept away together. The Medici returned, in the train of foreign invaders, from their long exile. The policy of Machiavelli was abandoned; and his public services were requited with poverty, imprisonment, and torture. The Swiss and the Spaniards were, at that time, regarded as the best soldiers in Europe. The Swiss battalion consisted of pikemen, and bore a close resemblance to the Greek phalanx, The Spaniards, like the soldiers of Rome, were armed with the sword and the shield. The victories of Flaminius and Æmilius over the Macedonian kings seem to prove the superiority of the weapons used by the legions. The same experiments had been recently tried with the same result at the battle of Ravenna, one of those tremendous days into which human folly and wickedness compress the whole devastation of a famine or a plague. In that memorable conflict, the infantry of Arragon, the old companions of Gonsalvo, deserted by all their allies, hewed a passage through the thickest of the imperial pikes, and effected an unbroken retreat, in the face of the gendarmerie of De Foix, and the renowned artillery of Este. Fabrizio, or rather Machiavelli, proposes to combine the two systems, to arm the foremost lines with the pike, for the purpose of repulsing cavalry, and those in the rear with the sword, as being a weapon better adapted for every purpose. Throughout the work, the author expresses the highest admiration of the military science of the ancient Romans, and the greatest contempt for the maxims which had been in vogue amongst the Italian commanders of the preceding generation. He prefers infantry to cavalry; and fortified camps to fortified towns. He is inclined to substitute rapid movements, and decisive engagements, for the languid and dilatory operations of his countrymen. He attaches very little importance to the invention of gunThe fallen statesman still clung to his pro- powder. Indeed he seems to think that it ject with unabated ardour. With the view of ought scarcely to produce any change in the vindicating it from some popular objections, mode of arming or of disposing troops. The and of refuting some prevailing errors on the general testimony of historians, it must be subject of military science, he wrote his seven allowed, seems to prove, that the ill-constructbooks on the Art of War. This excellent worked and ill-served artillery of those times, is in the form of a dialogue. The opinions of though useful in a siege, was of little value on the writer are put into the mouth of Fabrizio the field of battle. Colonna, a powerful nobleman of the Ecclesiistical State, and an officer of distinguished merit in the service of the King of Spain. He visits Florence on his way from Lombardy to his own domains. He is invited to meet some friends at the house of Cosimo Rucellui, an Of the tactics of Machiavelli we will not venture to give an opinion; but we are certain that his book is most able and interesting. As a commentary on the history of his times. it is invaluable. The ingenuity, the grace, and the perspicuity of the style, and the eloquence and animation of particular passages, must give pleasure even to readers who take no interest in the subject. impart to them that vivid and practical character which so widely distinguishes them from the vague theories of most political philosophers. Every man who has seen the world knows that nothing is so useless as a general maxim. If it be very moral and very true, it may serve for a copy to a charity-boy. If, like those of Rochefoucauld, it be sparkling and whimsical, it may make an excellent motto for an essay. But few, indeed, of the many wise apophthegms which have been uttered, from the time of the Seven Sages of Greece to that of Poor Richard, have prevented a single foolish action. We give the highest and the most peculiar praise to the precepts of Machiavelli, when we say that they may frequently be of real use in regulating the conduct, not so much because they are more just or more profound than those which might be culled from other authors, as because they can be more readily applied to the problems of real life. The Prince and the Discourses on Livy were written after the fall of the republican government. The former was dedicated to the young Lorenzo de Medici. This circumstance seems to have disgusted the contemporaries of the writer far more than the doctrines which have rendered the name of the work odious in later times. It was considered as an indication of political apostasy. The fact, however, seems to have been, that Machiavelli, despairing of the liberty of Florence, was inclined to support any government which might preserve her independence. The interval which separated a democracy and a despotism, Soderini and Lorenzo, seemed to vanish when compared with the difference between the former and the present state of Italy; between the security, the opulence, and the repose which it had enjoyed under its native rulers, and the misery in which it had been plunged since the fatal year in There are errors in these works. But they which the first foreign tyrant had descended are errors which a writer situated like Machiafrom the Alps. The noble and pathetic ex-velli could scarcely avoid. They arise, for the hortation with which the Prince concludes, shows how strongly the writer felt upon this subject. The Prince traces the progress of an ambitious man, the Discourses the progress of an ambitious people. The same principles on which in the former work the elevation of an individual are explained, are applied in the latter to the longer duration and more complex interests of society. To a modern statesman the form of the Discourses may appear to be puerile. In truth, Livy is not a historian on whom much reliance can be placed, even in cases where he must have possessed considerable means of information. And his first Decade, to which Machiavelli has confined himself, is scarcely entitled to more credit than our chronicle of British kings who reigned before the Roman invasion. But his commentator is indebted to him for little more than a few texts, which he might as easily have extracted from the Vulgate or the Decameron. The whole train of thought is original. On the peculiar immorality which has rendered the Prince unpopular, and which is almost equally discernible in the Discourses, we have already given our opinion at length. We have attempted to show that it belonged rather to the age than to the man; that it was a partial taint, and by no means implied general depravity. We cannot, however, deny that it is a great blemish, and that it considerably diminishes the pleasure which, in other respects, those works must afford to every intelligent mind. It is, indeed, impossible to conceive a more healthful and vigorous constitution of the understanding than that which these works indicate. The qualities of the active and the contemplative statesman appear to have been blended, in the mind of the writer, into a rare and exquisite harmony. His skill in the details of business had not been acquired at the expense of his general powers. It had not rendered his mind less comprehensive, but it had served to correct his speculations, and to most part, from a single defect which appears to us to pervade his whole system. In his political scheme the means had been more deeply considered than the ends. The great principle, that societies and laws exist only for the purpose of increasing the sum of private happiness, is not recognised with sufficient clearness. The good of the body, distinct from the good of the members, and sometimes hardly compatible with it, seems to be the object which he proposes to himself. Of all political fallacies, this has had the widest and the most mischievous operation. The state of society in the little commonwealths of Greece, the close connection and mutual dependence of the citizens, and the severity of the laws of war, tended to encourage an opinion which, under such circumstances, could hardly be called erroneous. The interests of every individual were inseparably bound up with those of the state. An invasion destroyed his cornfields and vineyards, drove him from his home, and compelled him to encounter all the hardships of a military life. A peace restored him to security and comfort. A victory doubled the number of his slaves. A defeat perhaps made him a slave himself. When Pericles, in the Peloponnesian war, told the Athenians that if their country triumphed their private losses would speedily be repaired, but that if their arms failed of success, every individual amongst them would probably be ruined, he spoke no more than the truth. He spoke to men whom the tribute of vanquished cities supplied with food and clothing, with the luxury of the bath and the amusements of the theatre, on whom the greatness of their country conferred rank, and before whom the members of less prosperous communities trembled; and to men who, in case of a change in the public fortunes, would at least be deprived of every comfort and every distinction which they enjoyed. To be butchered on the smoking ruins of their city, to be dragged in chains to Thucydides, il. 62 |