Niccolo Machiavelli

Machiavelli thought of dedicating the Principe to one of the Medicean princes, but without result. The Medici, as yet at all events, could not employ Machiavelli, and had not in them selves the stuff to found Italian kingdoms.

Other

Works.—Machiavelli, meanwhile, was reading his Dis corsi to a select audience in the Rucellai gardens. Towards the year 1519 both Leo X. and his cousin, the cardinal Giulio de' Medici, thought it necessary to give Florence at least a semblance of self-government. They applied to several politicians, among others to Machiavelli, for advice in the emergency. The result was a treatise in which he deduced practical conclusions from the past history and present temper of the city, blending these with his favourite principles of government in general. He earnestly ad monished Leo, for his own sake and for Florence, to found a permanent and free state system for the republic. The year 152o yielded the Arte della guerra and the Vita di Castruccio.

The first of these is a methodical treatise, setting forth Mach iavelli's views on military matters, digesting his theories respect ing the superiority of national troops, the inefficiency of fortresses, the necessity of relying upon infantry in war, and the comparative insignificance of artillery. The peroration contains a noble appeal to the Italian liberator of his dreams, and a parallel from Mace donian history, which, read by the light of this century, sounds like a prophecy of Piedmont.

The

Vita di Castruccio was composed at Lucca, whither Machia velli had been sent on a mission. Dealing freely with the outline of Castruccio's career, as he had previously dealt with Cesare Borgia, he sketched his own ideal of the successful prince. Cesare Borgia had entered into the Principe as a representative figure rather than an actual personage; so now conversely the theories of the Principe assumed the outward form of Castruccio.

In the same year, 152o, Machiavelli received a commission from the officers of the Studio pubblico to write a history of Florence. He left a portion of it finished, with a dedication to Clement VII., when he died in 1527. The Historie fiorentine is not so much a chronicle of Florentine affairs, from the commence ment of modern history to the death of Lorenzo de' Medici in 1492, as a critique of that chronicle from the point of view adopted by Machiavelli in his former writings. But the History of Florence

is not a mere political pamphlet. It is the first attempt in any literature to trace the vicissitudes of a people's life in their logical sequence, deducing each successive phase from passions or neces sities inherent in preceding circumstances, reasoning upon them from general principles, and inferring corollaries for the conduct of the future. In form it is modelled upon Livy. The style of the whole book is nervous, vivid, free from artifice and rhetoric. Machiavelli had formed for himself a prose style, equalled by no one but by Guicciardini in his minor works ; it is an athlete's style, all bone and sinew, without superfluous flesh or ornament.

It would seem that from the date of Machiavelli's discourse to Leo on the government of Florence the Medici had taken him into consideration and he was employed on one or two missions of little importance. But his public career was virtually closed. A trans lation of the Andria and three original comedies from his pen are extant, the precise dates of which are uncertain, though the great est of them, Mandragola, was first printed at Rome in 1524. It is the ripest and most powerful play in the Italian language.

The plot is improbable and unpleasing. But the wit, humour, vivacity and satire of the piece bring before us the old life of Florence in a succession of brilliant scenes. If Machiavelli had any moral object when he composed the Mandragola, it was to paint in glaring colours the corruption of Italian society. It shows how a bold adventurer, aided by the profligacy of a parasite, the avarice and hypocrisy of a confessor, and a mother's complaisant familiarity with vice, achieves the triumph of making a gulled husband bring his own unwilling but too yielding wife to shame. The whole comedy is a study of stupidity and baseness acted on by roguery. The force of healthy instincts is underestimated.