NEW STUDIES IN THE RENAISSANCE.*

PROFESSOR VILL,uit has given a title to his work which, taking it as far as it goes at present, hardly describes it truly. He has explored anew those ever fertile fields of the Italian Renaissance, and has told us that the life of Machiavelli is the centre-piece around which he has grouped his studies. But those studies have been so wide, that the figure of the astute Secretary often vanishes for long periods ; Florence herself is often lost sight of, in disquisitions relating to all Italy. We have, therefore, pre- ferrod to set a new title at the head of our notice of the Professor's delightful work. The discursiveness is, indeed, almost the only fault we have to find with it. It would have formed a more valuable contribution to the history of the * Moroi° Machiavelli and his rims. By Professor Pasquale Villa& Translated by Linda Villarl. London: C. Kogan Paul and Co. 1878.

period of which it treats, had it dealt in greater detail on Florentine matters, and passed more lightly over the affairs of the other Italian States. This is especially the case in those chapters which relate to the literary history of the time. Here Professor Villari has crowded his canvas with too many figures, has thrust too many names upon us, both of authors and of works ;—a lengthier account of some individuals would have been at once more useful and more interesting.

We can speak with unmixed approval of Madame Villari's share of the book. She has translated her husband's Italian into clear and idiomatic English. In one chapter only, namely, the fifth of the second volume, are there traces either of fatigue or of carelessness ; and in the whole work, we have noticed only two words which could not pass muster as " English undefiled." These are " rejuvenated," early in Vol. I., and " anguished," on p. 130 of the second volume. These are very trivial matters, and we only mention them that they may be corrected, when the time comes for another edition of the work before us.

It is difficult to say what it is that gives to the study of the Italian Renaissance its peculiar and unfailing fascination. It is not, we believe, because we see there the elements of the artistic life which has remained with little alteration the artistic life of to-day, nor is it, as many writers seem to have thought, because of its striking contrast to the history immediately before it and after it, and to the contemporary history which surrounds it. It is more probably because of its own marvellous contradictions, its blending of fierceness and gentleness, its sharp transitions from the utmost savageness to the highest refine- ments. But these surmises can be no more than surmises,—the fact of the fascination always remains.

Of contrasts and contradictions, the lives of individual men afforded wonderful examples. There was Aeneas Sylvius, for instance, at once politician, scholar, man of letters, bon vivant, soldier, and Pope. No more cunning tergiversator ever appeared than he, no more orthodox and exemplary Pope, few wilder or more reckless pleasure. seekers, Yet none probably accused him of hypocrisy, when in hie age he condemned the writings of his youth. And when he had forged the signature of the Pope Eugenius, he had the satisfaction of gaining, before Eugeuius's death, his approval of the pious fraud. Strange also are certain traits that are preserved to us of Machiavelli's own character. He, who had passed the greatest part of his life in the restless excitement of a diplomatic servant of a State perpetually at war, spends later years in "snaring thrushes, cutting wood, and playing tric-trac with a butcher, a miller, and two kiln-men." He had, probably, never known religious reverence, and he was too well acquainted with the worst sides of Royalty not to be a staunch Republican, yet a feeling of respect and ceremony remained with him yet. When the the wood-cutting • and trio-trac playing were done, and evening came,—

" I return home, and shut myself up in my study. Before I make my appearance in it, I take off my rustic garb, soiled with mud and dirt, and put on a dross adapted for Courts and cities. Thus fitly habited, I enter the resort of the ancients, and there I eat that food which alone is mine,—the food I was born to eat. For a period of four hours I feel no annoyance ; I forget every grief ; stooped in my books, I fear neither poverty nor death."

Was Vittori, to whom is addressed the letter from which we quote, as much astonished as we are to find such gleams of poetry in the breast of Niccolo Machiavelli ?

Machiavelli's style has been held up, and rightly, as masterly ; it is graphic, without being affected, brief, and yet not harsh nor cold. He came at a time when a combination of circum- stances had altered the mode of looking at things, and so also the mode of talking about them, and there was probably, besides this, something more which gave to Machiavelli's style its directness. It was his intense wish to convince his countrymen of the value and truth of his opinions. Just as every man is said to be roused into eloquence once in his life, BO every age usually produces one man of very surpassing eloquence ; a man who necessarily speaks without the peculiar affectation of his period, nod, because he feels unconsciously that one must speak in a different way, different from that in which the many speak, to command their silence, and to force upon them conviction.

Literature, in Machiavelli's time, emancipated from scholastic Alfluenee, had not yet struck a new note ; she still echoed the

tones of Greece and Rome. For centuries the great bulk of men had lived altogether apart from letters, and scholasticism was the sole literature that engrossed the minds of the few. Dante,

whose work looms forth out of the darkness at the begnning of the fourteenth century as the pioneer of a new eau, still stands, in Professor Villari's words, "with one foot in the middle-ages." Fifty years later, Petrarch is on the scene, emancipated alto- gether from scholastic philosophy. With the end of Scholastic- ism, allegory faded away ; men then spoke of real things, and, sought their joy in them. To the poet of the middle-ages, the butterfly was a delight, because it was typical of immortality ; it represented to him, in its emergence from the chrysalis, the spirit of man living beyond the grave. The poet of the Renais- sance thought of nothing like this when a butterfly fluttered past him ; he thought only of the brilliant colours of the wings. With

this extreme realism there had come—it seemed as though to help it—the great literary revival. Petrarch was among the first of a great circle of students who were bent on calling back to life the literature of the past. Petrarch looked with grief on the Greek books he could not road; Niccoli and others collected, at the expenditure of much toil and money, manuscripts scattered in the East and in the West. Strozzi at last per- suaded Ciisolora, to come from Constantinople to teach Greek at Florence. When Crisolora had begun to lecture, the Uni- versity of Florence leapt into sudden importance; it became' the centre of Hellenism., the pride of Italy. Then the passion for studying Homer and the tragedians became almost a mad- ness. Niccoli would rush after rich young Florentines who were sallying purposeless through the street, and beseech them in fervent tones to devote themselves to Greek and to Latin,—to 'HAM, as he called it. Piero di Pazzi, who had. lived, before a life of lazy enjoyment, was " converted " by

Niccoli, and became a man of learning. Men gave to their children classic names taken from the Greek and Latin literature, and set before themselves the ancient heroes as models for their own lives. And the reason for this passion —that is to say, the origin of the passion—lay probably in the fact that the Classics supplied men again with realistic images, and taught them the secrets of their own hearts. An old story relates how Venus, once walking through the fairest part of Arcadia, saw there nothing so beautiful as the pool of water which reflected her own incomparable face. To the men of the Renaissance, the Classics were as this pool,—they showed them the images of themselves.

Thus Italy was, then, the home of refinement, but not by any weans of moral excellence. We saw just now how, to Niccoli, virtue meant knowledge. Niceoli's own life was full of "ludicrous scandals." Alberti defined virtue as a thing "fall of gaiety and grace ;" Poggio Braceiolini passed his life partly in scholarship, partly in profligacy, and wrote " invectives " full of the most atrocious obscenity. Yet Poggio felt ill at ease at the dull, animal life he saw when, on one of his distant journeys (journeys undertaken mostly in search of MSS.) he found him- self in England, with Cardinal Beaufort, "in the company of wealthy, uncultured nobles, who passed the chief part of their life in eating and drinking. During their dinners, which some- times lasted four hours, he was obliged to rise from time to time, and bathe his eyes with cold water, in order to keep himself awake."

With the beginning of his second volume, Professor Villari allows his hero to appear upon the scene. Niccolo Machiavelli was born at Florence, in the year 1469. He came of an old Tuscan family, and he was the son of a jurisconsult. He learned much from his early and constant intercourse with the accomplished scholar, Marcella Virgilio ; he had read the Latin authors diligently, and the Greek historiaus,—in Latin trans- lations, if not in the originals. Details of his youth are but few. We know that he was eight-and-twenty before he had found regular employment, and that he sought and obtained it from the Government of his own city. There was a continual de- mand, indeed, for men of learning to fill the various secretary offices. Machiavelli's appearance at that time has been described thus :— "He was of middle height, slender figure, with sparkling eyes, dark hair, rather a small head, a slightly aquiline nose, a tightly. closed mouth ; all about him bore the impress of a very acute observer and thinker, but not that of one able to wield much influ- ence over others. He could not easily rid himself of the sarcastic expression continually playing round his mouth, and flashing from his eyes."

His office was that of Secretary to the "Ten," an administrative body second only to the Signori, the virtual rulers of Florence. The "Ten" combined the functions of a War Office and a Ministry for Home Affairs, and had besides this to choose the ambassadors for foreign countries, and keep up correspondence with them. The Signori checked this correspondence, but it had to pass through the " Ten " in the first instance. Thus the office of Secretary to the " Ten " was one of the utmost labour. It combined listening to the mutterings of mal- contents at home, and the much louder complaints of the Captains fighting beyond the borders for the Republic, and demanding continually more men and more money. Further, it entailed keeping a continual watch for the possibilities of a useful political alliance, and obtaining the best possible inform- aticn as to the doings and machinations of foreign princes. Machiavelli's industry in his work was ceaseless ; he spent all the day in writing letters for the Republic, of which letters the archives of Florence still contain many thousands. His scanty leisure he occupied, as most Florentine gentlemen did, partly in literary pursuits, and partly in wild dissipation.

The first important foreign mission on which the "Ten" sent the new Secretary was one dispatched in the year 1500 to Louis XII. of France. Louis XII., on the downfall of Ludovico the Moor, was one of the princes who seemed to hold the fortunes of Italy in their hands. The question that imme- diately concerned Florence was this :—Would Louis XII. side with them, or with Pisa, their continual adversary ? The diffi- culties of Machiavelli were greatly increased by the fact that Alexander VI., who was plotting for the advance- ment of his son, Duke Valentinois, of Romagna (otherwise Caesar Borgia), was diligently striving to instil into the French King's mind suspicions against the good-faith of the Florentines. Machiavelli's argument took no high ground. He contented himself with dwelling not on the good-faith of the Florentines, but upon the fact that it was their interest to side with the French. And Machiavelli prevailed with Lords so far that Louis, tempted by the hopes of the moneys which the Secre- tary promised should be sent from Florence to the King, for- bade Duke Valentinois to attack either Florence or Bologna. When this mission was over, Machiavelli rose very greatly in the opinions of the most influential citizens ; but, fortunately, his head was not easily turned, and he applied himself with his old diligence to the routine correspondence of his office. His cheerful temper and gay conversation kept him incorrupt from those jealousies and hatreds which usually threaten a more than ordinarily successful man.

The third great mission on which Machiavelli was sent was that to the Duke of Romagna. Valentinois was a man of sur- passing cunning, and Machiavelli, though he may, by the light of subsequent events, have formed finally a correct view of his character, was often, while he was with him, continually in the dark as to his real designs. No one with whom he was, in the course of his varied life, thrown into contact, interested him more profoundly. In the Prince the successes and failures of Valentinois are his continual theme and example. As to deal- ings with him, Machiavelli was in these placed in a situation of the utmost difficulty, for he was not by any means a plenipoten- tiary of Florence; he could only temporise with the Duke, scarcely promise anything. " Ecco " said Valentinois, "there is no settling with these Florentines." But what did Machiavelli think of all that he saw ? What did he think of the Duke's ceaseless perfidy, of his remorseless and often wanton cruelty ? He was certainly not, as some have said, its instigator, but we cannot believe that he was, as Professor Villari seems to think, a horrified spectator. While he saw the horrors which were daily perpetrated around him, it is possible that he felt it terrible "to live among men steeped in crime, ever ready for treachery and bloodshed, amenable to nothing but brute force, without having the slightest power to prevent or modify their misdeeds." But when he found that by these very misdeeds the doer of them was flourishing for a while, like the green bay-tree, he seems by no means to have held his conduct up as reprehensible,—rather, indeed, as worthy to be imitated by the wise. For he looked upon politics, as Professor Villari says, removed from morality. Most curious is the account we have of the two ways in which he sought oblivion from the horrible realities which made him, even in his official letters, betray "a certain anguished terror, behind, a veil of cynicism." He sought such oblivion, in the first place, by writing "ribald and facetious letters to his officious col- leagues ;" in the second place, by meditating in solitude on the great writers of antiquity. Here, again, we see one of those strange contrasts which, as we pointed out before, are so characteristic of the Renaissance in Italy. When Machiavelli returned from his mission to Valentinois, it was obvious that Florence must find fresh means for pro-

secutiug the war with Pisa, and for defensive measures against Valentinois and his father, Pope Alexander VI. Those means must be obtained by new taxation, and the taxes proposed by Machiavelli, and at last voted, were a tithe to be laid on all landed property, and a small arbitrio—i.e., tax fixed at the dis- cretion of the magistrates—on all professions. The proposal encountered bitter opposition,—so bitter, indeed, that it nearly

overthrew the Goufalioniere Soderini, who advocated the measure. Machiavelli wrote a speech for Soderini to deliver, and we may well give an extract from this, as a specimen of a style very different from the unimpassioned phrases of the Principe :—

"Many of you must remember that when Constantinople was taken by the Turks, the Emperor foresaw the coming destruction, and his own resources being insufficient to ward it off, ho called the citizens together, and explained to them their danger and the neces- sities required. They all laughed him to scorn. The siege took place. The very citizens who had jeered at the forebodings of their master no sooner heard the cannon thundering against the walls, and the shouts of the enemies' hosts, than they ran weeping to the Emperor, with heaps of gold ; but ho drove them all away, saying,

'Go and die with your gold, since ye would not live without it But beholding you froo Florentines, with your liberty in your hands, I will not believe that you desired to fall. For surely I must bolievo that men born free must have duo respect for liberty.'"

Professor Villari takes his hero up to the year 1507, when he had at last prevailed upon the Florentines to institute a national militia. This was Machiavelli's darling plan, the subject which he could never discuss without losing all his coldness and all his cynicism, and changing to a genuine enthusiast. For in its realisation lay, as he believed, the salvation of Florence,— in an extension of the same idea, the salvation of all Italy. This scheme we must discuss when the time comes for us to hear what Professor Villari has to say about Machia- velli's great work, the Prince. And wo cannot conclude without expressing a hope that we may not have long to wait.

If the latter volumes of the Life and Times of Nicculo Mochiavelli at all resemble those which are now before us, we shall certainly give them a hearty welcome.