LORENZO DE MEDICI.*
THE story of Lorenzo de Medici comes to us again across the drift of years, making us wonder anew at the indefinable but absolute Florentine fascination, of its kind different from, if not superior to, anything that even Rome and Venice can give out of their great historic treasures. Beauty and art make her glorious in spite of history. Symonds and many • Lorenzo de Medici and Florence in OA. Fifteenth Century. Br E. Armstrong,. M.A., Fsllow of Queen's College, Oxford. London and New York : Putosmis Sons. others have during recent years made the city live for us again, with all the strange struggles between State and State
which resemble the small intestine wars of Greece more than any other part of history. The Brownings and Landor gave her an English literary life of their own; and she has been the inspiration of many an English novelist from George Eliot to Oaida; though it must be confessed that the advan- tages of " local colour " were never made more manifest than in some of the vivid pictures of the latter lady, as compared to the laborious cram which enabled the far greater artist to compile the splendid picture of Romola out of an inner consciousness which was certainly not Florentine. Both George Eliot and Oaida, however, have the advantage over the historical chronicler of being able to concentrate their interest upon scenes and figures of their own selection, The constant wandering of the interest from Republic to Republic and warrior to statesman, as unchartered and unfixed as Macaulay's flights of poetical rhetoric among the Thirty Cities of Regales, is a strain upon the memory which taxes the clearest head to follow it. The rebellion of Volterra against the power of Florence makes the latter seem modern by the side of the lordly Volaterra3. Lorenzo de Medici only figured on the stage of life for the space of forty-three years, and his story is strangely characteristic of the fierce democracy which prevailed in those middle ages, which the world is accustomed to connect with the stricter associations of purple and of tyranny. The Medici family were "mere bankers by profession. Possessing no military resources, gifted with no experience of war, aided by no general convic- tion, they established a despotism which, with two inconsider-
able intervals, lasted for a round three centuries." Florence was an exact instance of a modern Athens. Nothing is stranger in history, and nothing more inexplicable, than the fabulous de- velopment of the Grecian power, which may be said, almost with-
out exaggeration, to have been born, completed, and perfected in the lifetime of one man, Pericles, who, if historic depths could really be sounded, would probably prove to be the fore- most genius who ever lived. The fame of Florence rose on the ruin of many a minor State, and the records of their wars and convulsions read like an edition of the quarrels of the Capulets and the Montagnes. For war and perse. cution and assassination are the text of Mr. Armstrong's story. He must have stored his mind with a variety of detail of this kind before buckling to the active business of his task, which might well have overtaxed his resources if he had not kept a clear head in the melee, as clear as Lorenzo himself. "He was young, and by nature hasty and impatient, yet his sister Bianca described him in after years to her son Alessandro as using infinite patience in reconciling the malcontents of Piero's regime." Piero was Lorenzo's cousin, and constant clouds and differences between the different members of the family, the unit of Florentine life, were one of the great rocks and dangers of his rule.
The unfortunate drawback to studies of this kind is the occasional failure of interest and concentration attached to the constant shifting of the scenes and figures on the stage as they pass and group round the character of Lorenzo. As in his preface Mr. Armstrong truly says, "Florence is no nation, and Lorenzo de Medici no hero." Everything in
history acts together, bat nothing definite or precise can be said ever to have been the outcome of all the Medicean in- trigues and struggles. In the common phrasing, nothing came of it. The gradual growth of the mighty Roman empire was cast in a different mould from that, Tantv molis
erat Romanam condere gentem. The whole difficulty of the Florentine question lay in the fact which the author has embodied in a paragraph. "Although Florence was now and hereafter virtually an oligarchy, its constitutional forces were democratic." The predominant feature was the fear of
a strong executive ; and constant division of authority, rapid rotation of office, the substitution of lot for selection, the
denial of military power, and an intricate tangle of checks and councils, were among the many methods adopted from that fear :-
"Thus it was that when vigour and experience, secrecy and rapidity were needed, they must be sought outside the official government. This is the secret of all Florentine history until the republic became a principality. This, therefore, was the meaning of that unofficial organisation, the Parte Guelfa,' which, when the conflict with the Ghibellines was closed, still continued to control the state, possessing large independent resources, and
a highly organised executive, proscribing its opponents, whether of the highest or the lowest classes, under the mere pretence of Ghibellinism."
Trade and manufacture were the spell and power of Florence, and all the faction-fights and party squabbles, all the
im- prisonments and assassinations, left them placidly and successfully flowing on in the midst of the city, behind windows and doors barricaded for Guelfs and Ghibellines,. blacks and whites, to " sweep the street in flight or triumph." The interest of the Florentine citizen was in his guild, and the political fortunes of the growing party possessed no charm for him. Tros Tyriusve mihi nub() diecrimine agetur. This was the case till 1378, when the revolution known as the rising of the Ciompi, described by the author as rather social. and economic than political, the labouring classes clamouring for political privilege as a means to economic emancipation, served to shift the foundation of society, to destroy the meaning of the guilds, and to substitute great mercantile and banking companies, built up by voluntary associations of capital, for the older corporations. The forms alone of the Guelf party survived until the eighteenth century.
We will not attempt to follow Mr. Armstrong into the elaborate details of story which grow out of his opening. His book is one which must be read by the student for him self, and as it makes no aim at vivid description or at picturesque writing, does not in any sense lend itself to the easy pleasure of quotation. Perhaps this, weakness or strength as it may be, is most clearly brought out by the disconnected and incomplete form in which the story of Savonarola, no doubt the most world-famous episode of the time, is at intervals brought before us in connection with Lorenzo. That, as the distinct and wonderful precursor of the Reformation, though it was in no sense that he so regarded himself, Savonarola has left the deepest mark on history of all the men of the day, is so stamped upon our minds that it is almost by instinct that the eye turns first to hie name in the index to see in what way he has been treated to servo as a guide to our reading of the book. This is not quite fair to the book, perhaps, but it is unavoidable. And when we find the great monk, whose name and fame remain to this day one of the greatest of Florentine attractions, his little cell proving more attractive to the student than all the Medicean marvels, passed over with so slight a record either as theologian or as legislator, and dis- missed so easily, the sense of disappointment is more abiding, than perhaps it ought to be. " Much has been made," says Mr. Armstrong, of the political opposition which, under Savona- rola's influence, threatened Lorenzo's later years. There is,. however, no trustworthy evidence to show that the Dominican had any thought, or the Medici any fear, of this. Lorenzo's power with the Pope could have secured Savonarola's removal at any moment." Indeed, Savonarola, figures in the story ate little but a mere dependent on Lorenzo's will.
The chapters on literature and art with which Mr. Arm- strong closes his volume do not on their part add much to our interest and knowledge in connection with so world- famed a subject. It must be frankly said that there is too much of study about them, and too little of conclusion or of guidance. The author lacks the secret of the vivifying touch in dealing with his material, which makes us read and re- member, and gather fresh subject for thought from the hints given to us. He discourses much of the Humanists, but beyond saying that the tendency known by that name implied a reversion to classical civilisation, and a reaction against Teutonic barbarism, and that its most natural form of expres- sion was scurrilous invective—surely an odd antidote to bar- barism—he does not lend much meaning to Humanism. His accounts of the painters finally—of Ghirlandajo and the rest —go little beyond brief summaries of their best-known characteristics, something after the honoured methods of the guide-book. We own to a sense of disappointment in laying down a book which, careful as it is, fails somehow to breathe of Florence.
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