THE FLORENTINE HISTORY.*
THE chief difference between Mr. Thomson's translation of Machiavelli's Florentine History and the six which have preceded it lies, as his prefatory note points out, in arrange- ment. He has adopted the convenient plan of dividing each of the eight books into numbered sections, after the example of several recent Italian editions. This certainly makes the History, always fascinating, much clearer, lighter, and easier to read. As to the merit of the translation itself, it is con- siderable. We do not think that the task was a very difficult one, old Italian, in its beautiful simplicity, turning easily enough into rather quaint but straightforward English. But it is not every one who can write the kind of English required and give his work at the same time a most satisfactory quality of readableness.
There lies at this moment before the writer, side by side with Mr. Thomson's two pleasant-looking volumes, a tiny 1550 edition of the Historie Florentine di Nicolo Macchiavelli, Cittadino, et Secretario Fiorentino, with its stately dedication al Santissimo et Beatissimo Padre Signore nostro Clemente VII. Pontefice Massimo. It is a newly corrected edition, and was • The Florentine History. Written by NiceolO Machiavelli. Translated from the Italian by Ninian Hill Thomson. N.A. 2 vols. London : A. Constable and Co. 1125. 6d. net.-I printed in Venice by Gabriel Giolito de Ferrari, e Fratelli, who adorned its delicate title-page with their quaint design of two Satyrs carying a funeral urn balanced on their shoulders. Flames are issuing from the urn, and out of the midst of them rises a Phoenix. Above the bird a scroll proudly declares that "through my death I live eternally." The book is printed in small italics, very clear and readable, and still wears its original binding of fine vellum, fastened to the leaves with little straps of white leather. Originally the cover was tied with tiny white leather strings. This copy, old and worn, may have been carried in the pockets of Nardi, of Segni, of Varchi, of Ammirato, Machiavelli's continuators ; or of some private amateur of literature. It has not been M- used, and in its three hundred and fifty-sixth year is still an attractive companion, having spent its last hundred years in one family. In this old edition there are no sections and no paragraphs. Each book begins with the same dedication to Clement VII., and goes on without a break to its end. The pages are dignified, if monotonous ; reading was not made easy in those days, when a true student cared little for difficulties.
Machiavelli was one of the greatest, if not the very greatest, of Italian prose-writers, and his style in its clear grace is inimitable. Here we have none of the vicious ornaments which disfigured later literature. The writer of The Prince, who gained himself an unenviable character from the kind of political morality he preached there—the serpent's wisdom without the dove's harmlessness—appears in a much better light in his less brilliant but still classical work, The Florentine History. Here, as the late Dr. Garnett remarked, he gives "a faithful as well as an animated picture of the public life of a community in its characteristics more nearly akin to the ancient commonwealth of Athens than any the earth has seen since this disappeared from her face." And at the same time he showed hi a personal patriotism and "fidelity to the idea of the State as he conceived it." This idea was purely Republican ; but no one had a greater horror of anarchy. In his earlier, years he had been disgraced and banished by the Medici ; but when his genius brought him back into favour under Popes Leo X. and Clement VII., and when the latter, as Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, employed him to write the history of Florence, Machiavelli's attitude towards his patron's house was not that of a flatterer. His admiration for the great Lorenzo was sincere; he was wise enough to see that, however beautiful the Republican theory might be, it was a hard business to knit the Florentine people together, except "by force of a single man's strong will."
Within the space of a short article one cannot do more than touch on the great subject of the history of Florence, It may be worth while to remind readers of Machiavelli's limits, which he at first intended to be much narrower than they are. When Cardinal Giulio gave him the commission, his idea was to begin his history with the rise to power of the Medici, towards the middle of the fifteenth century. "For I thought to myself that Messer Lionardo of Arezzo and Messer Poggio, both of them admirable historians, must have recorded at length all that had taken place before that time." But on studying the writings of these two worthies, Machiavelli found that they had confined themselves almost entirely to the foreign wars of Florence, neglecting "civil discords and intestine feuds," either because they seemed to them trivial, or from fear of offending the descendants of those engaged in them. "Both of which reasons," says Messer Niccolo, "without offence be it said, seem to me unworthy of these excellent writers." For his genius could not fail to see that in the history of Florence her foreign wars were not nearly so important as her home quarrels. And his knowledge of human nature taught him that so long as a man's ancestors were handed down to fame, he cared little by what means that fame was acquired.
Machiavelli therefore began at the beginning ; that is to say, at the decline of the Roman Empire. His first four books brought him down to the return from banishment of Cosimq de' Medici in 1434, and he ended the next four with the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent in 1492. He then presented hie work to Pope Clement ; but not by any means as a finishe4 history. He had every intention of going on "to discourse of the events that followed thereafter, in a fuller and loftier style, suited to their greater dignity and importance Nor will time courage and confidence wherewith I have
hitherto written be wanting for the completion of my task, guando da me la vita non si scompagni, el la V.S. non mi abbandoni."
So he meant to go on his way "with a light heart." But the Pope's power failed him, and life did not accompany him far. Misfortune and death came upon him together. The Medici and their friends were once more driven out of Florence in 1527. Clement VII. was a prisoner in Rome; and in that same unlucky summer Machiavelli died. A simple cause, an
overdose of castor-oil, stilled that wonderful brain.
There is something suggestive and interesting in Ma.chia-
vein's own account of his way of working, given in a letter to a friend. Every author has a different way of finding inspira- tion, and chooses a different hour and different means of using it. Machiavelli wrote The Prince, his greatest work, after the following fashion, and it probably represents the mood and manner in which all his intellectual labour was carried on. We venture to quote a few lines from Professor Henry Morley. Machiavelli was then living, poor and in exile, on his little estate near San Casciano " He rose before the sun, spent two hours in a little wood of his that was being cut down to raise money, saw how the work went on for a couple of hours, and talked with the woodcutters, who had always some great dispute in hand. From the wood he would go to a spring, then to his bird-nets, with a book or two under his arm, Dante or Petrarch, Tibullus or Ovid. Having read with enjoyment, he would stroll to the tavern, talking with any whom he met, and noting the different tastes and fancies of men. Then came dinner time, and he ate what his little fields could afford, returned to the tavern, where he generally met the innkeeper, a butcher, a miller, and two oven-men, with whom he played at ericca and tric-trac, over which they raised a thousand quarrels for a farthing, and shouted so that they might be heard at San Casciano. Thus he kept his head from troubling him, until at evening ho went home, took off the muddy peasant's coat he wore by day, entered his study in decent dress, to be for four hours happy in companionship with the ancients, and noting with his pen what he had learnt from them and from the world."
Who would not be a great Italian writer in the sixteenth century !
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