has his own opinion to deliver upon the nature of the malady. Each records the facts revealed by the autopsy according to his own impressions.
The literary qualities of these historians are very different, and seem to be derived from essential differences in their characters. Pitti is by far the most brilliant in style, concentrated in expression to the point of epigram, and weighty in judgment. Nardi, though deficient in some of the most attractive characteristics of the historian, is invaluable for sincerity of intention and painstaking accuracy. The philosophical, rhetorical, and dramatic passages which add so much splendor to the works of Guicciardini are absent from the pages of Nardi. He is anxious to present a clear picture of what happened; but he cannot make it animated, and he never reflects at length upon the matter of his history. At the same time he lacks the naïiveté which makes Corio, Allegretti, Infessura, and Matarazzo so amusing. He gossips as little as Machiavelli, and has no profundity to make up for the want of piquancy. The interest of his chronicle is greatest in the part which concerns Savonarola, though even here the peculiarly reticent and dubitative nature of the man is obvious. While he sympathizes with Savonarola's political and moral reforms, he raises a doubt about his inner sincerity, and does not approve of the attitude of the Piagnoni.[1] In his estimation of men Nardi was remarkably cautious, preferring always to give an external relation of events, instead of analyzing motives or criticising character.[2] He is in especial silent about bad men and criminal actions. Therefore, when he passes an adverse judgment (as, for instance, upon Cesare Borgia), or notes a dark act (as the stuprum committed upon Astorre Manfredi), his corroboration of historians more addicted to scandal is important. Segni is far more lively than Nardi, while he is not less painstaking to be accurate. He shows a partisan feeling, especially in his admiration for Niccolo Capponi and his prejudice against Francesco Carducci, which gives the relish of personality that Nardi's cautiously dry chronicle lacks. Rarely have the entangled events of a specially dramatic period been set forth more lucidly, more succinctly, and with greater elegance of style. Segni is deficient, when compared with Varchi, only perhaps in volume, minuteness, and that wonderful mixture of candor, enthusiasm, and zeal for truth which makes Varchi incomparable. His sketches of men, critiques, and digressions upon statistical details are far less copious than Varchi's. But in idiomatic purity of language he is superior. Varchi had been spoiled by academic habits of composition. His language is diffuse and lumbering. He lacks the vivacity of epigram, selection, and pointed phrase. But his Storia Fiorentina remains the most valuable repertory of information we possess about the later vicissitudes of the republic, and the charm of detail compensates for the lack of style. Nerli is altogether a less interesting writer than those that have been mentioned; yet some of the particulars which he relates, about Savonarola's reform of manners, for example, and the literary gatherings in the Rucellai gardens, are such as we find nowhere else.
[1] Book ii. cap. 16.
[2] See lib. ii. cap. 34: 'Nel nostro scrivere non intendiamo far giudizio delle cose incerte, e massimamente della intenzione e animo segreto degli uomini, che non apparisce chiara se non per congettura e riscontro delle cose esteriori. E però stando termo il primo proposito, vogliamo raccontare quanto più possibile ci sia, la verità delle cose fatte, più tosto che delle pensate o immaginate.' This is dignified and noble language in an age which admired the brilliant falsehoods of Giovio.
Many of my readers will doubtless feel that too much time has been spent in the discussion of these annalists of the siege of Florence. Yet for the student of history they have a value almost unique. They suggest the possibilities of a true science of comparative history, and reveal a vivacity of the historic consciousness which can be paralleled by no other nation. How different might be our conception of the vicissitudes of Athens between 404 and 338 B.C. if we possessed a similar Pleiad of contemporary Greek authors!
Having traced the development of historical research and political philosophy in Florence from the year 1300 to the fall of the Republic, it remains to speak of the two greatest masters of practical and theoretical statecraft—Francesco Guicciardini and Niccolo Machiavelli. These two writers combine all the distinctive qualities of the Florentine historiographers in the most eminent perfection. At the same time they are, not merely as authors but also as men, mirrors of the times in which they both played prominent parts. In their biographies and in their works we trace the spirit of an age devoid of moral sensibility, penetrative in analysis, but deficient in faith, hope, enthusiasm, and stability of character. The dry light of the intellect determined their judgment of men, as well as their theories of government. On the other hand, the sordid conditions of existence to which they were subjected as the servants of corrupt states, or the instruments of wily princes—as diplomatists intent upon the plans of kings like Ferdinand or adventurers like Cesare Borgia, privy councilors of such Popes as Clement VII. and such tyrants as Duke Alessandro de' Medici—distorted their philosophy and blunted their instincts. For the student of the sixteenth century they remain riddles, the solution of which is difficult, because by no strain of the imagination is it easy to place ourselves in their position. One half of their written utterances seem to be at variance with the other half. Their actions often contradict their most brilliant and emphatic precepts; while contemporaries disagree about their private character and public conduct. All this confusion, through which it is now perhaps impossible to discern what either Guicciardini or Machiavelli really was, and what they really felt and thought, is due to the anomaly of consummate ability and unrivaled knowledge of the world existing without religious or political faith, in an age of the utmost depravity of public and private morals. No criticism could be more stringent upon the contemporary disorganization of society in Italy than is the silent witness of these men, sublimely great in all mental qualities, but helplessly adrift upon a sea of contradictions and of doubts, ignorant of the real nature of mankind in spite of all their science, because they leave both goodness and beauty out of their calculations.
Francesco Guicciardini was born in 1482. In 1505, at the age of twenty-three, he had already so distinguished himself as a student of law that he was appointed by the Signoria of Florence to read the Institutes in public. However, as he preferred active to professorial work, he began at this time to practice at the bar, where he soon ranked as an able advocate and eloquent speaker. This reputation, together with his character for gravity and insight, determined the Signoria to send him on an embassy to the Court of Ferdinand of Aragon in 1512. Thus Guicciardini entered on the real work of his life as a diplomatist and statesman. We may also conclude with safety that it was at the court of that crowned hypocrite and traitor to all loyalty of soul that he learned his first lessons in political cynicism. The court of Spain under Ferdinand the Catholic was a perfect school of perfidy, where even an Italian might discern deeper reaches of human depravity and formulate for his own guidance a philosophy of despair. It was whispered by his enemies that here, upon the threshold of his public life, Guicciardini sold his honor by accepting a bribe from Ferdinand.[1] Certain it is that avarice was one of his besetting sins, and that from this time forward he preferred expediency to justice, and believed in the policy of supporting force by clever dissimulation.[2] Returning to Florence, Guicciardini was, in 1515, deputed to meet Leo X. on the part of the Republic at Cortona. Leo, who had the faculty of discerning able men and making use of them, took him into favor, and three years later appointed him Governor of Reggio and Modena. In 1521 Parma was added to his rule. Clement VII. made him Viceroy of Romagna in 1523, and in 1526 elevated him to the rank of Lieutenant-General of the Papal army. In consequence of this high commission, Guicciardini shared in the humiliation attaching to all the officers of the League who, with the Duke of Urbino at their head suffered Rome to be sacked and the Pope to be imprisoned in 1527. The blame of this contemptible display of cowardice or private spite cannot, however, be ascribed to him: for he attended the armies of the League not as general, but as counselor and chief reporter. It was his business not to control the movements of the army so much as to act as referee in the Pope's interest, and to keep the Vatican informed of what was stirring