cent Lorenzo as to the qualities and conduct necessary for a prince to achieve similar success.
Modern English writers have judged Machiavelli differently, and some of them, perhaps, have gone to the other extreme; as may possibly be said of Byron in Childe Harold s Pilgrim age (Canto IV. St. 54, 55):—
"In Santa Croce s holy precincts lie
Ashes which make it holier, dust which is
Even in itself an immortality.
. . . . . Here repose
Angelo's, Alfieri's bones, and his,
The starry Galileo, with his woes;
Here Machiavelli s earth returned to whence it rose.
"These are four minds, which, like the elements,
Might furnish forth creation."
Prominent, however, amongst modern reviews of Machiavelli stands Macaulay s masterly, brilliant, though not always just essay, which appeared in the Edinburgh Review, March, 1827. This came like a revelation upon the reading public, and certainly did more than any other literary production to spread a more correct knowledge and juster views of Machiavelli in England and America.
I abstain from referring to the many most interesting and instructive works on Machiavelli, in Italian, French, and German, that have appeared within the last thirty years; but should be unjust were I not to mention specially that very able and exhaustive work, "Niccolo Machiavelli and his Times," by Professor Pasquale Villari of Florence. Two volumes of this have appeared simultaneously in Italian and in English (1877, 1881), and the third is looked for with eager interest.
The great experience in public affairs which Machiavelli had acquired during his many years employment in the service of the state at home and in his various missions abroad, coupled with his natural gifts of quick perception and keen penetration, soon taught him that the constant resort to dissembling and treachery by the rulers and governments of the different states of Italy in their dealings with each other, as well as with their
