Add to this their style, their exaggerated length, the addition of postscripts longer than the letter itself, and the singular signature, richer in laudatory titles than was ever used except by Oriental princes.
These letters have, indeed, a flavour of their own, a vivacity breaking loose from the restraints of the classical writers who served as his models, an exuberant self-confidence which, at first sight, obliged the reader to put faith in the falsehoods with which they swarmed. Nay, it seems that—as happens with some lunatics, and some incorrigible liars—he ended by himself believing in his own fictions.
Leaving aside many strange blunders, surprising in a Latin scholar,[412] and the prolixity already mentioned, without dwelling on the very undiplomatic want of delicacy, present to a morbid extent, and all the more surprising in a statesman of that age, when reserve was more general than at present, one fact particularly strikes me—an inveterate habit of punning, a symptom of extreme frivolity, which was certainly not a characteristic of mediæval diplomacy.
What man in his senses would, even in the depths of the Dark Ages, have written as he did to Pope Clement, in the letter dated August 5, 1347?—
“The grace of the Holy Spirit having freed the Republic under my rule, and my humble person having been, at the beginning of August, promoted to the militia, there is attributed to me, as in the signature, the name and title of August.
“Given as above on the 5th of August,
“Humble Creature,
“Candidate of the Holy Spirit, Nicolò the Severe and Clement, Liberator of the City, Zealous for Italy, Lover of the World, who kisses the feet of the blessed.”
Note that, after all this signature, the letter goes on for three pages more, on much more serious topics, which he had postponed to the pun on “August.”
In this respect, a clear proof of his insanity is to be found in the letter which he wrote in the elation of his victory over the barons. Not to dwell on the strange familiarity with the Deity which he shows, when he writes “that God formed to war those fingers which had been trained to the use of the pen” (whereas, as a matter of fact, he had no knowledge whatever of the art of war), it is well to note that, among his gravest charges against the Colonna was that of their having sacked a church where he had deposited his golden crown. Still more strange is the following claim to prophecy, addressed to the clergy—who, as dealing in such matters, are likely to be most sceptical concerning them: