The management of sentences is less expert. More, as many other humanists, was bilingual to the extent of composing habitually in Latin even when he meant to publish in the vernacular. Richard III he composed in both. This may partly explain his frequent use of what are now subordinating conjunctions to begin sentences. Wherefore is often used in sixteenth-century English, as Latin quare, where modern use requires therefore. But when allowance is made for this, there still remains some uncertainty as to sentence boundaries, some doubt as to whether an added clause is subordinate or independent. Writing racy English for the larger audience, More tolerated the looser aggregative habit of English prose in his time. But his English, as well as his Latin, shows clear grasp of the period, and even occasional strict conformity. Current English still lagged in this respect throughout the century. Before Hooker English prose is generally less controlled than Italian. On the other hand, More uses balance and epigram discreetly, not for decorative display, but strictly for point; and his shifting from longer aggregations to sharp short sentences gives pleasant variety.
MACCHIAVELLI
Narrative and exposition are perfectly fused in Macchiavelli (Istorie fiorentine, testo critico con introduzione e note per cura di Plinio Carli, Florence, Sansoni, 1927, 2 vols.). His history of Florence (1532) not only has an insistent moral; it is at once narrative and expository. While we see the events, we see into them. His analytic narrative carries the orator’s art of narratio,[83] the statement of the facts involved in an argument, to greater scope. We follow Macchiavelli not merely as assenting to his conclusions, but as reaching them ourselves. The more distinctively narrative values of vividness and directness he brings out often enough to show his control. But his ultimate object is not imaginative realization; it is rather persuasion. The sequence is not only of events, but of ideas. The admirable orations given to leaders at crises are not merely conventional, nor mainly to characterize the speaker as a person in a play, but to expound the situation. Livian in model, they are oratory of a higher order, both acutely reasoned and persuasive.
Macchiavelli’s exposition is sometimes separate, as in the essay that prefaces each book, or in those sententiae that from time to time open vistas of thought.
Beyond doubt rancor seems greater and strokes are heavier when liberty is recovered than when it is defended (II. xxxvii. 123).
For a republic no law can be framed which is more vicious than one that looks to the past (III. iii. 136).
No one who starts a revolution in a city should expect either to stop it where he intends, or to regulate it in his own way (III. x. 148).
Between men who aspire to the same position it is easy to arrange alliance, but not friendship (VI. ix. 34).
For men in power shame consists in losing, not in crooked winning (VI. xvii. 81).
Thereupon arose in the city those evils which oftenest spawn in a peace. For the young, freer than usual, spent immoderately on dress, suppers, and such luxuries, and being idle, wasted their time and substance on gaming and women. Their study was to appear splendid in dress, sage and astute in speech; and he who was quickest with biting phrase was wisest and most esteemed (VII. xxviii. 155).