38.—“But leaving the ancients aside, what more noble and glorious enterprise and more profitable could there be than for Christians to devote their power to subjugating the infidels?[[456]] Do you not think that this war, if it succeeded prosperously and were the means of turning so many thousand men from the false sect of Mahomet to the light of Christian truth, would be as profitable to the vanquished as to the victors? And truly, as Themistocles once said to his family, being banished from his native land and received by the King of Persia and caressed and honoured with countless and very rich gifts: ‘My friends, we should have been undone but for our undoing;’[[457]] so with reason might the Turks and Moors then say the same, because in their loss would lie their salvation.
“Therefore I hope that we shall yet see this happiness, if God grant life enough for Monseigneur d’Angoulême to attain the crown of France,[[458]] who gives such promise of himself as my lord Magnifico told of four evenings since; and for my lord Henry, Prince of Wales,[[459]] to attain that of England, who now is growing up under his great father in every sort of virtue,[[460]] like a tender shoot under the shade of an excellent and fruit-laden tree, to renew it with much greater beauty and fruitfulness when the time shall be; for as our friend Castiglione writes thence,[[461]] and promises to tell more fully on his return, it seems that nature wished in this lord to show her power by gathering in a single body enough excellences to adorn a host.”
Then messer Bernardo Bibbiena said:
“Very great promise is shown also by Don Carlos, Prince of Spain, who (although not yet arrived at the tenth year of his age) already shows so much capacity and such certain signs of goodness, of foresight, of modesty, of magnanimity and of every virtue, that if the empire of Christendom shall be (as men think) in his hands, we may believe that he must eclipse the name of many ancient emperors, and equal the fame of the most famous that have been on earth.”[[462]]
39.—My lord Ottaviano added:
“I think, then, that such divine princes as these have been sent by God on earth, and by Him made to resemble one another in youth, in martial power, in state, in beauty and bodily shape, to the end that they may be of one accord for this good purpose also. And if there must ever be any envy or emulation among them, it may be solely in wishing to be each the first and most fervent and zealous for so glorious an enterprise.
“But let us leave this discourse and return to our subject. I say, then, messer Cesare, that the things which you wish the prince to do are very great and worthy of much praise; but you ought to understand that if he does not know that which I have said he ought to know, and has not formed his mind after that pattern and directed it to the path of virtue, he will hardly know how to be magnanimous, generous, just, courageous, foreseeing, or to possess any of those other qualities that are looked for in him. Nor yet would I have him such merely for the sake of being able to exercise these qualities: for just as those who build are not all good architects, so those who give are not all generous; because virtue never harms any man, and there are many who rob in order to give away, and thus are generous with the property of others; some give to those they ought not, and leave in misfortune and distress those to whom they are beholden; others give with a certain bad grace and almost spite, so that men see they do so on compulsion; others not only make no secret of it, but call witnesses and almost proclaim their generosities; others foolishly empty the fountain of their generosity at a draught, so that it can be no more used again.
PRINCE HENRY OF WALES
AFTERWARDS HENRY VIII OF ENGLAND
1491-1547
Reduced from Walker and Boutall’s photograph of an anonymous portrait (no. 157) in the National Portrait Gallery at London. Painted on copper, and formerly owned by Mr. Barrett at Lee Priory, Kent, the picture was acquired by the Gallery from the Messrs. Graves in 1863.