Some specimens of the two panegyrics, with the plan of that composed by Politiano, are annexed, and translated with our author's own felicity.
The philosophical amusements of the two brothers follow next, in a pertinent descant on the disputationes Camaldulenses of Landino; and after these, Lorenzo is presented to us as a lover. The materials are furnished by his own sonnets, and the comment he composed on them, and, though the dead and the surviving beauties he celebrates are left nameless, there is reason to suppose, that they were Simonetta, the deceased mistress of his brother, and Lucretia Donati.
'The sonnets of Lorenzo,' says Mr. R., p. 116, 'rise and fall through every degree of the thermometer of love; he exults and he despairs; he freezes and he burns; he sings of raptures too great for mortal sense, and he applauds a severity of virtue that no solicitations can move. From such contradictory testimony, what are we to conclude? Lorenzo has himself presented us with the key that unlocks this mystery. From the relation which he has before given, we find that Lucretia was the mistress of the poet, and not of the man. Lorenzo sought for an object to concentrate his ideas, to give them strength, and effect, and he found in Lucretia a subject that suited his purpose and deserved his praise. But having so far realized his mistress, he has dressed and ornamented her according to his own imagination. Every action of her person, every emotion of her mind, is subject to his control. She smiles or she frowns; she refuses or relents; she is absent or present; she intrudes upon his solitude by day, or visits him in his nightly dreams, just as his presiding fancy directs.
'In the midst of these delightful visions, Lorenzo was called upon to attend to the dull realities of life. He had now attained his twenty-first year, and his father conceived that it was time for him to enter into the conjugal state. To this end, he had negotiated a marriage between Lorenzo and Clarice, the daughter of Giacopo Orsini, of the noble and powerful Roman family of that name, which had so long contended for superiority with that of the Colonna. Whether Lorenzo despaired of success in his youthful passion, or whether he subdued his feelings at the voice of paternal authority, is left to conjecture only. Certain, however, it is, that in the month of December 1468, he was betrothed to a person whom, it is probable, he had never seen, and the marriage ceremony was performed on the 4th day of June, 1469.[31] That the heart of Lorenzo had little share in this engagement, is marked by a striking circumstance. In adverting to his marriage in his Ricordi, he bluntly remarks, that he took this lady to wife; or rather, says he, she was given to me, on the day before-mentioned. Notwithstanding this apparent indifference, it appears, from indisputable documents, that a real affection subsisted between them; and there is reason to presume that Lorenzo always treated her with particular respect and kindness. Their nuptials were celebrated with great splendour. Two military spectacles were exhibited, one of which represented a field battle of horsemen, and the other the attack and storming of a fortified citadel.'
Lorenzo's second journey to Milan, and the death of his father, Piero, take up the remainder of this chapter.
The variety of the materials that compose the third chapter, which opens with the political state of Italy at the time of Lorenzo's succession to the direction of the republic, is too great, perhaps the incidents too minute, and the transition from event to event too rapid, to admit of extracts. The riches of the Medici, their commercial concerns, and other sources of revenue—the character of Giuliano de' Medici, that of Angelo Politiano—the league between the Duke of Milan, the Venetians, and the Florentines—the establishment of the academy of Pisa—an account of Lorenzo's Poem, entitled Altercatione, with specimens and translations, constitute the most prominent features of the chapter.
The fourth chapter, whether we consider the importance of the events related, or the perspicuity and energy with which they are developed and told, contains, in our opinion, the most interesting period in the life of Lorenzo, the annals of Florence, and the general history of that time. 'The conspiracy of the Pazzi,' says our author, p. 176, was 'a transaction in which a pope, a cardinal, an archbishop, and several other ecclesiastics, associated themselves with a band of ruffians, to destroy two men who were an honour to their age and country; and purposed to perpetrate their crime at a season of hospitality, in the sanctuary of a Christian church, and at the very moment of the elevation of the host, when the audience bowed down before it, and the assassins were presumed to be in the immediate presence of their God.'
Having traced the origin of the conspiracy to Rome, and the ambition and inveterate enmity of Sixtus the Fourth, and his nephew, Count Girolamo Riario, to Lorenzo, Mr. R. proceeds to their Florentine accomplices, the family of the Pazzi, whom, though allied by intermarriages to that of the Medici, envy, intolerance of superiority, penury, and profligacy, had rendered their irreconcilable enemies. The young Cardinal Riario our author considers more as an instrument in the hands of his uncle Girolamo, than as an accomplice in the scheme; and proceeds:
P. 180. 'This conspiracy, of which Sixtus and his nephew were the real instigators, was first agitated at Rome, where the intercourse between the Count Girolamo Riario and Francesco de' Pazzi, in consequence of the office held by the latter, afforded them an opportunity of communicating to each other their mutual jealousy of the power of the Medici, and their desire of depriving them of their influence in Florence; in which event it is highly probable that the Pazzi were to have exercised the chief authority in the city, under the patronage, if not under the avowed dominion, of the papal see. The principal agent engaged in the undertaking was Francesco Salviati, archbishop of Pisa, to which rank he had lately been promoted by Sixtus, in opposition to the Medici, who had for some time endeavoured to prevent him from exercising his episcopal functions. If it be allowed that the unfavourable character given of him by Politiano is exaggerated, it is generally agreed that his qualities were the reverse of those which ought to have been the recommendations to such high preferment. The other conspirators were, Giacopo Salviati, brother of the archbishop; Giacopo Poggio, one of the sons of the celebrated Poggio Bracciolini, and who, like all the other sons of that eminent scholar, had obtained no small share of literary reputation; Bernardo Bandini, a daring libertine, rendered desperate by the consequences of his excesses; Giovan Battista Montesicco, who had distinguished himself by his military talents, as one of the condottieri of the armies of the pope; Antonio Maffei, a priest of Volterra; and Stephano da Bagnone, one of the apostolic scribes, with several others of inferior note.
'In the arrangement of their plan, which appears to have been concerted with great precaution and secrecy, the conspirators soon discovered, that the dangers which they had to encounter were not so likely to arise from the difficulty of the attempt, as from the subsequent resentment of the Florentines, a great majority of whom were strongly attached to the Medici. Hence it became necessary to provide a military force, the assistance of which might be equally requisite, whether the enterprise proved abortive or successful. By the influence of the Pope, the King of Naples, who was then in alliance with him, and on one of whose sons he had recently bestowed a cardinal's hat, was also induced to countenance the attempt.