But it may safely be asserted, that they have availed themselves of this creative faculty much more sparingly, and with much less success, than their modern competitors. The attribution of sense to inert objects, is indeed common to both; but that still bolder exertion, which embodies abstract existence, and renders it susceptible of ocular representation, is almost exclusively the boast of the moderns.[34]
'If, however, we advert to the few authors who preceded Lorenzo de' Medici, we shall not trace in their writings many striking instances of those embodied pictures of ideal existence, which are so conspicuous in the works of Ariosto, Spenser, Milton, and subsequent writers of the higher class, who are either natives of Italy, or have formed their taste upon the poets of that nation.'
To enforce his premises, the author produces a variety of tableaux from the writings of his hero, and not without appearance of success, to show his superiority in this species of composition.
To invalidate the claim of the moderns, with their fragments of personification, it might, perhaps, be sufficient to call to the reader's mind that immense mass of prosopopœia, on which the ancients established the ostensible fabric of their religion. What were the divinities that filled their temples, but images of things, personifications of the powers of nature? and were not these the auxiliaries of their poets? Discriminated by characteristics so appropriate and so decisive, that no observation of succeeding ages has been able to add any thing essential, or to subtract any thing as superfluous from their insignia. At this moment, the poet and the artist subsist on their sterling properties; and the greatest of the moderns could do no more than recompose from the birth of Minerva, the charms of Pandora, and the horrors of Scylla, the origin, the beauty, and the deformities of his Sin; and if, by the superhuman flight of his fancy, he snatched the attributes and shape of Death from a region yet unexplored by former wings, the being itself had not been unknown to the ancients; it carried off Alceste, and offered battle in it's gloom to Hercules. But will it be denied, that by personifying the act by which his heroes were to fall, and the punishment attendant on that act, Milton has, as far as in him lay, destroyed the credibility of his poem? Homer found the abstractions, which he mingled with the real actors of his poem, already personified; and to demand a belief in the existence of Minerva or Jupiter, subjected his reader to no greater exertion, than to believe in the existence of Achilles or Ulysses. Had credibility not been the great principle of Homer, had he introduced Wisdom seizing Achilles by the hair, and Beauty ravishing Paris from the combat, the Iliad, in what concerns the plan, would be little more than the rival of the Pilgrim's Progress.
But if Homer refused admittance to new-personified beings as actors of his poem, has he contented himself entirely with monosyllabic animation of the inanimate, with roaring shores, remorseless stones, or maddening lances? The enormous image of Discord in the fourth, the picturesque prosopopœia of Prayers and Guilt in the ninth, and the luxuriant episode of Guilt again in the nineteenth book of the "Ilias," not only prove the contrary, but establish him beyond all competition, Milton perhaps excepted, as the first master of that poetic figure. The Liberty of Petrarch, and the Jealousy and Hope of Lorenzo de' Medici, may with equal propriety adopt the names of Health, Suspicion, and Curiosity; but the Litæ of Homer are images discriminated from all others, and will rank as models of true prosopopœia without the assistance of Hesiod, Æschylus, or the love-embodying romance of Apuleius.
The Appendix to the first volume consists of forty-two pieces, and contains the political and literary documents of the history. Of these the papers relative to the conspiracy of the Pazzi, especially the commentarium of Poliziano, the brief of excommunication of Sixtus IV, the reply of the Florentine Synod, and the deposition of Giambattista de Montesicco before his execution, are the most interesting.
One great prerogative of the author is, no doubt, that happy distribution of matter, by which the grave and the more amusing parts of the subject alternately relieve each other. Having left his reader "con la bocca dolce," at the conclusion of the first volume, Mr. R. at the beginning of the second, exhibits the rival of Petrarch, if not as the founder, at least as the first who gave action and energy to that conciliating system of politics, since denominated the balance of power, the darling maxim of modern statesmen.
'The situation of Italy,' says our author, p. 4, 'at this period, afforded an ample field for the exercise of political talents. The number of independent states of which it was composed, the inequality of their strength, the ambitious views of some, and the ever-active fears of others, kept the whole country in continual agitation and alarm. The vicinity of these states to each other, and the narrow bounds of their respective dominions, required a promptitude of decision, in cases of disagreement, unexampled in any subsequent period of modern history. Where the event of open war seemed doubtful, private treachery was without scruple resorted to; and where that failed of success, an appeal was again made to arms. The Pontifical See had itself set the example of a mode of conduct that burst asunder all the bonds of society, and operated as a convincing proof that nothing was thought unlawful which appeared to be expedient. To counterpoise all the jarring interests of these different governments, to restrain the powerful, to succour the weak, and to unite the whole in one firm body, so as to enable them on the one hand successfully to oppose the formidable power of the Turks, and on the other, to repel the incursions of the French and the Germans, both of whom were objects of terror to the less warlike inhabitants of Italy, were the important ends which Lorenzo proposed to accomplish. The effectual defence of the Florentine dominions against the encroachments of their more powerful neighbours, though perhaps his chief inducement for engaging in so extensive a project, appeared, in the execution of it, rather as a necessary part of his system than as the principal object which he had in view. In these transactions, we may trace the first decisive instance of that political arrangement, which was more fully developed and more widely extended in the succeeding century, and which has since been denominated the balance of power. Casual alliances, arising from consanguinity, from personal attachment, from vicinity, or from interest, had indeed frequently subsisted among the Italian States; but these were only partial and temporary engagements, and rather tended to divide the country into two or more powerful parties, than to counterpoise the interests of individual governments, so as to produce in the result the general tranquillity.'[35]