In the Vatican is preserved a MS. of this history in two volumes folio, of 1210 pages, in twenty-five books, ending with the death of James IV. of Scotland in 1512. The narrative is preceded by a dedication in Latin to Francesco Maria II., from Antonio Vergilio Battiferri, grand-nephew of the author, which is dated in 1613, and mentions the MS. as autograph. Yet on the last leaf is this colophon, apparently in the same hand: "Rogo ut bene conserventur, simul cum aliis in cenobio venerand. monalium Sce. Clare de Urbino, quousque bella, Deo favente, cessabunt. Ego Federicus Ludovici Veterani Urbinus scripsi totum opus." But though not the original, that transcriber's name guarantees the accuracy of this copy. An extract from it in [II. of the Appendix] proves that the Leyden edition of 1651 is in fact a loose paraphrase of the work.[73]
Vespasiano Filippi[*74] was a Florentine bibliopole, in an age when that commerce was carried on by persons of learning, whose business it was to transcribe, collate, and critically master the MSS. which formed its staple. He was thus in familiar intercourse not only with the literary men of the age, but with such princes and prelates as turned their attention to the promotion of reviving letters by multiplication and preservation of books. Of many such he has left us biographical notices, recently given to the world by Cardinal Mai from three MSS. in the Vatican library,[75] and in the Riccardiana of Florence. His collection of lives of illustrious ladies remains unedited. In the former work no memoir is so fully extended as that of Duke Federigo of Urbino, upon which we have in part drawn in our [Second Book]. It was inscribed to Duke Guidobaldo I., in a dedication which not only testifies to his father's martial skill, and a prowess that never knew defeat, but also to the prudence of his sway, and assures us that the great powers of Italy had frequent recourse to his judicious counsels. Unlike the pedantic writers among whom he lived, Vespasiano composed these memoirs in the language of the people for whose information he intended them; but the long interval that elapsed before they saw the light has necessarily prevented them from becoming in any degree popular. Muratori, though unable to give an account of their author, has printed his lives of Eugene IV. and Nicholas V., and characterises his style as possessing a simplicity more precious than eloquence.
Two members only of the brilliant and lettered court of Guidobaldo have gained enduring celebrity from their writings—Castiglione and Bembo.[*76] The former may be considered a pattern of gentlemanly writing, the latter of scholarlike composition. We have already said what is necessary of both, and have introduced into our narrative an idea of Count Baldassare's Cortegiano, its objects and style. It is said to have been suggested by Louis XII., and written about 1516, but the author's preface seems to point at an earlier date. Two of his published letters to Bembo show how anxiously he awaited the suffrage of his friends, among whom it was handed about; but it was sent to press in 1528, only in consequence of the alarm of a pirated edition being in preparation, from a MS. which had been submitted to the famed Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara. The number of reprints which issued during the next fifty years was at least forty-two. A variety of circumstances conduced to this extensive and continued popularity. Books professing to initiate the many into habits and mysteries of refined society ever have claims on public curiosity, but the attraction was here increased by the dazzling reputation of the palace-circle at Urbino, as well as by the charms of erudition, wit, elegance, and worldly wisdom which sparkle in every page. It has, however, been remarked that most translations of the Cortegiano have failed to obtain the applause bestowed upon the original. The observation may be taken as a compliment to the polish of its diction, and to those delicacies of expression that bear no transplanting into another idiom. It also proves that the celebrity of this work rests much upon its style. The subject could scarcely be treated at such length without falling into that diffuseness and repetition, which, though clothed in beauty by the rich fluency of the Italian language, must always degenerate into monotony when rendered by the bold expletives of a less copious tongue.
CASTIGLIONE
After the picture by Raphael in the Louvre
In a period when princes and courts little resembled what they have since become, we possess from the pens of Machiavelli and Castiglione generalised portraits of both; and they may be relied on as genuine, although the Tuscan, like the tenebristi painters, overloaded his darker shadows, whilst the Mantuan Count employed the roseate tinting of licensed flattery. Roscoe considers the Cortegiano an ethical treatise, yet it belongs as much to belles-lettres as to moral philosophy. Its author has been called the Chesterfield of Italy, and the parallel is singularly apt. The Count and the Earl have each supplied "a glass of fashion and a mould of form" for the guidance of their courtly contemporaries, and the posthumous reputation of both with the world at large rests more upon their dicta as arbiters of politeness, than upon their rare diplomatic address and statesmanlike attainments. With all its interest as a picture of manners and a test of civilisation in that proverbially refined age, with every charm which elegance of style can impart, it is impossible to dwell on the Cortegiano without feeling that its influence was then fraught with evil. In the pages of that essay were first systematically embodied precepts of tact, lessons of adulation, all repugnant to the stern manners and wholesome independence of antecedent generations. The homely bearing of honest burghers, the rough and ready speech of men who lived in harness, were there put out of fashion by studied phrase and cringing flattery, too easy preparations for the effeminate euphuism and fulsome servility which Spanish thraldom soon after imposed upon Italy.