These ballads were often on the pagan theme of snatching life's opportunities while one might, a popular expression of the Renaissance time, an echo of Horace's Carpe diem, "snatch the day," which the Roman had taken from his Greek models. Every now and then, however, there is a more serious note in the Carnival songs written to be sung during the revels at the Carnival time, when it is surprising to find such a thought emphasized. One of the best known of these Carnival songs is attributed to Lorenzo de' Medici:
"Fair is youth and void of sorrow;
But it hourly flies away.
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Naught ye know about to-morrow.
Midas treads a wearier measure:
All he touches turns to gold:
If there be no taste of pleasure,
What's the use of wealth untold?
What's the joy his fingers hold,
When he's forced to thirst for aye?
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Naught ye know about to-morrow."
PALMA VECCHIO, POET (SOMETIMES CALLED ARIOSTO)
After Lorenzo's death one of these Carnival songs, to express the grief of his people for him, written by Antonio Alamanni, was sung by maskers habited as skeletons who rode on a car of death, the music to it being that of a dead march. As a contrast to the less serious songs it is worth quoting:
"Sorrow, tears, and penitence
Are our doom of pain for aye:
This dead concourse riding by
Hath no cry but penitence! [{449}]
E'en as you are, once were we:
You shall be as now we are:
We are dead men, as you see:
We shall see you dead men, where
Naught avails to take great care.
After sins, of penitence.
We too in the Carnival
Sang our love-songs through the town
Thus from sin to sin we all
Headlong, heedless, tumbled down;--
Now we cry, the world around.
Penitence! oh, penitence!
Senseless, blind, and stubborn fools!
Time steals all things as he rides:
Honors, glories, states, and schools,
Pass away, and naught abides;
Till the tomb our carcass hides.
And compels this penitence."
Strange as it may seem, the Italian prose of Columbus' Century has had a wider vogue and influence than its poetry. Two literary springs in prose have flowed out of Italy--fiction and history. The greatest of modern historical writers is undoubtedly Machiavelli. His name has been so much deprecated because of the doctrines that he is thought to have suggested that very few people realize what a profound student of human nature he was and how deep was his philosophy. His famous book, "Il Principe" (The Prince), was written within a decade of Columbus' death and at once attracted wide attention. This great political monograph is a calm analysis of the various methods whereby an ambitious conscienceless man may rise to sovereign power. It is usually supposed to be a setting forth of his own absolutely principleless philosophy. As a matter of fact, it is quite as much a lesson in politics for all the world, and while it might be studied faithfully by a man who wanted to usurp sovereign authority in a free state, it contains a series of lessons, which he who [{450}] runs may read, for all citizens to know just how the downfall of their liberties may be brought about. There probably was never a contribution to political philosophy that has attracted so much attention. It is one of the few books that the serious politicians of all countries and nearly every generation since Machiavelli's time have considered it worth while to read. As a matter of fact, it is esteemed so highly as a human document that it is almost considered a serious defect in scholarship for anyone who claims to be educated to confess ignorance of it.
After a set of discourses on Livy, Machiavelli was commissioned to write the history of Florence. This is the first attempt in any literature to trace the political life of a people, showing all the forces at work upon them and the consequent effects. He places the portrait of Florence on the background of a very striking group of pictures drawn from Italian history. Necessarily, since he was employed at their suggestion for the purpose, the Medici are given a place of first rank and very great prominence. This was not mere subserviency, however, but was a very proper estimation of the role played by that house in the fortunes of Florence. He puts into the mouths of his historical characters speeches after the manner of Livy and Thucydides, and some of these speeches are masterpieces of Italian oratory. His style is vigorous and without any thought of ornamentation, informed only by the effort to express his meaning completely and forcibly. Later he wrote a play which John Addington Symonds, the English critic whose deep knowledge of Italian literature gives his opinion much weight, did not hesitate to call "the ripest and most powerful single play in the Italian language." There may be difference of opinion as to Machiavelli's place in philosophy, and above all in ethics, but there can be no doubt about his genius as an historian and a writer, as a profound student of men and their ways and one of the greatest contributors to political philosophy.
We have come to discount all that has been said in derogation of Machiavelli's personal character, though it must not be forgotten that even in the older time there were men who realized that his book was an essay in political philosophy that [{451}] made a wonderful revelation and not in any sense a confession of personal opinions. It has been said that we owe the expression, "Old Nick," as used familiarly for the devil, to the fact that Machiavelli's first name Was Nicholas. Sam Butler long ago wrote:
"Nick Machiavelli had ne'er a trick,
Though he gave his name to our old Nick."