In our own time some of the men whose wide knowledge and large experience have best fitted them to express an opinion on Machiavelli have been most emphatic in their high estimation of his character and influence. Above all, they have insisted on the enduring character of his work and the fact that it appeals to the essential in human nature, not to the passing fads of any single generation. Two such different men in intellectual training as John Morley and Lord Acton are agreed on this as they could not have agreed on most other things. Morley said that "Machiavelli was a contemporary of any age and a citizen of any country." Lord Acton said that he was "no vanishing type, but a constant and contemporary influence."
Besides a novel, which we quote from later in this chapter, and his political and historical works, Machiavelli wrote a series of plays and poems which are of high literary value. Garnett in his "Italian Literature" says that "he came nearer than any contemporary, except Leonardo da Vinci, to approving himself a universal genius. No man of his time stands higher intellectually, and his want of moral elevation is largely redeemed by his ample endowment with the one virtue chiefly needful to an Italian of his day, but of which too many Italians were destitute--patriotism."
Another of Columbus' great contemporaries among Italian writers was Guicciardini, the Italian historian (1483-1540). Unlike most of the great historians, he was a man of affairs. When less than twenty he was sent as Florentine Ambassador to the King of Spain, and in his early twenties, under Pope Leo X, governed Modena and Reggio with such talent as drew wide attention to him. He was the Lieutenant-General of the Anti-Imperial Army in 1527, later was one of the Eight at [{452}] Florence, and from 1531 to 1534 ruled Bologna as Papal Vice-Legate. He tells the story of Italy from 1492 to 1534 in great detail. He writes as an eye-witness who had himself been prominent in most of the scenes that he describes. The mass of matter is not allowed to obscure the picture as a whole, and the work has distinct literary value. Probably never in the world's history has such a description of events come from a man who was himself one of the most prominent actors in them. His work has been declared "the greatest historical work that had appeared since the beginning of the modern era" ("Encyclopaedia Britannica").
About the middle of the nineteenth century Guicciardini's hitherto unpublished works were given to the public in ten volumes and served to throw wonderful light on the historian himself. His "Ricordi Politici" deserve to be placed beside Machiavelli's "Prince," and it is easy to understand, after reading them, that Guicciardini regarded his friend Machiavelli somewhat as "an amiable visionary or political enthusiast." There has probably never been a set of human documents that illuminated the heights and depths of humanity so well as these writings of the Renaissance. To read Machiavelli, Guicciardini's "Ricordi," Benvenuto Cellini's "Autobiography" and Rabelais is to see the contradictions that there are in this microcosm man better than is possible in any other way. If we but add Montaigne, who was educated in our century, the picture is complete. These men of the Renaissance saw clearly and deeply into humanity through the lens of themselves. Guicciardini, devoid of passion as well as of high moral standards in personal life, eminently loyal to his patrons at all times, just so far as administration of law went, and unquestionably able, possesses all that ordinarily is assumed to bring the admiration if not the respect of men, yet no one can read his "Reminiscences" without feeling the deepest repugnance for his cynicism, selfishness and distrust of men. Ranke has impugned his good faith as an historian, and his quondam repute is gone. It is this very contrast, as exhibited in his writings, that makes Guicciardini's works as valuable a contribution to the story of humanity as the many masterpieces of his contemporaries.
One of the writers of this time who must not be omitted, though his merit has not always been recognized, is Vasari, whose "Lives of the Painters" has interested every generation in every country who have occupied themselves much with the great artists. Himself an artist, living on intimate terms with many of the men whose lives he sketched and gathering anecdotes about them and rescuing many a personal trait from oblivion that otherwise would have been lost to posterity, Vasari succeeded in making an extremely valuable as well as interesting book. Some of his anecdotes have been discredited, and he has often been open to the criticism of lack of critical acumen in his compilations of materials, but his industry, his recognition of what was likely to be of interest and his untiring efforts to make his sketch as complete as possible, deserve the recognition which they have obtained. While his style is apparently most artless, he possesses, as Garnett has said, "either the science or the knack of felicitous composition to an extraordinary degree." It must not be forgotten that this apparent lack of art is often the highest art, and so it is not surprising to hear Vasari spoken of as the Herodotus of art. His good taste in art as well as in literature is demonstrated by his admiration for the first fruits of the early Tuscan school which were neglected in his day. He was one of the genial, lovable men of the time who made many friends.
The most popularly interesting phase of the literature of the Renaissance and Columbus' Century for our time is doubtless the fiction that was written so plentifully and so widely read during the period. Whenever a large number of people become interested in reading, after a time more and more superficial reading is provided for them until finally the most trivial of story-telling becomes the vogue. This has happened at a number of times in the world's history. It can be traced in Rome with the decadence, in the Oriental countries, as Burton's edition of the "Thousand and One Nights" shows so clearly, and in our own time as well as during the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Another interesting development is the tendency for the fiction that is popular among the better and supposedly more educated classes, gradually [{454}] to be occupied more and more with sex problems and sexual questions of all kinds. Whenever many have leisure and a smattering of education, this occurs. It is quite noticeable during the Renaissance period, though a great many good stories were written of excellent literary quality without any tinge of this.
The writing of novels in Italy had begun with Boccaccio in the fourteenth century, and continued with Sacchetti and Giovanni Il Fiorentino. About the middle of the fifteenth century, however, this mode of writing became all the fashion, and the number of novels, though of course by the word novelle the Italians meant a short story, is almost without end. Very many of them have been lost, but a very large number have been preserved. The first of the writers of the time was Massuccio Salernitano, who flourished during the latter half of the fifteenth century and died towards its close. Doni has said of him, "Hail then to the name of Salernitano, who, scorning to borrow even a single word from Boccaccio, has produced a work which he may justly regard as his own." It is to him that we owe the first form of what afterwards became "Romeo and Juliet." Massuccio was a realist and called "Heaven to witness that the whole of his stories are a faithful narrative of events occurring during his own time." Fifty of his novels at least are extant.
Often these novel writers did not attempt any other mode of literature, and indeed not infrequently were not scholarly in any sense of the word, but the next of the Italian novelists of the time, Savadino degli Arienti, was an accomplished scholar and historian. His history of his native city Bologna is still considered very valuable by his countrymen. He entitled his tales "Porretane" because he declared that they had been recited at the baths of Porreto, which was the favorite summer resort and place of public amusement for the Bolognese. The recital of these would be supposed to occupy somewhat the place that moving pictures do now. There is a variety of amusing adventures, witty stories, love tales, and sometimes tragic incidents for contrast. Besides his novels and his history, Ariente wrote an account of illustrious ladies, Delle Donne Clare, dedicated to Giunipera Sforza Bentivoglio, [{455}] which shows very clearly how the women of the Renaissance, as we have come to know them, were appreciated by their masculine contemporaries very early in Columbus' Century.
After Savadino comes Luigi da Porto. Crippled by a wound early in life, he turned from the army to literature and became the friend of many of the scholars of the time, especially Cardinal Bembo and members of the Gonzaga family. To him we owe "Juliet" in its best and purest form. It is the only story we have from him, but it secured world-wide reputation at the time and has never lost its interest for mankind. Porto was followed by Leonardo Illicini, another writer of a single novel which has been preserved and has gone through a number of editions. Illicini, or Licinio, as his name is sometimes given, was a physician, for a time the court physician to the Duke of Milan, afterwards professor of medicine at Ferrara and one of the distinguished philosophers of the time. Every man is said to have one good story in him, if he only has the time and energy to write it, and Illicini wrote his and attracted the attention of his distinguished friends and contemporaries by the nobleness and beauty of the sentiments which he incorporated into it and which make it a singular exception to the usual tenor of Italian novels.