[545] I should not be surprised to see an attempt soon made to whitewash Aretino. Balzac, in his Catherine de Médicis, has already indicated the line to be followed: "L'Arétin, l'ami de Titien et le Voltaire de son siècle, a, de nos jours, un renom en complète opposition avec ses œuvres, avec son caractère, et que lui vaut une débauche d'esprit en harmonie avec les écrits de ce siècle, où le drolatique était en honneur, où les reines et les cardinaux écrivaient des contes, dits aujourd'hui licentieux."
[546] I will only refer to a very curious epistle (Lettere a P. Aretino, vol. iii. p. 193), which appears to me genuine, in which Aretino is indicated as the poor man's friend against princely tyrants; and another from Daniello Barbaro (ibid. p. 217), in which the Dialogue on Courts is praised as a handbook for the warning and instruction of would-be courtiers. The Pornographic Dialogues made upon society the same impression as Zola's Nana is now making, although it is clear to us that they were written with a licentious, and not an even ostensibly scientific, intention.
[547] While these sheets are passing through the press, I see announced a forthcoming work by Antonio Virgili, Francesco Berni con nuovi documenti. We may expect from this book more light upon Aretino's relation to the Tuscan poet.
[548] [Age of the Despots], chaps. v. and vi.
[549] "Mi è parso più conveniente andare dietro alla verità effettuale della cosa che all'immaginazione di essa" (Principe, cap. xv.).
[550] The section on the types of commonwealths in the Discorsi (cap. ii.) comes straight from Polybius. But I am not aware of any signs in Machiavelli of a direct study of the elder Greek philosophical writings.
[551] I refer to the Opere Inedite. In the Isteria d'Italia, Guicciardini's style is inferior to Machiavelli's.
[552] I cannot refrain from translating a paragraph in Spaventa's Essay upon Bruno, which, no less truly than passionately, states the pith of this Italian tragedy. "The sixteenth century was the epoch, in which the human spirit burst the chains that up to then had bound it, and was free. There is no more glorious age for Italy. The heroes of thought and freedom, who then fought for truth, were almost all her sons. They were persecuted and extinguished with sword and fire. Would that the liberty of thought, the autonomy of the reason, they gave to the other nations of Europe, had borne fruit in Italy! From that time forward we remained as though cut off from the universal life; it seemed as if the spirit which inspired the world and pushed it onward, had abandoned us" (Saggi di Critica, Napoli, 1867, p. 140).
[553] Epistolæ Angeli Poliziani, lib. ix. p. 269 (ed. Gryphius, 1533).
[554] Laurentius Valla: Opera omnia, Basileæ, 1465. The "De Voluptate" begins at p. 896 of this edition.