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This digression will enable our readers to understand what we mean when we say that in the Mandragola, Machiavelli has proved that he completely understood the nature of the dramatic art, and possessed talents which would have enabled him to excel in it.
The ideally righteous citizen of Agnolo Pandolfini does not interfere with the ideally unrighteous prince of Machiavelli: each has his own position and conduct; and who can say whether, if the positions were exchanged, the conduct might not be exchanged also? In such a condition of things as this, evil ceases to appear monstrous; it is explained, endured, condoned.
This conditional abolition of the Papal authority was in due course made absolute, and the King assumed the title of Head of the Church. "The breach with Rome" was effected with a cold and calculated cunning, which the most adept disciple of Machiavelli could not have excelled."
But the extraordinary thing about The New Machiavelli is, that this envisaging of England in her social, political, and intellectual life, this acutely and almost diabolically observed crowd of real persons, this minute psychology, this exact history, this elaborate philosophy all are subservient to the purpose of explaining how it was that Remington was driven into the net of sex, and Isabel was enabled to "darn his socks."
To me, it is the age of Lionardo, of Charles VIII and Francis I, of Cesare Borgia and Leo X, of Raffael, of Machiavelli, and of Erasmus, who carries us on to the second stage, the period of angry ecclesiastical politics, of Clement VII, Fontainebleau, Rabelais, Titian, Palladio, and Vasari.
Compare Ariosto, Satire i. 208-27. Guicciardini had been secretary and vicegerent of the Medicean Popes. See back, p. 206. These utterances are all the more remarkable because they do not proceed from the deep sense of holiness which animated reformers like Savonarola. Machiavelli was not zealous for the doctrines of Christianity so much as for the decencies of an established religion.
'If all the achievements of the Duke are considered' it is Machiavelli speaking 'it will be found that he built up a great substructure for his future power; nor do I know what precepts I could furnish to a prince in his commencement better than such as are to be derived from his example. It is thus that Machiavelli, the citizen, addresses Lorenzo, the tyrant of Florence.
Their sonnets and canzoni contributed much to the revival of a purer style, although their elegance is often too elaborate and their thoughts and feelings too artificial. Besides these, Ariosto, Tasso, Machiavelli, and Michael Angelo, whose genius was practiced in more ambitious tasks, did not disdain to shape and polish such diminutive gems as the canzone, the madrigal, and the sonnet.
But that, after the apathy of the fifteenth century, is still a passion. The rectitude of instinct and the intense convictions of the earlier age have been exchanged for a scientific clairvoyance, a 'stoic-epicurean acceptance' of the facts of vitiated civilization, which in men like Guicciardini and Machiavelli is absolutely appalling. Nearly all the authors of this period bear a double face.
"Very well," exclaimed Lucien; "I will show you that I can do as much as Machiavelli." "Oh!" cried Michel, grasping Leon's hand, "you have done it, Leon. Lucien," he continued, "you have three hundred francs in hand; you can live comfortably for three months; very well, then, work hard and write another romance.
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