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Updated: May 15, 2025
Maddalena, his wife, died six days before him, after giving birth to a daughter Catherine. This is the, no doubt, highly favorable portrait of the man to whom Machiavelli dedicated his Principe.
Allegretto Allegretti, Diari Sanesi, in Muratori, xxiii. p. 777, and Corio, p. 425, should be read for the details of his pleasures. See too his character by Machiavelli, 1st. Fior. lib. 7, vol. ii. p. 316. Yet Giovio calls him a just and firm ruler, stained only with the vice of unbridled sensuality.
But incidentally I have re-read most of Machiavelli, not excepting those scandalous letters of his to Vettori, and it seems to me, now that I have released myself altogether from his literary precedent, that he still has his use for me. In spite of his vast prestige I claim kindred with him and set his name upon my title-page, in partial intimation of the matter of my story.
Schnadhorst, the famous organiser, of Birmingham, and subsequently of London, with the authorship of the scheme. But I doubt the truth of this. I knew Mr. Schnadhorst well, and had a great respect for him as a man at once honest, sagacious, and of much simplicity of character. But he was not intellectually great, nor was he the astute and unscrupulous Machiavelli his opponents believed him to be.
He had therefore, like Machiavelli and Guicciardini, the best opportunities of forming a correct judgment of the men whose characters he weighed in his Sommario, and of obtaining a faithful account of the events which he related.
A nation in which the ruling class had only recently learned to read and write was naturally dazzled by this sister nation, saturated with the learning and culture of the ages, mistress of every brilliant art and accomplishment; who after having run the whole gamut of human experience, drunk at every known fountain, had arrived at the code summed up by Machiavelli as the best by which to live!
Borgia, who had the reputation of being the closest man of his age, had to deal with a negotiator who, though young, was a match for him, and the account of the mission is very curious; there was deep dissimulation on both sides. Machiavelli returned to Florence in January, 1503, after three eventful months passed in the court and camp of Borgia.
It has been well said that the two extremes of society, the statesman and the craftsman, find their point of meeting in Machiavelli and Cellini, inasmuch as both recognise no moral authority but the individual will. The virtù, extolled by Machiavelli is exemplified by Cellini. Machiavelli bids his prince ignore the laws; Cellini respects no tribunal and takes justice into his own hands.
He let the cat out of the bag and showed in the boldest terms how theory becomes an instrument of practice. You may take him as a symbol of the political theorist. You may say that all the thinkers of influence have been writing advice to the Prince. Machiavelli recognized Lorenzo the Magnificent; Marx, the proletariat of Europe.
I may as well mention, parenthetically, that Dominico was rather an original in his way. His father was an Italian and his mother a Russian. I believe he was born in Moscow. How he came to adopt the profession of guide I don't know, unless it was on account of some natural proclivity for an easy life. A grave, lean, saturnine man was Dominico something of a cross between Machiavelli and Paganini.
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