de, restato confuso e disperato, si tratteneva alla
sua villa di Santa Margarita a Montici; dove transportato dalla
stizza ritocco in molte parti la sua Istoria, per mostrare di
non essere stato della setta Pallesca; e dove potette, accatto
l' occasione di parere istrumento della Repubblica.'
Guicciardini's own apology for his treatment of the Medici, in
the proemio to the treatise _Del Reggimento di Firenze_,
deserves also to be read.

Turning now from the statesman to the man of letters, we find in
Guicciardini one of the most consummate historians of any nation or of
any age. The work by which he is best known, the Istoria d' Italia, is
one that can scarcely be surpassed for masterly control of a very
intricate period, for subordination of the parts to the whole, for
calmness of judgment and for philosophic depth of thought. Considering
that Guicciardini in this great work was writing the annals of his own
times, and that he had to disentangle the raveled skein of Italian
politics in the sixteenth century, these qualities are most remarkable.
The whole movement of the history recalls the pomp and dignity of Livy,
while a series of portraits sketched from life with the unerring hand of
an anatomist and artist add something of the vivid force of Tacitus. Yet
Guicciardini in this work deserves less commendation as a writer than as
a thinker. There is a manifest straining to secure style, by
manipulation and rehandling, which contrasts unfavorably with the
unaffected ease, the pregnant spontaneity, of his unpublished writings.
His periods are almost interminable, and his rhetoric is prolix and
monotonous. We can trace the effort to emulate the authors of antiquity
without the ease which is acquired by practice or the taste that comes
with nature.

The transcendent merit of the history is this--that it presents us with
a scientific picture of politics and of society during the first half of
the sixteenth century. The picture is set forth with a clairvoyance and
a candor that are almost terrible. The author never feels enthusiasm for
a moment: no character, however great for good or evil, rouses him from
the attitude of tranquil disillusioned criticism. He utters but few
exclamations of horror or of applause. Faith, religion, conscience,
self-subordination to the public good, have no place in his list of
human motives; interest, ambition, calculation, envy, are the forces
which, according to h