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'Among the friends of Cosimo, to whose personal influences at Florence
the Revival of Learning owed a vigorous impulse, Niccolo de' Niccoli
claims our attention. . . . . His judgment in matters of style was so
highly valued that it was usual for scholars to submit their essays to
his eyes before they ventured upon publication. . . . . Notwithstanding
his fine sense of language, Niccolo never appeared before the world of
letters as an author. . . . Certainly his reserve in an age noteworthy
for display has tended to confer on him distinction. The position he
occupied at Florence was that of a literary dictator. All who needed his
assistance and advice were received with urbanity. He threw his house
open to young men of parts, engaged in disputations with the curious,
and provided the ill-educated with teachers. Foreigners from all parts
of Europe paid him visits. The strangers who came to Florence at that
time, if they missed the opportunity of seeing him at home, thought they
had not been in Florence. The house where he lived was worthy of his
refined taste and cultivated judgment, for he had formed a museum of
antiquities--inscriptions, marbles, coins, vases, and engraved gems.
There he not only received students and strangers, but conversed with
sculptors and painters, discussing their inventions as freely as he
criticised the essays of the scholars. . . . . Vespasiano's account of
his personal habits presents so vivid a picture that I cannot refrain
from translating it at length:--"First of all, he was of a most fair
presence; lively, for a smile was ever on his lips, and very pleasant in
his talk. He wore clothes of the fairest crimson cloth, down to the
ground. He never married, in order that he might not be impeded in his
studies. A housekeeper provided for his daily needs. He was, above all
men, the most cleanly in eating, as also in all other things. When he
sat at table, he ate from fair antique vases, and, in like manner, all
his table was covered with porcelain and other vessels of great beauty.
The cup from which he drank was of crystal, or of some other precious
stone. To see him at table--a perfect model of the men of old--was of a
truth a charming sight. He always willed that the napkins set before him
should be of the whitest, as well as all the linen." . . . . What
distinguished Niccolo was the combination of refinement and humane
breeding with open-handed generosity and devotion t