s. There was enough
daring left in Florence to carry through a plan of brilliant treason,
modelled on an antique Roman tragedy. But there was not moral force
in the protagonist to render that act salutary, not public energy
sufficient in his fellow-citizens to accomplish his drama of
deliverance. Lorenzo was corrupt. Florence was flaccid. Evil manners
had emasculated the hero. In the state the last spark of independence
had expired with Ferrucci.

Still I have not without forethought dubbed this man a Cinque Cento
Brutus. Like much of the art and literature of his century, his action
may be regarded as a _bizarre_ imitation of the antique manner.
Without the force and purpose of a Roman, Lorenzo set himself to copy
Plutarch's men--just as sculptors carved Neptunes and Apollos without
the dignity and serenity of the classic style. The antique faith
was wanting to both murderer and craftsman in those days. Even as
Renaissance work in art is too often aimless, decorative, vacant of
intention, so Lorenzino's Brutus tragedy seems but the snapping of
a pistol in void air. He had the audacity but not the ethical
consistency of his crime. He played the part of Brutus like a Roscius,
perfect in its histrionic details. And it doubtless gave to this
skilful actor a supreme satisfaction--salving over many wounds of
vanity, quenching the poignant thirst for things impossible and
draughts of fame--that he could play it on no mimic stage, but on
the theatre of Europe. The weakness of his conduct was the central
weakness of his age and country. Italy herself lacked moral purpose,
sense of righteous necessity, that consecration of self to a noble
cause, which could alone have justified Lorenzo's perfidy. Confused
memories of Judith, Jael, Brutus, and other classical tyrannicides,
exalted his imagination. Longing for violent emotions, jaded with
pleasure which had palled, discontented with his wasted life, jealous
of his brutal cousin, appetitive to the last of glory, he conceived
his scheme. Having conceived, he executed it with that which never
failed in Cinque Cento Italy--the artistic spirit of perfection. When
it was over, he shrugged his shoulders, wrote his magnificent Apology
with a style of adamant upon a plate of steel, and left it for the
outlaws of Filippo Strozzi's faction to deal with the crisis he
had brought about. For some years he dragged out an ignoble life
in obscurity, and died at last, as Varchi puts it, more by hi