ere
surely, if Fortune had heretofore graunted mee so much state, as
suffiseth for a like enterprise, I would not have doubted, but in most
short time, to have shewed to the world, how much the auncient orders
availe: and without peradventure, either I would have increased it with
glory, or lost it without shame.'

[Sidenote: _The History of Florence_.]

In 1520 Machiavelli was an ageing and disappointed man. He was not
popular with any party, but the Medici were willing to use him in minor
matters if only to secure his adherence. He was commissioned by Giulio
de Medici to write a history of Florence with an annual allowance of 100
florins. In 1525 he completed his task and dedicated the book to its
begetter, Pope Clement VII.

In the History, as in much of his other work, Machiavelli enriches the
science of humanity with a new department. 'He was the first to
contemplate the life of a nation in its continuity, to trace the
operation of political forces through successive generations, to
contrast the action of individuals with the evolution of causes over
which they had but little control, and to bring the salient features of
the national biography into relief by the suppression of comparatively
unimportant details.' He found no examples to follow, for Villani with
all his merits was of a different order. Diarists and chroniclers there
were in plenty, and works of the learned men led by Aretino, written in
Latin and mainly rhetorical. The great work of Guicciardini was not
published till years after the Secretary's death. Machiavelli broke away
from the Chronicle or any other existing form. He deliberately applied
philosophy to the sequence of facts. He organised civil and political
history. He originally intended to begin his work at the year 1234, the
year of the return of Cosimo il Vecchio from exile and of the
consolidation of Medicean power on the ground that the earlier periods
had been covered by Aretino and Bracciolini. But he speedily recognised
that they told of nothing but external wars and business while the heart
of the history of Florence was left unbared. The work was to do again in
very different manner, and in that manner he did it. Throughout he
maintains and insistently insinuates his unfailing explanation of the
miseries of Italy; the necessity of unity and the evils of the Papacy
which prevents it. In this book dedicated to a Pope he scants nothing of
his hatred of the Holy See. For ever he is st