e of his other
literary works. With his passion for incarnating his theories in a
single personality, he wrote the _Life of Castruccio Castracani_, a
politico-military romance. His hero was a soldier of fortune born Lucca
in 1281, and, playing with a free hand, Machiavelli weaves a life of
adventure and romance in which his constant ideas of war and politics
run through and across an almost imaginary tapestry. He seems to have
intended to illustrate and to popularise his ideals and to attain by a
story the many whom his discourses could not reach. In verse Machiavelli
was fluent, pungent, and prosaic. The unfinished _Golden Ass_ is merely
made of paragraphs of the _Discorsi_ twined into rhymes. And the others
are little better. Countless pamphlets, essays, and descriptions may be
searched without total waste by the very curious and the very leisurely.
The many despatches and multitudinous private letters tell the story
both of his life and his mind. But the short but famous _Novella di
Belfagor Arcidiavolo_ is excellent in wit, satire, and invention. As a
playwright he wrote, among many lesser efforts, one supreme comedy,
_Mandragola_, which Macaulay declares to be better than the best of
Goldoni's plays, and only less excellent than the very best of
Moliere's. Italian critics call it the finest play in Italian. The plot
is not for nursery reading, but there are tears and laughter and pity
and anger to furnish forth a copious author, and it has been not ill
observed that _Mandragola_ is the comedy of a society of which _The
Prince_ is the tragedy.

[Sidenote: The End.]

It has been said of the Italians of the Renaissance that with so much of
unfairness in their policy, there was an extraordinary degree of
fairness in their intellects. They were as direct in thought as they
were tortuous in action and could see no wickedness in deceiving a man
whom they intended to destroy. To such a charge--if charge it
be--Machiavelli would have willingly owned himself answerable. He
observed, in order to know, and he wished to use his knowledge for the
advancement of good. To him the means were indifferent, provided only
that they were always apt and moderate in accordance with necessity, A
surgeon has no room for sentiment: in such an operator pity were a
crime. It is his to examine, to probe, to diagnose, flinching at no
ulcer, sparing neither to himself or to his patient. And if he may not
act, he is to lay down very clearly the