SOURCE: Introduction to Dialogue on the Government of Florence, by Francesco Guicciardini, edited and translated by Alison Brown, Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. vii-xxviii.

In the following excerpt, Brown provides a close assessment of Guicciardini's Dialogue, compares his work to that of his colleague Machiavelli, and concludes that while Guicciardini preferred freedom to tyranny, he was ultimately a practical man who believed in realpolitik.

The year 1509 … marks Francesco's initiation into the life of politics, when he was summoned for the first time to a consultative meeting of citizens, or pratica (see Glossary). In 1511, aged only 28, he was elected Florentine ambassador to Spain, and it was there, at Logrogno, that he wrote the Discourse which anticipates in many respects his reform scheme in Book II of the Dialogue [on the Government of Florence]. It offers a blueprint for the reform of the republican regime headed by Piero Soderini, completed (if...