[1] It was written in 1514, and first published in folio by the Aldi of Venice in 1528.  We find an English translation so early as 1561 by Thomas Hoby.  At this time it was in the hands of all the gentlefolk of Europe.  It is interesting to compare the ‘Cortegiano’ with Della Casa’s ‘Galateo,’ published in 1558.  The ‘Galateo’ professes to be a guide for gentlemen in social intercourse, and the minute rules laid down would satisfy the most exacting purist of the present century.  In manners and their ethical analysis we have certainly gained nothing during the last three centuries.  The principle upon which these precepts of conduct are founded is not etiquette or fashion, but respect for the sensibilities of others.  It would be difficult to compose a more philosophical treatise on the lesser duties imposed upon us by the conditions of society—­such minute matters as the proper way to blow the nose or use the napkin, being referred to the one rule of acting so as to cause no inconvenience to our neighbors.

In the opening of his ‘Cortegiano’ Castiglione introduces us to the court of Urbino—­refined, chivalrous, witty, cultivated, gentle—­confessedly the purest and most elevated court in Italy.  He brings together the Duchess Elizabetta Gonzaga; Emilia Pia, wife of Antonio da Montefeltro, whose wit is as keen and active as that of Shakespeare’s Beatrice; Pietro Bembo, the Ciceronian dictator of letters in the sixteenth century; Bernardo Bibbiena, Berni’s patron, the author of ‘Calandra,’ whose portrait by Raphael in the Pitti enables us to estimate his innate love of humor; Giuliano de’ Medici, Duke of Nemours, of whom the marble effigy by Michael Angelo still guards the tomb in San Lorenzo; together with other knights and gentlemen less known to fame—­two Genoese Fregosi, Gasparo Pallavicini, Lodovico, Count of Canossa, Cesare Gonzaga, l’ Unico Aretino, and Fra Serafino the humorist.  These ladies and gentlemen hold discourse together, as was the custom of Urbino, in the drawing-room of the duchess during four consecutive evenings.  The theme of their conversation is the Perfect Courtier.  What must that man be who deserves the name of Cortegiano, and how must he conduct himself?  The subject of discussion carries us at once into a bygone age.  No one asks now what makes the perfect courtier; but in Italy of the Renaissance, owing to the changes from republican to despotic forms of government which we have traced in the foregoing pages, the question was one of the most serious importance.  Culture and good breeding, the amenities of intercourse, the pleasures of the intellect, scarcely existed outside the sphere of courts; for one effect of the Revival of Learning had been to make the acquisition of polite knowledge difficult, and the proletariat was less cultivated then than in the age of Dante.  Men of ambition who desired to acquire a reputation whether as soldiers or as poets, as politicians or as orators, came to