[1] The dates of these historians are as follows:—­

BORN.   DIED.
Machiavelli      1469   1527
Nardi            1476   1556
Guicciardini     1482   1540
Nerli            1485   1536
Giannotti        1492   1572
Varchi           1502   1565
Segni            1504   1558
Pitti            1519   1589

[2] Varchi, it is true, had Nardi’s History of Florence and Guicciardini’s History of Italy before him while he was compiling his History of Florence.  But Segni and Nerli were given for the first time to the press in the last century; Pitti in 1842, and Guicciardini’s History of Florence in 1859.

The Storia Fiorentina of Varchi extends from the year 1527 to the year 1538; that of Segni from 1527 to 1555; that of Nardi from 1494 to 1552; that of Pitti from 1494 to 1529; that of Nerli from 1494 to 1537; that of Guicciardini from 1420 to 1509.  The prefatory chapters, which in most cases introduce the special subject of each history, contain a series of retrospective surveys over the whole history of Florence extremely valuable for the detailed information they contain, as well as for the critical judgments of men whose acumen had been sharpened to the utmost by their practical participation in politics.  It will not, perhaps, be superfluous to indicate the different parts played by these historians in the events of their own time.  Guicciardini, it is well known, had governed Bologna and Romagna for the Medicean Popes.  He too was instrumental in placing Duke Cosimo at the head of the republic in 1536.  At Naples, in 1535, he pleaded the cause of Duke Alessandro against the exiles before Charles V. Nardi on this occasion acted as secretary and advocate for Filippo Strozzi and the exiles; his own history was composed in exile at Venice, where he died.  Segni was nephew of the Gonfalonier Capponi, and shared the anxieties of the moderate liberals during the siege of Florence.  Pitti was a member of the great house who contested the leadership of the republic with the Medici in the fifteenth century; his zeal for the popular party and his hatred of the Palleschi may still perhaps be tinctured with ancestral animosity.  Giannotti, in whose critique of the Florentine republic we trace a spirit no less democratic than Pitti’s, was also an actor in the events of the siege, and afterwards appeared among the exiles.  In the attempt made by the Cardinal Salviati (1537) to reconcile Duke Cosimo and the adherents of Filippo Strozzi, Giannotti was chosen as the spokesman for the latter.  He wrote and died in exile at Venice.  Nerli again took part in the events of those troublous times, but on the wrong side, by mixing himself up with the exiles and acting as a spy upon their projects.  All the authors I have mentioned were citizens of Florence, and some of them were members of her most illustrious families.  Varchi, in whom the flame of Florentine patriotism burns brightest, and who is by far the most copious annalist of the period, was