motives or criticising character.[2] He is in especial silent about bad men and criminal actions.  Therefore, when he passes an adverse judgment (as, for instance, upon Cesare Borgia), or notes a dark act (as the stuprum committed upon Astorre Manfredi), his corroboration of historians more addicted to scandal is important.  Segni is far more lively than Nardi, while he is not less painstaking to be accurate.  He shows a partisan feeling, especially in his admiration for Niccolo Capponi and his prejudice against Francesco Carducci, which gives the relish of personality that Nardi’s cautiously dry chronicle lacks.  Rarely have the entangled events of a specially dramatic period been set forth more lucidly, more succinctly, and with greater elegance of style.  Segni is deficient, when compared with Varchi, only perhaps in volume, minuteness, and that wonderful mixture of candor, enthusiasm, and zeal for truth which makes Varchi incomparable.  His sketches of men, critiques, and digressions upon statistical details are far less copious than Varchi’s.  But in idiomatic purity of language he is superior.  Varchi had been spoiled by academic habits of composition.  His language is diffuse and lumbering.  He lacks the vivacity of epigram, selection, and pointed phrase.  But his Storia Fiorentina remains the most valuable repertory of information we possess about the later vicissitudes of the republic, and the charm of detail compensates for the lack of style.  Nerli is altogether a less interesting writer than those that have been mentioned; yet some of the particulars which he relates, about Savonarola’s reform of manners, for example, and the literary gatherings in the Rucellai gardens, are such as we find nowhere else.

    [1] Book ii. cap. 16.

[2] See lib. ii. cap. 34:  ’Nel nostro scrivere non intendiamo far giudizio delle cose incerte, e massimamente della intenzione e animo segreto degli uomini, che non apparisce chiara se non per congettura e riscontro delle cose esteriori.  E pero stando termo il primo proposito, vogliamo raccontare quanto piu possibile ci sia, la verita delle cose fatte, piu tosto che delle pensate o immaginate.’  This is dignified and noble language in an age which admired the brilliant falsehoods of Giovio.

Many of my readers will doubtless feel that too much time has been spent in the discussion of these annalists of the siege of Florence.  Yet for the student of history they have a value almost unique.  They suggest the possibilities of a true science of comparative history, and reveal a vivacity of the historic consciousness which can be paralleled by no other nation.  How different might be our conception of the vicissitudes of Athens between 404 and 338 B.C. if we possessed a similar Pleiad of contemporary Greek authors!