In some respects Dante, Machiavelli, and Michael Angelo Buonarroti may be said to have been the three greatest intellects produced by Florence.  Dante in exile and in opposition, would hold no sort of traffic with her citizens.  Michael Angelo, after the siege, worked at the Medici tombs for Pope Clement, as a makepeace offering for the fortification of Samminiato; while Machiavelli entreats to be put to roll a stone by these Signori Medici, if only he may so escape from poverty and dullness.  Michael Angelo, we must remember, owed a debt of gratitude as an artist to the Medici for his education in the gardens of Lorenzo.  Moreover, the quatrain which he wrote for his statue of the Night justifies us in regarding that chapel as the cenotaph designed by him for murdered Liberty.  Machiavelli owed nothing to the Medici, who had disgraced and tortured him, and whom he had opposed in all his public action during fifteen years.  Yet what was the gift with which he came before them as a suppliant, crawling to the footstool of their throne?  A treatise De Principatibus; in other words, the celebrated Principe; which, misread it as Machiavelli’s apologists may choose to do, or explain it as the rational historian is bound to do, yet carries venom in its pages.  Remembering the circumstances under which it was composed, we are in a condition to estimate the proud humility and prostrate pride of the dedication.  ’Niccolo Machiavelli to the Magnificent Lorenzo, son of Piero de’ Medici:’  so runs the title.  ’Desiring to present myself to your Magnificence with some proof of my devotion, I have not found among my various furniture aught that I prize more than the knowledge of the actions of great men acquired by me through a long experience of modern affairs and a continual study of ancient.  These I have long and diligently revolved and examined in my mind, and have now compressed into a little book which I send to your Magnificence.  And though I judge this work unworthy of your presence, yet I am confident that your humanity will cause you to value it when you consider that I could not make you a greater gift than this of enabling you in a few hours to understand what I have learned through perils and discomforts in a lengthy course of years.’  ’If your Magnificence will deign, from the summit of your height, some time to turn your eyes to my low place, you will know how unjustly I am forced to endure the great and continued malice of fortune.’  The work so dedicated was sent in MS. for the Magnificent’s private perusal.  It was not published until 1532, by order of Clement VII., after the death of Machiavelli.

I intend to reserve the Principe, considered as the supreme expression of Italian political science, for a separate study; and after the introduction to Macaulay’s Essay on Machiavelli, I need hardly enter in detail into a discussion of the various theories respecting the intention of this treatise.[1] Yet this is the proper place for explaining my view about Machiavelli’s writings in relation to his biography, and for attempting to connect them into such unity as a mind so strictly logical as his may have designed.