To multiply the records of crime revenged by crime, of force repelled by violence, of treason heaped on treachery, of insult repaid by fraud, would be easy enough.  Indeed, a huge book might be compiled containing nothing but the episodes in this grim history of despotism, now tragic and pathetic, now terror-moving in sublimity of passion, now despicable by the baseness of the motives brought to light, at one time revolting through excess of physical horrors, at another fascinating by the spectacle of heroic courage, intelligence, and resolution.  Enough however, has been said to describe the atmosphere of danger in which the tyrants breathed and moved, and from which not one of them was ever capable of finding freedom.  Even a princely house so well based in its dynasty and so splendid in its parade of culture as that of the Estensi offers a long list of terrific tragedies.  One princess is executed for adultery with her stepson (1425); a bastard’s bastard tries to seize the throne, and is put to death with all his kin (1493); a wife is poisoned by her husband to prevent her poisoning him (1493); two brothers cabal against the legitimate heads of the house, and are imprisoned for life (1506).  Such was the labyrinth of plot and counterplot, of force repelled by violence, in which the princes praised by Ariosto and by Tasso lived.

Isolated, crime-haunted, and remorseless, at the same time fierce and timorous, the despot not unfrequently made of vice a fine art for his amusement, and openly defied humanity.  His pleasures tended to extravagance.  Inordinate lust and refined cruelty sated his irritable and jaded appetites.  He destroyed pity in his soul, and fed his dogs with living men, or spent his brains upon the invention of new tortures.  From the game of politics again he won a feverish pleasure, playing for states and cities as a man plays chess, and endeavoring to extract the utmost excitement from the varying turns of skill and chance.  It would be an exaggeration to assert that all the princes of Italy were of this sort.  The saner, better, and nobler among them—­men of the stamp of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Can Grande della Scala, Francesco and Lodovico Sforza, found a more humane enjoyment in the consolidation of their empire, the cementing of their alliances, the society of learned men, the friendship of great artists, the foundation of libraries, the building of palaces and churches, the execution of vast schemes of conquest.  Others, like Galeazzo Visconti, indulged a comparatively innocent taste for magnificence.  Some, like Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, combined the vices of a barbarian with the enthusiasm of a scholar.  Others again, like Lorenzo de’ Medici and Frederick of Urbino, exhibited the model of moderation in statecraft and a noble width of culture.  But the tendency to degenerate was fatal in all the despotic houses.  The strain of tyranny proved too strong.  Crime, illegality, and the sense of peril, descending from father to son, produced monsters in the shape of men.  The last Visconti, the last La Scalas, the last Sforzas, the last Malatestas, the last Farnesi, the last Medici are among the worst specimens of human nature.