[Sidenote:  His Character.]

What manner of man was Machiavelli at home and in the market-place?  It is hard to say.  There are doubtful busts, the best, perhaps, that engraved in the ‘Testina’ edition of 1550, so-called on account of the portrait.  ’Of middle height, slender figure, with sparkling eyes, dark hair, rather a small head, a slightly aquiline nose, a tightly closed mouth:  all about him bore the impress of a very acute observer and thinker, but not that of one able to wield much influence over others.’  Such is a reconstruction of him by one best able to make one.  ’In his conversation,’ says Varchi, ’Machiavelli was pleasant, serviceable to his friends, a friend of virtuous men, and, in a word, worthy to have received from Nature either less genius or a better mind.’  If not much above the moral standard of the day he was certainly not below it.  His habits were loose and his language lucid and licentious.  But there is no bad or even unkind act charged against him.  To his honesty and good faith he very fairly claims that his poverty bears witness.  He was a kind, if uncertain, husband and a devoted father.  His letters to his children are charming.  Here is one written soon before his death to his little son Guido.—­’Guido, my darling son, I received a letter of thine and was delighted with it, particularly because you tell me of your full recovery, the best news I could have.  If God grants life to us both I expect to make a good man of you, only you must do your fair share yourself.’  Guido is to stick to his books and music, and if the family mule is too fractious, ’Unbridle him, take off the halter and turn him loose at Montepulciano.  The farm is large, the mule is small, so no harm can come of it.  Tell your mother, with my love, not to be nervous.  I shall surely be home before any trouble comes.  Give a kiss to Baccina, Piero, and Totto:  I wish I knew his eyes were getting well.  Be happy and spend as little as you may.  Christ have you in his keeping.’—­There is nothing exquisite or divinely delicate in this letter, but there are many such, and they were not written by a bad man, any more than the answers they evoke were addressed to one.  There is little more save of a like character that is known of Machiavelli the man.  But to judge him and his work we must have some knowledge of the world in which he was to move and have his being.

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[Sidenote:  State of Italy.]

At the beginning of the sixteenth century Italy was rotten to the core.  In the close competition of great wickedness the Vicar of Christ easily carried off the palm, and the Court of Alexander vi. was probably the wickedest meeting-place of men that has ever existed upon earth.  No virtue, Christian or Pagan, was there to be found; little art that was not sensuous or sensual.  It seemed as if Bacchus and Venus and Priapus had come to their own again, and yet Rome had not ceased to call herself Christian.