feelings he sacrificed, in order to do what he considered his duty to mankind. It is the very struggle of the noble Othello. His heart relents; but his hand is firm. He does nought in hate, but all in honour. He kisses the beautiful deceiver before he destroys her. rejected all the base and pernicious ingredients by which those finer elements were defiled. Like the Puritans, he lived “As ever in his great task-master's eye." Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on an Almighty Judge and an eternal reward. And hence he acquired their contempt of external That from which the public character circumstances, their fortitude, their of Milton derives its great and peculiar tranquillity, their inflexible resolution. splendour, still remains to be menBut not the coolest sceptic or the most tioned. If he exerted himself to overprofane scoffer was more perfectly free throw a forsworn king and a persefrom the contagion of their frantic de- cuting hierarchy, he exerted himself in lusions, their savage manners, their conjunction with others. But the glory ludicrous jargon, their scorn of science, of the battle which he fought for the and their aversion to pleasure. Hating species of freedom which is the most tyranny with a perfect hatred, he had valuable, and which was then the least nevertheless all the estimable and orna- understood, the freedom of the human mental qualities which were almost mind, is all his own. Thousands and entirely monopolised by the party of tens of thousands among his contempo. the tyrant. There was none who had raries raised their voices against Shipa stronger sense of the value of litera- money and the Star-chamber. But ture, a finer relish for every elegant there were few indeed who discerned amusement, or a more chivalrous de- the more fearful evils of moral and inlicacy of honour and love. Though tellectual slavery, and the benefits his opinions were democratic, his tastes which would result from the liberty of and his associations were such as har- the press and the unfettered exercise of monise best with monarchy and aristo- private judgment. These were the cracy. He was under the influence of objects which Milton justly conceived all the feelings by which the gallant to be the most important. He was deCavaliers were misled. But of those sirous that the people should think for feelings he was the master and not the themselves as well as tax themselves, slave. Like the hero of Homer, he en- and should be emancipated from the joyed all the pleasures of fascination; dominion of prejudice as well as from but he was not fascinated. He listened that of Charles. He knew that those to the song of the Syrens; yet he who, with the best intentions, overglided by without being seduced to looked these schemes of reform, and their fatal shore. He tasted the cup of contented themselves with pulling Circe; but he bore about him a sure down the King and imprisoning the antidote against the effects of its be- malignants, acted like the heedless witching sweetness. The illusions brothers in his own poem, who, in their which captivated his imagination never eagerness to disperse the train of the impaired his reasoning powers. The sorcerer, neglected the means of libestatesman was proof against the splen-rating the captive. They thought only dour, the solemnity, and the romance of conquering when they should have which enchanted the poet. Any person thought of disenchanting. who will contrast the sentiments expressed in his treatises on Prelacy with the exquisite lines on ecclesiastical architecture and music in the Penseroso, which was published about the same time, will understand our meaning. This is an inconsistency which, more than any thing else, raises his character in our estimation, because it "Oh, ye mistook! Ye should have snatched his wand And bound him fast. Without the rod reversed, And backward mutters of dissevering power, We cannot free the lady that sits here Bound in strong fetters fixed and motionless." To reverse the rod, to spell the charm shows how many private tastes and | backward, to break the ties which bound ton. a stupefied people to the seat of en- | bated as criminal, or derided as parachantment, was the noble aim of Mil- doxical. He stood up for divorce and To this all his public conduct regicide. He attacked the prevailing was directed. For this he joined the systems of education. His radiant and beneficent career resembled that of the god of light and fertility. "Nitor in adversum; nec me, qui cætera, vincit Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi," Presbyterians; for this he forsook them. He fought their perilous battle; but he turned away with disdain from their insolent triumph. He saw that they, like those whom they had vanquished, were hostile to the liberty of It is to be regretted that the prose thought. He therefore joined the In- writings of Milton should, in our time, dependents, and called upon Cromwell be so little read. As compositions, to break the secular chain, and to save they deserve the attention of every man free conscience from the paw of the who wishes to become acquainted with Presbyterian wolf. With a view to the the full power of the English language. same great object, he attacked the They abound with passages compared licensing system, in that sublime trea- with which the finest declamations of tise which every statesman should wear Burke sink into insignificance. They as a sign upon his hand and as front- are a perfect field of cloth of gold. The lets between his eyes. His attacks style is stiff with gorgeous embroidery. were, in general, directed less against Not even in the earlier books of the particular abuses than against those Paradise Lost has the great poet ever deeply-seated errors on which almost risen higher than in those parts of his all abuses are founded, the servile wor- controversial works in which his feelship of eminent men and the irrational | ings, excited by conflict, find a vent in dread of innovation. bursts of devotional and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow his own majestic language, "a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies." We had intended to look more closely at these performances, to analyse the peculiarities of the diction, to dwell at some length on the sublime wisdom of the Areopagitica and the nervous rhetoric of the Iconoclast, and to point out some of those magnificent passages which occur in the Treatise of Reformation, and the Animadversions on the Remonstrant. But the length to which our remarks have already ex That he might shake the foundations of these debasing sentiments more effectually, he always selected for himself the boldest literary services. He never came up in the rear, when the outworks had been carried and the breach entered. He pressed into the forlorn hope. At the beginning of the changes, he wrote with incomparable energy and eloquence against the bishops. But, when his opinion seemed likely to prevail, he passed on to other subjects, and abandoned prelacy to the crowd of writers who now hastened to insult a falling party. There is no more hazard-tended renders this impossible. ous enterprise than that of bearing the We must conclude. And yet we torch of truth into those dark and in- can scarcely tear ourselves away from fected recesses in which no light has the subject. The days immediately ever shone. But it was the choice and following the publication of this relic of the pleasure of Milton to penetrate the Milton appear to be peculiarly set noisome vapours, and to brave the ter- apart, and consecrated to his memory. rible explosion. Those who most dis- And we shall scarcely be censured it, approve of his opinions must respect on this his festival, we be found lingerthe hardihood with which he main- ing near his shrine, how worthless sotained them. He, in general, left to ever may be the offering which we others the credit of expounding and bring to it. While this book lies on defending the popular parts of his re- our table, we seem to be contempoligious and political creed. He took raries of the writer. We are tranhis own stand upon those which the sported a hundred and fifty years back. great body of his countrymen repro- | We can almost fancy that we are visit ing him in his small lodging; that we | and to heal. They are powerful, not see him sitting at the old organ beneath only to delight, but to elevate and the faded green hangings; that we can purify. Nor do we envy the man who catch the quick twinkle of his eyes, can study either the life or the writings rolling in vain to find the day; that of the great poet and patriot, without we are reading in the lines of his noble aspiring to emulate, not indeed the countenance the proud and mournful sublime works with which his genius history of his glory and his affliction. has enriched our literature, but the zcal We image to ourselves the breathless with which he laboured for the public silence in which we should listen to his good, the fortitude with which he enslightest word, the passionate venera-dured every private calamity, the lofty tion with which we should kneel to kiss his hand and weep upon it, the earnestness with which we should endeavour to console him, if indeed such a spirit could need consolation, for the neglect of an age unworthy of his talents and his virtues, the eagerness with which we should contest with his daughters, or with his Quaker friend Elwood, the privilege of reading Homer to him, or of taking down the immortal accents which flowed from his lips. disdain with which he looked down on temptations and dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots and tyrants, and the faith which he so sternly kept with his country and with his fame. MACHIAVELLI. (March, 1827.) Euvres complètes de MACHIAVEL, traduites par J. V. PERIER. Paris: 1825. THOSE who have attended to the practice of our literary tribunal are well aware that, by means of certain legal fictions similar to those of Westminster Hall, we are frequently enabled to take cognisance of cases lying beyond the. sphere of our original jurisdiction. We need hardly say, therefore, that in the present instance M. Périer is merely a Richard Roe, who will not be mentioned in any subsequent stage of the proceedings, and whose name is used for the sole purpose of bringing Machiavelli into court. These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we cannot be ashamed of them; nor shall we be sorry if what we have written shall in any degree excite them in other minds. We are not much in the habit of idolizing either the living or the dead. And we think that there is no more certain indication of a weak and ill-regulated intellect than that propensity which, for want of a better name, we will venture to christen Boswellism. But there are a few characters which have stood the closest scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried in the furnace and have proved pure, which have been weighed in the We doubt whether any name in balance and have not been found literary history be so generally odious wanting, which have been declared as that of the man whose character and sterling by the general consent of man-writings we now propose to consider kind, and which are visibly stamped The terms in which he is commonly with the image and superscription of described would seem to import that he the Most High. These great men we trust that we know how to prize; and of these was Milton. The sight of his books, the sound of his name, are pleasant to us. His thoughts resemble those celestial fruits and flowers which the Virgin Martyr of Massinger sent down from the gardens of Paradise to the earth, and which were distinguished from the productions of other soils, not only by superior bloom and sweetness, but by miraculous efficacy to invigorate was the Tempter, the Evil Principle, One have been more addicted than formerly | cision. It is notorious that Machiavelli to the custom of strangling their bro-was, through life, a zealous republican. thers. Lord Lyttelton charges the In the same year in which he compoor Florentine with the manifold trea- posed his manual of King-craft, he sons of the house of Guise, and with suffered imprisonment and torture in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. the cause of public liberty. It seems Several authors have hinted that the inconceivable that the martyr of freeGunpowder Plot is to be primarily dom should have designedly acted as attributed to his doctrines, and seem to the apostle of tyranny. Several emithink that his effigy ought to be sub-nent writers have, therefore, endeastituted for that of Guy Faux, in those voured to detect in this unfortunate processions by which the ingenious performance some concealed meaning, youth of England annually commeinorate the preservation of the Three Estates. The Church of Rome has pronounced his works accursed things. Nor have our own countrymen been backward in testifying their opinion of his merits. Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonyme for the Devil.* It is indeed scarcely possible for any person, not well acquainted with the history and literature of Italy, to read without horror and amazement the celebrated treatise which has brought so much obloquy on the name of Machiavelli. Such a display of wickedness, naked yet not ashamed, such cool, judicious, scientific atrocity, seemed rather to belong to a fiend than to the most depraved of men. Principles which the most hardened ruffian would scarcely hint to his most trusted accomplice, or avow, without the disguise of some palliating sophism, even to his own mind, are professed without the slightest circumlocution, and assumed as the fundamental axioms of all political science. more consistent with the character and conduct of the author than that which appears at the first glance. One hypothesis is that Machiavelli intended to practise on the young Lorenzo de Medici a fraud similar to that which Sunderland is said to have employed against our James the Second, and that he urged his pupil to violent and perfidious measures, as the surest means of accelerating the moment of deliverance and revenge. Another supposition which Lord Bacon seems to countenance, is that the treatise was merely a piece of grave irony, intended to warn nations against the arts of ambitious men. It would be easy to show that neither of these solutions is consistent with many passages in The Prince itself. But the most decisive refutation is that which is furnished by the other works of Machiavelli. In all the writings which he gave to the public, and in all those which the research of editors has, in the course of three centuries, discovered, in his Comedies, designed for the entertainment of the multitude, in his Comments on Livy, intended for the perusal of the It is not strange that ordinary readers most enthusiastic patriots of Florence, should regard the author of such a in his History, inscribed to one of the book as the most depraved and shame- most amiable and estimable of the less of human beings. Wise men, how-Popes, in his public dispatches, in his ever, have always been inclined to look private memoranda, the same obliquity with great suspicion on the angels aid of moral principle for which The Prince dæmons of the multitude: and in the present instance, several circumstances have led even superficial observers to question the justice of the vulgar de Nick Machiavel had ne'er a trick, is so severely censured is more or less discernible. We doubt whether it would be possible to find, in all the many volumes of his compositions, a single expression indicating that dissimulation and treachery had ever struck him as discreditable. After this, it may seem ridiculous to say that we are acquainted with few who bore the unpopular name of Medici. But to those immoral doctrines which have since called forth such severe rcprehensions no exception appears to have been taken. The cry against them was first raised beyond the Alps, and seems to have been heard with amazement in Italy. The earliest assailant, as far as we are aware, was a countryman ʊ our own, Cardinal Pole. The author of the Anti-Machiavelli was a French Protestant. It is, therefore, in the state of moral feeling among the Italians of those times that we must seek for the real explanation of what seems most mysterious in the life and writings of this remarkable man. As this is a subject which suggests many interesting considerations, both political and metaphysical, we shall make no apology for discussing it at some length. writings which exhibit so much eleva- | Christians. Some members of the detion of sentiment, so pure and warm a mocratical party censured the Secretary zeal for the public good, or so just a for dedicating The Prince to a patron view of the duties and rights of citizens, as those of Machiavelli. Yet so it is. And even from The Prince itself we could select many passages in support of this remark. To a reader of our age and country this inconsistency is, at first, perfectly bewildering. The whole man seems to be an enigma, a grotesque assemblage of incongruous qualities, selfishness and generosity, cruelty and benevolence, craft and simplicity, abject villany and romantic heroism. One sentence is such as a veteran diplomatist would scarcely write in cipher for the direction of his most confidential spy; the next seems to be extracted from a theme composed by an ardent schoolboy on the death of Leonidas. An act of dexterous perfidy, and an act of patriotic self-devotion, call forth the same kind and the same degree of respectful admiration. The moral sensibility of the writer seems at once to be morbidly obtuse and morbidly acute. Two characters altogether dissimilar are united in him. They are not merely joined, but interwoven. They are the warp and the woof of his mind; and their combination, like that of the variegated threads in shot silk, gives to the whole texture a glancing and ever-changing appearance. The explanation might have been easy, if he had been a very weak or a very affected man. But he was evidently neither the one nor the other. His works prove, beyond all contradiction, that his understanding was strong, his taste pure, and his sense of the ridiculous exquisitely keen. During the gloomy and disastrous centuries which followed the downfal of the Roman Empire, Italy had preserved, in a far greater degree than any other part of Western Europe, the traces of ancient civilisation. The night which descended upon her was the night of an Arctic summer. The dawn began to reappear before the last reflection of the preceding sunset had faded from the horizon. It was in the time of the French Merovingians and of the Saxon Heptarchy that ignorance and ferocity seemed to have done their worst. Yet even then the Neapolitan provinces, recognising the authority of the Eastern Empire, preserved something of Eastern knowledge and refinement. Rome, protected by the sacred character of her Pontiffs, enjoyed at least comparative security and repose. Even in those regions where the sanguinary Lombards had fixed their monarchy, there was incomparably more of wealth, of information, of physical comfort, and of social order, than could be found in Gaul, Britain, or Germany. This is strange: and yet the strangest is behind. There is no reason whatever to think, that those amongst whom he lived saw anything shocking or incongruous in his writings. Abundant proofs remain of the high estimation in which both his works and his person were held by the most respectable among his contemporaries. Clement the Seventh patronised the publication of those very books which the Council That which most distinguished Italy of Trent, in the following generation, from the neighbouring countries was pronounced unfit for the perusal of the importance which the population |