Book I, for instance, closes a summary of ancient history with a survey of Italian cities after the invasions, and Frederick II’s fatal widening of the breach between Empire and Papacy. Book II shows Florence in full republican career thwarted by factions; Book IV, the creation of the vexillifer justitiae as a republican means of checking the selfish ambitions of the nobles. The increasing use of mercenaries shown in Book VII leads to chronic difficulties detailed later. The last three books present the war with Milan not only in its succession of events, but also as a single enterprise.
Finishing his first book in 1416, his sixth in 1429, Bruni solemnly presented nine books to the Signory in 1439, and lived to finish his long labor before 1444.
De bello italico adversos gothos gesto historia (1441), an amplification of the summary in the first book of his History of Florence, has less interpretation. The steady, concise narrative, with little comment, has sometimes too little salience. But to attentive reading the story of battle after battle, now victory, now defeat, gradually gives some grasp of the military operations to hold Italy for Justinian. The main figure is Belisarius. Except in occasional concrete description, this history is more like Caesar’s, and is an experiment in that expository narrative later mastered by Macchiavelli. Belisarius is clearly exhibited not only as marvelous in military science, but as an intelligent organizer and administrator. When he feels himself let down by Justinian, and is approached by the Goths toward a joint kingdom, he will not commit himself to any disloyalty. His triumphal return to Justinian reports his intelligent discipline in Italy. Later his recall to Italy after other generals had meantime failed finds the task of reorganization hopeless in the disaffection of the imperial soldiers so long unpaid and ill led. With very little comment or review Belisarius emerges clearly from the narrative itself.
Bruni’s histories are evidence of a sober earlier humanism immune to the extravagances of Ciceronianism and to that allusive display that led to dilation. They go about their business. Oratory is kept subsidiary to the story and the message. This tradition of Latin history continues in the Scotorum historiae (1526) of Hector Boece, and again in the Rerum scoticarum historia (1582) of George Buchanan. Both wrote Latin history seriously as European scholars. Buchanan, sometimes arid and partisan, was nationalist, indeed, only in his later years. Meantime he had taught for many years in France, had written Latin tragedies, and had been saluted by Joseph Scaliger as the foremost of Latin poets. History, then, kept alive among the humanists the medieval tradition of international Latin. Its classicism, more restrained and more intelligent, less of style than of method, was the more valid imitation.
(b) Vernacular Histories
MORE
Sir Thomas More’s study of Richard III (The History of King Richard the Thirde ... Writen by Master Thomas More ... 1513, ed. J. R. Lumby, Cambridge, 1883) shows these preoccupations in both Latin and English. Though it is unfinished, it is not fragmentary, nor merely descriptive; it is a thoroughgoing interpretation. All the more conspicuous, therefore, is its concrete vividness. Though judge and afterward pamphleteer, More cast this history as story. He makes us understand largely by making us see. Thus the Queen surrenders her son.
All this notwithstanding, here I deliuer him, and hys brother in him, to kepe into your handes, of whom I shall aske them both afore God and the world. Faithfull ye be, that wot I wel, and I know wel ye be wise. Power and strength to kepe him if you list neither lacke ye of yourself nor can lack helpe in this cause. And if ye cannot elsewhere, than may ye leue him here. But only one thing I beseche you, for the trust that his father put in you euer and for the trust that I put in you now, that as farre as ye thinke that I fere to muche, be ye wel ware that ye fere not as farre to little. And therewithall she said vnto the child: Farewel, my own swete sonne; God send you good keping; let him kis you ones yet ere ye goe, for God knoweth when we shal kis togither agayne. And therewith she kissed him and blessed him, turned her back and wept and went her way, leauing the childe weping as fast. When the lord Cardinal and these other lordes with him had receiued this yong duke, thei brought him into the sterrechamber, where the protectour toke him in his armes and kissed him with these wordes: Now welcome, my lord, euen with al my very hart. And he sayd in that of likelihod as he thought. Thereupon forthwith they brought him to the kynge his brother into the bishoppes palice at Powles, and from thence through the citie honorably into the Tower, out of which after that day they neuer came abrode (40).
The three pages devoted to the episode of Shore’s wife, lively at once with irony and with image, pass to calm estimate and moral reflection.
And for thys cause as a goodly continent prince, clene and faultles of himself, sent out of heauen into this vicious world for the amendment of mens maners, he caused the bishop of London to put her to open penance, going before the crosse in procession upon a Sonday with a taper in her hand. In which she went in countenance and pace demure so womanly, and albeit she were out of al array saue her kyrtle only, yet went she so fair and louely, namelye while the wondering of the people caste a comly rud in her chekes, of whiche she before had most misse, that her great shame wan her much praise.... But me semeth the chaunce so much the more worthy to be remembred in how much she is now in the more beggerly condicion, vnfrended and worne out of acquaintance, after good substance, after as gret fauour with the prince, after as gret sute and seking to with al those that those days had busynes to spede, as many other men were in their times, which be now famouse only by the infamy of their il dedes. Her doinges were not much lesse, albeit thei be much lesse remembred because thei were not so euil (53).
The conversations of the Duke of Buckingham with Cardinal Morton, functioning as exposition, close at the end of More’s manuscript almost as a scene in a play.
The duke laughed merely at the tale, and said: My lord, I warant you neither the lyon nor the bore shal pyke anye matter at any thyng here spoken; for it shall neuer come nere their eare. In good fayth, sir, said the bishop, if it did, the thing that I was about to say, taken as wel as afore God I ment it, could deserue but thank; and yet taken as I wene it wold, might happen to turne me to litle good and you to lesse. Then longed the duke yet moch more to wit what it was. Wherupon the byshop said: In good faith, my lord, as for the late protector, sith he is now king in possession, I purpose not to dispute his title. But for the weale of this realm, wherof his grace hath now the gouernance, and wherof I am my self one poore member, I was about to wish that to those habilities wherof he hath already right many litle nedyng my prayse, it might yet haue pleased God for the better store to haue geuen him some of suche other excellente vertues mete for the rule of a realm as our Lorde hath planted in the parsone of youre grace (91).
More’s diction is discreetly popular, both choice and homely, pointed with proverbs, occasionally reminiscent of popular poetry.
The Quene her self satte alone alowe on the rishes all desolate and dismayde (20).
The management of sentences is less expert. More, as many other humanists, was bilingual to the extent of composing habitually in Latin even when he meant to publish in the vernacular. Richard III he composed in both. This may partly explain his frequent use of what are now subordinating conjunctions to begin sentences. Wherefore is often used in sixteenth-century English, as Latin quare, where modern use requires therefore. But when allowance is made for this, there still remains some uncertainty as to sentence boundaries, some doubt as to whether an added clause is subordinate or independent. Writing racy English for the larger audience, More tolerated the looser aggregative habit of English prose in his time. But his English, as well as his Latin, shows clear grasp of the period, and even occasional strict conformity. Current English still lagged in this respect throughout the century. Before Hooker English prose is generally less controlled than Italian. On the other hand, More uses balance and epigram discreetly, not for decorative display, but strictly for point; and his shifting from longer aggregations to sharp short sentences gives pleasant variety.
MACCHIAVELLI
Narrative and exposition are perfectly fused in Macchiavelli (Istorie fiorentine, testo critico con introduzione e note per cura di Plinio Carli, Florence, Sansoni, 1927, 2 vols.). His history of Florence (1532) not only has an insistent moral; it is at once narrative and expository. While we see the events, we see into them. His analytic narrative carries the orator’s art of narratio,[83] the statement of the facts involved in an argument, to greater scope. We follow Macchiavelli not merely as assenting to his conclusions, but as reaching them ourselves. The more distinctively narrative values of vividness and directness he brings out often enough to show his control. But his ultimate object is not imaginative realization; it is rather persuasion. The sequence is not only of events, but of ideas. The admirable orations given to leaders at crises are not merely conventional, nor mainly to characterize the speaker as a person in a play, but to expound the situation. Livian in model, they are oratory of a higher order, both acutely reasoned and persuasive.
Macchiavelli’s exposition is sometimes separate, as in the essay that prefaces each book, or in those sententiae that from time to time open vistas of thought.
Beyond doubt rancor seems greater and strokes are heavier when liberty is recovered than when it is defended (II. xxxvii. 123).
For a republic no law can be framed which is more vicious than one that looks to the past (III. iii. 136).
No one who starts a revolution in a city should expect either to stop it where he intends, or to regulate it in his own way (III. x. 148).
Between men who aspire to the same position it is easy to arrange alliance, but not friendship (VI. ix. 34).
For men in power shame consists in losing, not in crooked winning (VI. xvii. 81).
Thereupon arose in the city those evils which oftenest spawn in a peace. For the young, freer than usual, spent immoderately on dress, suppers, and such luxuries, and being idle, wasted their time and substance on gaming and women. Their study was to appear splendid in dress, sage and astute in speech; and he who was quickest with biting phrase was wisest and most esteemed (VII. xxviii. 155).
Force and necessity, not written promises and obligations, make princes keep faith (VIII. xxii. 198).
But most of his exposition is not added; it is welded. The narrative itself is made expository by a constant chain of cause and effect. It is clear both in its events and in their significance for policy. We learn at every turn not only what Florence did, but why; and we forecast the result. Stefano Porcari, lamenting the decay of the Church (VI. xxix. 101), is inspired by Petrarch’s “Spirto gentil.” The account of the conspiracy nipped by the Pope is rather a story plot than a story. Macchiavelli is content to suggest that it was operatic. He is not concerned to work out its story values; he is bent on its historical significance. The spectacles at the wedding of Lorenzo to Clarice (VII. xxi. 148) are not elaborated descriptively; they are summed up as indicative of the habit of the time. So is handled (VII. xxxiii. 162) Professor Cola Montano’s doctrinaire enthusiasm for republics and scorn of tyrants. His pupils find the issue in assassination. The splendid audience of the Pope (VIII. xxxvi. 218) to the ambassadors of Florence for reconciliation is at once description and argument. Thus the progress of the Istorie fiorentine is simultaneously of facts and of ideas. It is analyzed narrative.
Fused also is the style. Heightened for the orations (II. xxxiv; III. v, xi, xiii, xxiii; IV. xxi; V. viii, xi, xxi, xxiv; VI. xx; VII. xxiii; VIII. x), it is never decorated, never diffused, so ascetically conformed to its message as never to obtrude. This is not negatively the art that knows how to conceal itself, but positively the art that is devoted singly. True in the choice of words, it is expert in the telling emphasis of sentences. Its reasoned balances suffice without the empty iteration of English euphuism. They are played never for display, always for point. The Latin period, welcome to the habit of Macchiavelli’s mind, is rarely pushed to a conformity that would in the vernacular have seemed artificial. Macchiavelli’s sentences are in logic fifty years ahead of the French and the English; but they do not force his own vernacular.