Diaries, Prioristi (Notebooks), Reminiscences, before coming down to modern writers. Among the Florentines it was a very common practice to keep a daily register of events, and in this wise their splendid store of historic literature was continually enlarged. But, nevertheless, no history bristles with so many difficulties as that of Florence, nor offers so many apparently insurmountable contradictions. Events pass before our eyes, well described, vividly coloured; they flit past in a rapid and uninterrupted whirl, never resting, subject to no law, and seemingly obedient to chance alone. Personal hatred, jealousy, and private revenge produce political revolutions, drenching the city with the blood of its children. These revolutions endure for months, perhaps even for years, and end with arbitrary decrees, which are violated or undone the moment they have received magisterial sanction. Thus we are often moved to inquire, How can this be the work of far-seeing diplomats, of great politicians? Either lofty commendations for political good sense and acuteness were falsely lavished on men incapable of giving their country sound laws and stable institutions, and who in the gravest affairs of State were solely influenced by personal loves and hates; or else for centuries past we have accorded unmerited praise to the historians who have described impossible events to us in the most vivid colours. In fact, how could it possibly be that so much good sense should breed so much disorder? How, too, in the midst of this disorder, with the vessel of the State at the mercy of every wind that blew, could art, science, and literature give forth so glorious a harvest?

Undoubtedly history, as we interpret it to-day, was unknown to the ancients. We seek the causes of events, whereas they merely described them. We wish to know the laws, manners, ideas, and prejudices of mankind, whereas our forefathers were exclusively concerned with human passions and actions. In the fifteenth century political science was chiefly a study of human nature, while at this day it is mainly a study of institutions. Modern history aims at the examination of mankind and society in every form, and from every point of view. That is why we have had to so often re-fashion the work that, nevertheless, had been splendidly performed by writers of old.

Leaving aside all compilers of those fables and legends on the origin of Florence found repeated in even later works, Florentine historians may be divided into two great schools. First come the authors of Chronicles or Diaries, who flourished chiefly in the fourteenth century, although they continued long after that period. These writers record day by day the events they have witnessed and in which they have often taken part; stirred by the very passions they describe, they sometimes rise to eloquence, and the heat of their own words leaves them no time to dwell on abstract ideas. They presuppose in their readers their own detailed knowledge of the political institutions among which their lives were spent, but which are unknown to us, and the object of our keenest desire. Frequently, however, some fourteenth-century chronicler, such as Giovanni Villani, with his incomparable gift of observation, supplies such minute descriptions of events, reports so many details, that, almost unawares, we find ourselves carried back to his day. Sometimes, when descending to particulars, he apologises for detaining the reader on topics of small moment, little foreseeing what value we later generations would attach to all those details of the trade, instruction, revenue, and expenditure of the Republic, or how we should long for more facts of the same kind. But as soon as these writers touch upon times and events outside their own experience, they have either to copy verbatim from other chroniclers, or their narratives remain cold, colourless, and devoid of merit or authority. We pass at once from the most lively and graphic descriptions to the strangest fables, the greatest incoherence, since these men are incapable of using any discernment even in copying literally from others. Proofs of this are seen in their puerile accounts of the foundation of Florence. Historical criticism was as yet unborn.

The scholarship of the fifteenth century gave rise to the study and imitation of Sallust and Livy; and Italian writers were no longer content to register facts from day to day, unconnectedly and without order. Many wrote in Latin, others in Italian; but all sought to compose historical narratives in a more artistic, or at all events, more artificial way. They launched into exordiums and general considerations; gave lengthy descriptions, eked out by many flights of fancy, of wars they had never witnessed, and of which they knew little or nothing; they attributed imaginary speeches to their personages, and sometimes fashioned their narratives in the shape of dialogues, to increase the distance between themselves and their fourteenth-century predecessors.3

It was a period of rhetorical essays and servile imitations of the classics, during which Italian history and literature declined, although preparing for revival in the coming age. In fact, we find the art of history notably advanced in the sixteenth century. Machiavelli, who may be styled the most illustrious founder of that art, begins with a word of blame to preceding historians exactly because "they had said little or nothing of civil discords, or of existing internal enmities and their effects, and described other matters with a brevity that could be neither useful nor pleasing to the reader." Indirectly, these words serve as a faithful portrait of the book that has proved the most lasting monument to his own fame. He inquires into the causes of events, the origin of all the parties and revolutions of the Republic; thus creating a new method and opening a new road. He reduces the whole history of the Commonwealth into an admirable unity; he rejects with profound contempt the fabulous tales bequeathed by the chronicler regarding the foundation of Florence, and throws an eagle glance on party manœuvres from their origin down to his own day. He was the first to undertake these researches, and, notwithstanding all newer investigations, his fundamental idea maintains its value.

But Machiavelli gave little heed to institutions, scarcely any at all to laws and customs. Furthermore, he was so entirely guided by his instinct of divination as to care little for the historic exactitude of particular facts. To ascertain the infinite number of inaccuracies and blunders contained in his book, and which would be unpardonable in a modern writer, his narrative must be compared with the contemporary accounts of the old chroniclers, some of which were known to him. Not only are there frequent errors of date, but also of the names and number of magistrates and of the framework of institutions. It would seem that while divining the spirit of events, he simultaneously remoulded them according to his own fancy. Sometimes we find him appropriating entire pages from Cavalcanti's history, even transcribing the fictitious speeches attributed by that chronicler to historic characters, and by a few touches of his own pouring new life into the dull narrative without troubling to undertake any fresh research. Thus, his book, although a valuable guide, is also an unsafe one. He cannot always abstain from transplanting a true fact to the place best suited to his own theories, thus filling up inconvenient gaps without many scruples of conscience. His aim, so he tells us, was to investigate the causes of parties and revolutions. What is now designated as local