Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/179

Rh object of popular odium, its interest, except as regards its weighty plea for a popular army, is mainly historical and psychological. There is an intimate connection between the Prince and the seven books on the Art of War, written about 1520. In the Prince Machiavelli insists particularly upon the part which the habit of relying upon treacherous and mutinous mercenaries, and the consequent decay of public spirit among the citizens, had had in bringing about the ruin of the Italian states. In the Art of War he shows how the citizen army he recommends is to be organised and led in battles and sieges. His experience of military affairs as an eye-witness, as well as an administrator, had been considerable, and he is by no means to be slighted as a tactical writer; but the military art was on the eve of great changes, which rendered much of his wisdom obsolete.

The Discourses on Livy's Decades occupy a middle position between political and historical science. They are entirely grounded on the study of Livy; but their main importance consists not in the commentary upon the transactions Livy has related, but in the application of these to the general principles of politics and to the circumstances of the writer's own country. They may be defined as in some sort the Prince rewritten on a larger scale, and copiously illustrated by historical examples; but the effect is much more pleasing. In the other book Machiavelli appears as the mere scientific analyst of politics, and his real purpose might be reasonably questioned; but the Discourses leave no doubt of his genuine patriotism and of his preference of morality to obliquity, except where, as it seems to him, the interest of the state interferes. The problem