upon the sun and stars? shall I not beneath whatever region of the
heavens have power to meditate the sweetest truths, unless I make myself
ignoble first, nay ignominious, in the face of Florence and her people?
Nor will bread, I warrant, fail me!' If Machiavelli, who in this very
letter to Vettori quoted Dante, had remembered these words, they ought
to have fallen like drops of molten lead upon his soul. But such was the
debasement of the century that probably he would have only shrugged his
shoulders and sighed, 'Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.'

[1] See familiar letter, June 10, 1514.

In some respects Dante, Machiavelli, and Michael Angelo Buonarroti may
be said to have been the three greatest intellects produced by Florence.
Dante in exile and in opposition, would hold no sort of traffic with her
citizens. Michael Angelo, after the siege, worked at the Medici tombs
for Pope Clement, as a makepeace offering for the fortification of
Samminiato; while Machiavelli entreats to be put _to roll a stone by
these Signori Medici_, if only he may so escape from poverty and
dullness. Michael Angelo, we must remember, owed a debt of gratitude as
an artist to the Medici for his education in the gardens of Lorenzo.
Moreover, the quatrain which he wrote for his statue of the Night
justifies us in regarding that chapel as the cenotaph designed by him
for murdered Liberty. Machiavelli owed nothing to the Medici, who had
disgraced and tortured him, and whom he had opposed in all his public
action during fifteen years. Yet what was the gift with which he came
before them as a suppliant, crawling to the footstool of their throne? A
treatise _De Principatibus_; in other words, the celebrated _Principe_;
which, misread it as Machiavelli's apologists may choose to do, or
explain it as the rational historian is bound to do, yet carries venom
in its pages. Remembering the circumstances under which it was composed,