Note 273 — LIBRO SECONDO (continued 4)

«Of this last composition, the strongest external evidence would scarcely induce us to believe him guilty. Nothing was ever written more detestable in matter and manner. The narrations, the reflections, the jokes, the lamentations are all the very worst of their respective kinds.... A foolish school-boy might write such a piece, and, after he had written it, think it much finer than the incomparable introduction of the Decameron. But that a shrewd statesman, whose earliest works are characterised by manliness of thought and language, should at near sixty years of age, descend to such puerility, is utterly inconceivable.» Macaulay's, Essays, vol. I, pag. 89. Con tali parole il Macaulay dimostra un criterio ed un gusto letterario ben più sicuri di quelli del Leo, il quale si fonda invece sulla Descrizione della peste, per denigrare il carattere morale del Machiavelli: «Wie leicht Machiavelli mit dem Tode umspringt, und wie er alles, was anderen schrecklich ist, mit der grössten Anmuth zu verhöhnen weiss sicht man recht gut aus der satyrischen Erzählung einer fingirten Heirath, während der Pest im Jahr 1527 in Florenz; es enthält diese Erzählung zugleich in jeder Zeile Beweise wie Machiavelli zu einer Zeit, wo ihn überall Unglück umgab, und kaum vier Wochen vor seinem eignem Tode (also nicht mehr bei jungen Jahren) seine Phantasie noch voll Bilder weiblicher Schönheit und sinnlicher Verhältnisse zu Weibern hatte.» Vedi la prefazione più volte citata, dal Leo premessa alla sua traduzione tedesca delle lettere del Machiavelli, pag. XIV, in nota.