INTRODUCTION

HE Renaissance is the name of a European The movement so gradual, broad, manifold, Renaissance and subtle, that any attempt to reduce it to a single expression is predestined to failure. No formula less vague and magniloquent than Michelet's-the discovery by man of himself and of the 'world-can be stretched to cover the diverse aspects of that great era of change. On all sides there was a loosening of bonds, and a widening of horizons, 'deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind.' The extension of man's territorial domain, and of his imaginative prospect, by the discovery of the New World, the shattering of his most familiar conceptions by the brilliant conjectures of Copernicus, are two signal achievements which may perhaps be taken as emblematic of all the rest. By these the medieval scheme of the physical universe, and with it the medieval theory of divinity and politics, to which it was so delicately and symmetrically fitted, were to be finally overthrown. At the same time the rediscovery and reconstruction of classical antiquity by the labours of scholars gave to imagination a new focus, and to humanity a new model. St. Augustine's dream of a City of God waxed pale and faint, like a student's midnight taper, when the sun rose on those other cities, wherein were harboured

INTRO- the beauty and the strength of ancient Greece and Rome. DUCTION In the zest of the new interests and new possibilities that

were rising into view, the human kind shook off for a while its old preoccupation with the idea of death, and, undeterred by plague and famine, took for motto 'It is good for us to be here.' The old civilisation was passing away, and to the excited hopes of a younger generation all things seemed possible. It was the heyday of the adventurer, the speculator, the promulgator of new systems, the setter-up of new models. The feudal order, with its elaborated rigid tiers and hierarchies, culminating in Emperor and Pope, was crumbling to destruction; slowly and unperceived, strong separate nations were being built up out of its ruins. In the meantime there was room for a new conception of the State, such as was set forth by Sir Thomas More in his Utopia; for a new conception of the position of a Ruler, such as was set forth by Machiavel in his Prince; for a new conception of the duties and opportunities of the individual in society, such as was set forth by Count Baldassare Castiglione in his BOOK OF THE COURTIER.1

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No single book can serve as a guide to the Renaissance, or as an index to all that is embraced by the comprehensive energy of that significant appellation.' But if one, rather than another, is to be taken for an abstract or epitome of the chief moral and social ideas of the age, that one must be THE

'The Courtier, though not printed till 1528, was completed by the author, as shall be seen hereafter, in 1516, the year of the publication of More's Utopia and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. The First Edition of The Prince did not appear till 1532, after the death of Machiavel, but the book was written in 1513. To the same time belongs another work of first importance in the history of scholarship and letters: the version of the Greek Testament by Erasmus.

COURTIER. It is far indeed from being the greatest book of its INTROtime; it is hardly among the greatest. But it is in many ways DUCTION the most representative. That dominant note of the Renais- Th Book sance, the individualism which subordinated all institutions of te Renaissance to the free development of human faculty, finds full expression in The Courtyer-nowhere with a stronger, simpler, and less conscious emphasis than in the high exordium: 'Let ' us therfore at length settle oure selves to begin that is oure purpose and drifte, and (if it be possible) let us facion such ' a Courtier, as the Prince that shalbe worthye to have him

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' in his servyce, although hys state be but small, maye notwythstandynge be called a mightye Lorde.'. The almost

idolatrous reverence for classical precedent, for the deeds and Classical words of the noble Grecians and Romans, which pervades Precedent Renaissance literature, has left its mark on every page of THE COURTIER, and has moreover, by a happy inspiration, been allowed to determine the very form in which the book is cast. Many of the matters discussed by the writers of his time in separate treatises are dealt with by Castiglione in those interwoven digressions which are permitted to break the monotony of his continued theme. Thus, for instance, the discourse on jests and jesting, introduced into the second book, compares creditably enough with the Facetic of Poggio the Florentine, Secretary of the Apostolic See, Poggio or with the Detti e Fatti, piacevoli e gravi, di diversi Principi, Filosofi e Cortigiani, compiled and reduced to morality' by the sober Guicciardini, or with any other in Guicciardini the estimable and prolific family of Renaissance jest-books. The discussion in the first book on the true standards of vernacular literature, the use of archaisms, and the relation between writing and speech, is the author's contribution to

a question which had been broached by Dante in his treatise Dante De Vulgari Eloquentia, and which was hotly debated during

the sixteenth century, on the one side and the other, by

INTRO- writers as considerable as Trissino, Machiavel, and Bembo.1 DUCTION By his own age and the next, Castiglione rather than Dante

The Scholar-
Gentleman

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was accepted as the most distinguished champion, against the Tuscan purists, of a courtly speech common to all Italy.2 The passionate monologue, again, in praise of Platonic love, which is assigned by the author to Bembo in the fourth book of THE COURTIER, finds its precedent and parallel in the works wherein Ficino and Pico treated the same subject at large. And the lighter pieces of dialectic, the debates, dramatically interrupted, on the comparative worthiness of the sexes and of the fine arts, deal with topics which constantly exercised the wit and the imagination of Renaissance society and Renaissance literature. Take it for all in all, the BOOK OF THE COURTIER reflects as in a mirror the age that gave it birth.

But rather than in these diversions and digressions Castiglione's title to memory is to be found in his treatment of his main theme, his admirable presentment of an ideal perhaps the most valuable and potent of those bequeathed to us by the Renaissance. The idea of the scholar-gentleman' is nowhere set forth with more likelihood and consistency of detail, nowhere analysed with a finer skill, than in THE COURTIER. The complete gentleman of Castiglione's portraying differs from the pedantic scholars of the monasteries in that he is to be skilled in the use of arms, a master of all athletic crafts, well versed in affairs, a joyous companion withal, and able to hold his own in the gallant society of a court. His principal profession is still chivalry. To see the world of men and action chiefly through the spectacles of books may be excusable in a

1 See Trissino, Il Castellano (1529); Machiavelli, Dialogo Sulla Lingua; Bembo, Prose (1525).

2 Claudio Tolomei in his dialogue, Il Cesano (1554), introduces Castiglione as the acknowledged protagonist for the lingua cortigiana.