whole Hotel of Rambouillet. To prove the whole system of this
school erroneous, it is only necessary to apply the test which
dissolved the enchanted Florimel, to place the true by the false
Thalia, to contrast the most celebrated characters which have
been drawn by the writers of whom we speak with the Bastard in
King John or the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. It was not surely
from want of wit that Shakspeare adopted so different a manner.
Benedick and Beatrice throw Mirabel and Millamant into the shade.
All the good sayings of the facetious houses of Absolute and
Surface might have been clipped from the single character of
Falstaff, without being missed. It would have been easy for that
fertile mind to have given Bardolph and Shallow as much wit as
Prince Hal, and to have made Dogberry and Verges retort on each
other in sparkling epigrams. But he knew that such indiscriminate
prodigality was, to use his own admirable language, "from the
purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was,
and is, to hold, as it were, the mirror up to Nature."

This digression will enable our readers to understand what we
mean when we say that in the Mandragola, Machiavelli has proved
that he completely understood the nature of the dramatic art, and
possessed talents which would have enabled him to excel in it. By
the correct and vigorous delineation of human nature, it produces
interest without a pleasing or skilful plot, and laughter without
the least ambition of wit. The lover, not a very delicate or
generous lover, and his adviser the parasite, are drawn with
spirit. The hypocritical confessor is an admirable portrait. He
is, if we mistake not, the original of Father Dominic, the best
comic character of Dryden. But old Nicias is the glory of the
piece. We cannot call to mind anything that resembles him. The