very dexterously connected it with the history of his own times.
The relation of the trick put on the doting old lover is
exquisitely humorous. It is far superior to the corresponding
passage in the Latin comedy, and scarcely yields to the account
which Falstaff gives of his ducking.

Two other comedies without titles, the one in prose, the other in
verse, appear among the works of Machiavelli. The former is very
short, lively enough, but of no great value. The latter we can
scarcely believe to be genuine. Neither its merits nor its
defects remind us of the reputed author. It was first printed in
1796, from a manuscript discovered in the celebrated library of
the Strozzi. Its genuineness, if we have been rightly informed,
is established solely by the comparison of hands. Our suspicions
are strengthened by the circumstance, that the same manuscript
contained a description of the plague of 1527, which has also, in
consequence, been added to the works of Machiavelli. 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, at once trite and affected, threadbare tinsel
from the Rag Fairs and Monmouth Streets of literature. A foolish
schoolboy 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.