"At first, seeing the ingenious and subtle mind of my friend, I was at a loss to account for his apparent failure in assuring his own fortune; but, knowing him better, I see that his judgment, never at fault in dealing with things afar off, may be perplexed and misled when it comes to bear upon present affairs; being so great in himself he doth sometimes forget of what poor account in Europe are his countrymen to-day. He is at present making a series of discourses upon politics, which he reads in the gardens of Cosimo Rucellai, where the meetings of the Academy are held. It was at one of these meetings, after the company had dispersed, that I first had speech of him; in which traverses, though the chief subject of his discourse is Livy's history of the Roman Republic, he draweth his examples from many sources, and showeth how mankind hath always been prone to the same faults, and in like circumstances will always act in a like manner without regard for the lessons and warnings of the past.
"In the intervals of preparing these discourses against their occasions, and of refining those which he hath read, he giveth much time and labour to the polishing of a little treatise or manual for princes; a work full of seasonable matter, which I have read with much profit and agreement, for he reasons not, as the schoolmen use, from some abstract theory of the universe, with which all events must be forced into harmony, but gathering together the facts of common experience, he derives from the perfect understanding of them the principles of his philosophy; wherefore I say that he hath invented a new science, and added a tenth muse to the choir of Apollo. And to show you the satiric nature of the man, I must tell you, that having dedicated his treatise of _The Prince_ to Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici, in the hope of some advancement and reward, and being disappointed of this hope, in the dedication of his _Discourses_ to Zanobi Buondelmonte and Cosimo Rucellai he says, 'Though I have been mistaken on many occasion, yet certainly I have made no error in offering my _Discourses_ to you. For in this I think to have shown some gratitude for benefits received, and to have abandoned the path habitually trodden by those who make a trade of writing, and whose custom it is to dedicate their works to some prince, to whom, in the blindness of their ambition or of their avarice, and in the pouring out of their empty flatteries, they attribute all the virtues, instead of making him blush for his vices. To avoid falling into that vulgar fault I have made choice, not indeed of a prince, but of those who merit to be princes.... Moreover, historians give greater praise to Hieron, a plain citizen of Syracuse, than to Perseus, King of Macedonia, for Hieron lacked none of the qualities of kingliness, except the name, while Perseus had no other than the kingdom.' So doth he think to repay them for their neglect.