DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63447#0312
296
THE HISTORICAL PAST OF ITALY.
with imperial ease and dignity, and was remarkable for
deep-set and penetrating eyes. Frederick was an accom-
plished linguist ; he even understood the Arabian tongue,
which he spoke with grace and fluency ; and influenced,
no doubt, by the fashion of the day, he had studied its
literature and song.
The early force of education, and the vicissitudes of
his chequered youth, had early taught him the prudence
and the necessity of self-control, and of observing
secrecy as to his own political aims. His earlier
years were, indeed, passed in the best training, under
the able counsellors whom Innocent III. placed around
him, and the administrative merits of whom he so pro-
foundly recognised as to follow in every respect ; thus
raising his fertile and lovely Sicilian kingdom to a pitch
of wealth and prosperity it never afterwards preserved.
In early youth he was certainly disposed to be gentle
and generous. His personal influence was very great on
his surroundings throughout his life. His liberality
was princely; but the very steps which he had seen
taken to achieve his own triumph were sufficient to
pervert the human heart; and a far less acute observer
could not but feel that the passions of Philip Augustus
and of Innocent, and not their acknowledgment of his
claims, had prompted their union against Otho.
In after times, the caprice and cruelty of the “tyrant”
alternated with the wisdom and policy of the “ sage ”
and the “ philosopher ” in the conduct of Frederick. It
was not, however, that his criminal actions were in
themselves darker than those of his contemporaries, but
that the lustre of his genius, and the interest he creates
in spite of them, makes them, perhaps, more inexplicable
to us. Frederick II. seems, in so many things, so nearly
approaching our own age—in his wise toleration, his
judicious thrift, his feeling for literature, for the encourage-
ment of the useful arts, for the majesty of the ancients,
and in his laws for the future—that we feel it the more
heinous of him to stoop to the barbarities of his own
times, when his interests or passions gave him cause.
THE HISTORICAL PAST OF ITALY.
with imperial ease and dignity, and was remarkable for
deep-set and penetrating eyes. Frederick was an accom-
plished linguist ; he even understood the Arabian tongue,
which he spoke with grace and fluency ; and influenced,
no doubt, by the fashion of the day, he had studied its
literature and song.
The early force of education, and the vicissitudes of
his chequered youth, had early taught him the prudence
and the necessity of self-control, and of observing
secrecy as to his own political aims. His earlier
years were, indeed, passed in the best training, under
the able counsellors whom Innocent III. placed around
him, and the administrative merits of whom he so pro-
foundly recognised as to follow in every respect ; thus
raising his fertile and lovely Sicilian kingdom to a pitch
of wealth and prosperity it never afterwards preserved.
In early youth he was certainly disposed to be gentle
and generous. His personal influence was very great on
his surroundings throughout his life. His liberality
was princely; but the very steps which he had seen
taken to achieve his own triumph were sufficient to
pervert the human heart; and a far less acute observer
could not but feel that the passions of Philip Augustus
and of Innocent, and not their acknowledgment of his
claims, had prompted their union against Otho.
In after times, the caprice and cruelty of the “tyrant”
alternated with the wisdom and policy of the “ sage ”
and the “ philosopher ” in the conduct of Frederick. It
was not, however, that his criminal actions were in
themselves darker than those of his contemporaries, but
that the lustre of his genius, and the interest he creates
in spite of them, makes them, perhaps, more inexplicable
to us. Frederick II. seems, in so many things, so nearly
approaching our own age—in his wise toleration, his
judicious thrift, his feeling for literature, for the encourage-
ment of the useful arts, for the majesty of the ancients,
and in his laws for the future—that we feel it the more
heinous of him to stoop to the barbarities of his own
times, when his interests or passions gave him cause.