MACHIAVELLI. [italy.
mental superiority, and the sarcastic severity of his cha-
racter, which he never attempted to moderate.
Machiavelli enjoyed but little glory in his lifetime, and
was, in this instance, less happy than the other great
writers of his age. It was long before his merit was ap-
preciated, or even known, in other parts of Europe. It is
true, that from the nature of most of his works, he could
not obtain so many readers as Ariosto and Tasso. We
may remark, as somewhat singular, that though the cele-
brated Montesquieu, in his grandeur and decline of the
Romans, went over the same ground already trodden by
the illustrious Florentine, he does not once quote him.
This could not be attributed to jealousy. Montesquieu
was superior to such a petty artifice; and has proved it
by the praises bestowed on Machiavelli in the Spirit of
Laws. Diderot has slightly mentioned him in his Opi-
nions of Philosophers. He notices an absurd assertion,
attributed to Machiavelli without sufficient authority,—■
that he waul'd rather be in hell with' Socrates, Brutus, and
Casar, than in heaven with the founders of Christianity—as
an undoubted saying of his. It was not likely that Ma-
chiavelli should wish to be in company with Csesar,
whom, in his writings, he appears so little to esteem: nor
would any man of his undoubted sense and discrimina-
tion, abstracted from any principle of religion, have
affected to despise a worship founded on the broad and
inestimable basis of virtue and purity. But atheism, as
well as religion, has its fanatics, and unfortunately Dide-
rot was one, notwithstanding his genius and his talents.
By supposing in Machiavelli this opinion against the ex-
istence of another world, he designed to infer, that he
himself did not believe in the immortality of the soul.