deep rut in the road of my intention. It has taken me far astray.

It is a matter of many weeks now-diversified indeed by some long

drives into the mountains behind us and amemorable sail to Genoa

across the blue and purple waters that drowned Shelley-since I

began a laboured and futile imitation of "The Prince." I sat up

late last night with the jumbled accumulation; and at last made a

little fire of olive twigs and burnt it all, sheet by sheet-to

begin again clear this morning.

But incidentally I have re-read most of Machiavelli, not excepting

those scandalous letters of his to Vettori, and it seems to me, now

that I have releasedmyself altogether from his literary precedent,

that he still has his use for me. In spite of his vast prestige I

claim kindred with him and set his name upon my title-page, in

partial intimation of the matter of my story. He takes me with

sympathy not only by reason of thedream he pursued and the humanity

of his politics, but by the mixture of his nature. His vices come

in, essential to my issue. He is dead and gone, all his immediate

correlations to party and faction have faded to insignificance,

leaving only on the one hand his broad method and conceptions, and

upon the other his intimate living personality, exposed down to its

salacious corners as thesoul of no contemporary can ever be

exposed. Of those double strands it is I have to write, of the

subtle protesting perplexing play of instinctive passion anddesire

against too abstract adream of statesmanship. But things that

seemed to lie very far apart in Machiavelli's time have come near to

one another; it is no simple story of white passions struggling

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