Onde, restato confuso e disperato, si tratteneva alla sua villa di Santa Margarita a Montici; dove transportato dalla stizza ritocco in molte parti la sua Istoria, per mostrare di non essere stato della setta Pallesca; e dove potette, accatto l' occasione di parere istrumento della Repubblica.' Guicciardini's own apology for his treatment of the Medici, in the proemio to the treatise _Del Reggimento di Firenze_, deserves also to be read.
Turning now from the statesman to the man of letters, we find in Guicciardini one of the most consummate historians of any nation or of any age.

The work by which he is best known, the Istoria d' Italia, is one that can scarcely be surpassed for masterly control of a very intricate period, for subordination of the parts to the whole, for calmness of judgment and for philosophic depth of thought.

Considering that Guicciardini in this great work was writing the annals of his own times, and that he had to disentangle the raveled skein of Italian politics in the sixteenth century, these qualities are most remarkable.
The whole movement of the history recalls the pomp and dignity of Livy, while a series of portraits sketched from life with the unerring hand of an anatomist and artist add something of the vivid force of Tacitus.

Yet Guicciardini in this work deserves less commendation as a writer than as a thinker.

There is a manifest straining to secure style, by manipulation and rehandling, which contrasts unfavorably with the unaffected ease, the pregnant spontaneity, of his unpublished writings.
His periods are almost interminable, and his rhetoric is prolix and monotonous.