GUICCIARDINI, FRANCESCO (1483-1540), the celebrated Italian historian and statesman, was born at Florence in the year 1483, when Marsilio Ficino held him at the font of baptism. His family was illustrious and noble; and his ancestors for many generations had held the highest posts of honour in the state, as may be seen in his own genealogical _Ricordi autobiografici e di famiglia_ (_Op. ined._ vol. x.). After the usual education of a boy in grammar and elementary classical studies, his father, Piero, sent him to the universities of Ferrara and Padua, where he stayed until the year 1505. The death of an uncle, who had occupied the see of Cortona with great pomp, induced the young Guicciardini to hanker after an ecclesiastical career. He already saw the scarlet of a cardinal awaiting him, and to this eminence he would assuredly have risen. His father, however, checked this ambition, declaring that, though he had five sons, he would not suffer one of them to enter the church in its then state of corruption and debasement. Guicciardini, whose motives were confessedly ambitious (see _Ricordi, Op. ined._ x. 68), turned his attention to law, and at the age of twenty-three was appointed by the Signoria of Florence to read the _Institutes_ in public. Shortly afterwards he engaged himself in marriage to Maria, daughter of Alamanno Salviati, prompted, as he frankly tells us, by the political support which an alliance with that great family would bring him (ib. x. 71). He was then practising at the bar, where he won so much distinction that the Signoria, in 1512, entrusted him with an embassy to the court of Ferdinand the Catholic. Thus he entered on the real work of his life as a diplomatist and statesman. His conduct upon that legation was afterwards severely criticized; for his political antagonists accused him of betraying the true interests of the commonwealth, and using his influence for the restoration of the exiled house of Medici to power. His Spanish correspondence with the Signoria (_Op. ined._ vol. vi.) reveals the extraordinary power of observation and analysis which was a chief quality of his mind; and in Ferdinand, hypocritical and profoundly dissimulative, he found a proper object for his scientific study. To suppose that the young statesman learned his frigid statecraft in Spain would be perhaps too simple a solution of the problem offered by his character, and scarcely fair to the Italian proficients in perfidy. It is clear from Guicciardini's autobiographical memoirs that he was ambitious, calculating, avaricious and power-loving from his earliest years; and in Spain he had no more than an opportunity of studying on a large scale those political vices which already ruled the minor potentates of Italy. Still the school was pregnant with instructions for so apt a pupil. Guicciardini issued from this first trial of his skill with an assured reputation for diplomatic ability, as that was understood in Italy.