"A complete history of these times has long been a great desideratum in literature; and whoever considers the magnitude of the undertaking will not think it likely to be soon supplied. Indeed, from the nature of the transactions that then took place, they can only be exhibited in detail, and under separate and particular views. That the author of the following pages has frequently turned his eye towards this interesting period is true; but he has felt himself rather dazzled than informed by the survey. A mind of greater compass, and the possession of uninterrupted leisure, would be requisite to comprehend, to select, and to arrange the immense varieties of circumstances which a full narrative of those times would involve, when almost every city of Italy was a new Athens, and that favoured country could boast its historians, its poets, its orators, and its artists, who may contend with the great names of antiquity for the palm of mental excellence: when Venice, Milan, Rome, Florence, Bologna, Ferrara, and several other places, vied with each other, not in arms, but in science and in genius, and the splendour of a court was estimated by the number and talents of learned men, who illustrated it by their presence, each of whose lives and productions would, in a work of this nature, merit a full and separate discussion. "From this full blaze of talents, the author has turned towards a period when its first faint gleams afford a subject, if not more interesting, at least more suitable to his powers; when, after a night of unexpected darkness, Florence again saw the sun break forth with a lustre more permanent, though perhaps not so bright. The days of Dante, Boccaccio, and of Petrarch, were indeed past; but under the auspices of the House of Medici, and particularly through the ardour and example of Lorenzo, the empire of science and taste was again restored."