This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects. Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. Supercripted characters are prefixed with ‘^’. The notes were printed as endnotes organized by chapters. Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation. THE BOOK OF THE COURTIER BY COUNT BALDESAR CASTIGLIONE [Illustration: BALDESAR CASTIGLIONE COUNT OF NOVILLARA 1478-1529 ] Reduced from Braun’s photograph (no. 11.505) of the portrait in the Louvre, painted in 1516 by Raphael (1483-1520). The original belonged to Charles I of England, after whose death it was bought by a Dutch collector and copied by Rubens. Later it became the property of Cardinal Mazarin, from whose heirs it was acquired for Louis XIV of France. The medallion on the title-page is from a photograph, specially made by Mansell, of a cast, kindly furnished by T. Whitcombe Greene, Esq., of an anonymous medal in his collection at Chandler’s Ford, Hampshire. See the late Alfred Armand’s _Les Médailleurs Italiens_, ii, 100, no. 10. THE BOOK OF THE COURTIER BY COUNT BALDESAR CASTIGLIONE (1528) [Illustration] TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN AND ANNOTATED BY LEONARD ECKSTEIN OPDYCKE WITH SEVENTY-ONE PORTRAITS AND FIFTEEN AUTOGRAPHS REPRODUCED BY EDWARD BIERSTADT LONDON DUCKWORTH & CO. NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1902 [Illustration: THE DE VINNE PRESS] Copyright 1901, by LEONARD ECKSTEIN OPDYCKE THE BOOK OF THE COURTIER was written, partly at Urbino and partly at Rome, between the years 1508 and 1516, and was first printed at the Aldine Press, Venice, in the month of April, 1528. There have since been published more than one hundred and forty editions, a list of which will be found at page 417 of this volume. The first Spanish version, by JUAN BOSCAN ALMOGAVER, was issued at Barcelona in 1534; the first French version, by JACQUES COLIN, was issued at Paris in 1537; the first English version, by THOMAS HOBY, was issued at London in 1561; the first Latin version, by HIERONYMUS TURLER, was issued at Wittenberg in 1561; the first German version, by LORENZ KRATZER, was issued at Munich in 1566. The present edition consists of five hundred numbered copies, of which this is No. TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE The popularity long enjoyed by this old book, the place that it holds in Italian literature, and the fact that it is almost inaccessible to English readers, seem to furnish sufficient reason for a new translation. The art of the Italian Renaissance delights us by its delicate and gentle beauty, and yet we know that life during this period was often gross and violent. To understand this, we must remember that art is more the expression of the ideal than of the actual, and that men’s ideals are loftier than their practice. Castiglione gives utterance to the finest aspirations of his time. His pages will lack interest only when mankind ceases to be interesting to man, and will reward study so long as the past shall continue to instruct the present and the future. The few deviations that the present translator has ventured to make from the letter of the Italian text are merely verbal, and were deemed needful to render its meaning clear. The notes that he offers are intended to explain obscure passages and to relieve the reader from the tedium of searching in books of reference. Perhaps no one will regard it as inopportune to be reminded of what all may have known but few are able to remember with precision. Students who may...