And feveral New Plans on the ART of WAR, By ELLIS FARNEWORTH, M. A. Tranflator of the Life of POPE SIXTUS V. and THE SECOND EDITION, CORRECTED. IN FOUR VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON, Printed for T. DAVIES, Ruffel Street, Covent-Garden; J. DoDSLEY, MDCCLXXV. SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE of NICHOLAS MACHIAVEL. TH HOUGH writers in general afford but very scanty materials to the Biographer, yet it might have reasonably been expected, that Machiavel would have proved an exception to this obfervation; for, exclufive of his active spirit and the perpetual agitations his country laboured under at that period, he was frequently employed in public characters, and confequently became, in fome degree connected with the history of those times. His fame alfo as a writer of extraordinary abilities, which was never called in question A 3 question till feveral years after his death, might have induced fome perfon of the fucceeding generation to collect the memoirs of his life, a circumftance that has fallen to the lot of many authors of inferior genius. But either the confufions of the times, and the little attention paid to literary merit, or the calumnies which fome years after his death were thrown upon his character and writings aldr by feveral religious Orders, have deprived him of this honour. Even his cotemporary Paulus Jovius, that profeffed collector of anecdotes, has given himself no trouble on this fubject, and records little more. than the falsehoods and invectives of the Ecclefiaftics. Niccolo Machiavelli, the fon of Bernardo, and Bartolomea the daughter of Stefano Nelli, was born at Florence the 3d of May, 1469; both his parents were defcended from noble families, who had filled with dignity the firft offices in the ftate; and as his father followed the profeffion of the law, it is |