Clever people will recognise and tolerate nothing but cleverness.
The child who is impelled to draw as soon as it can hold a pencil; the Mozart who breaks out into music as early; the boy Bidder who worked out the most complicated sums without learning arithmetic; the boy Pascal who evolved Euclid out of his own consciousness: all these may be said to have been impelled by instinct, as much as are the beaver and the bee. And the man of genius is distinct in kind from the man of cleverness, by reason of the working within him of strong innate tendencies--which cultivation may improve, but which it can no more create than horticulture can make thistles bear figs. The analogy between a musical instrument and the mind holds good here also. Art and industry may get much music, of a sort, out of a penny whistle; but, when all is done, it has no chance against an organ. The innate musical potentialities of the two are infinitely different.
For ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training is a much greater misfortune.--_Plato._
On gagne peu de choses par habilete=--It is little that one gains by cleverness. (?)
Patience and tenacity of purpose are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.
In all meanness there is a deficit of intellect as well as of heart, and even the cleverness of avarice is but the cunning of imbecility.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
Learned and leisured hospitality is the only antidote to the stance of deadly cleverness that is acquired in the professional pursuit of objectively secured knowledge. I remain certain that the quest for truth cannot thrive outside the nourishment of mutual trust flowering into a commitment to friendship.
La passion fait souvent un fou du plus habile homme, et rend souvent habiles les plus sots=--Love often makes a fool of the cleverest man, and often gives cleverness to the most foolish.
it is the client who knows what hurts, what directions to go, what problems are crucial, what experiences have been deeply buried. It began to occur to me that unless I had a need to demonstrate my own cleverness and learning, I would do better to rely upon the client for the direction of movement in the process.
People never will recollect, that mere learning and mere cleverness are of next to no value in life, while energy and intellectual grip, the things that are inborn and cannot be taught, are everything.
Never desire to appear clever and make a show of your talents before men. Be honest, loving, kindly, and sympathetic in all you say and do. Cleverness will flow from you naturally if you have it, and applause will come to you unsought from those who know what to applaud; but the applause of fools is to be shunned.
We should realize that a city is better off with bad laws, so long as they remain fixed, then with good laws that are constantly being altered, that the lack of learning combined with sound common sense is more helpful than the kind of cleverness that gets out of hand, and that as a general rule, states are better governed by the man in the street than by intellectuals. These are the sort of people who want to appear wiser than the laws, who want to get their own way in every general discussion, because they feel that they cannot show off their intelligence in matters of greater importance, and who, as a result, very often bring ruin on their country. -- Cleon, Thucydides, III, 37 translation by Rex Warner
Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else -- unless it is an enemy. -- Albert Einstein
"Allow me, Mr. Ivolgin," he said irritably. "What is the good of all this rigmarole? Pardon me. All is now clear, and we acknowledge the truth of your main point. Why go into these tedious details? You wish perhaps to boast of the cleverness of your investigation, to cry up your talents as detective? Or perhaps your intention is to excuse Burdovsky, by roving that he took up the matter in ignorance? Well, I consider that extremely impudent on your part! You ought to know that Burdovsky has no need of being excused or justified by you or anyone else! It is an insult! The affair is quite painful enough for him without that. Will nothing make you understand?"
Thus it will be easily understood that that grating, so obligingly opened to Jean Valjean, was a bit of cleverness on Thenardier's part. Thenardier intuitively felt that Javert was still there; the man spied upon has a scent which never deceives him; it was necessary to fling a bone to that sleuth-hound. An assassin, what a godsend! Such an opportunity must never be allowed to slip. Thenardier, by putting Jean Valjean outside in his stead, provided a prey for the police, forced them to relinquish his scent, made them forget him in a bigger adventure, repaid Javert for his waiting, which always flatters a spy, earned thirty francs, and counted with certainty, so far as he himself was concerned, on escaping with the aid of this diversion.
The man was ruined. He was shortly to be tried at Aix with his accomplice. They were relating the matter, and each one was expressing enthusiasm over the cleverness of the magistrate. By bringing jealousy into play, he had caused the truth to burst forth in wrath, he had educed the justice of revenge. The Bishop listened to all this in silence. When they had finished, he inquired,--
"Ah, I know her by name!" exclaimed Albert; "she is said to possess as much wit and cleverness as beauty. I was to have been presented to her when I met her at Madame Villefort's ball."
Anatole was sincerely fond of Dolokhov for his cleverness and audacity. Dolokhov, who needed Anatole Kuragin's name, position, and connections as a bait to draw rich young men into his gambling set, made use of him and amused himself at his expense without letting the other feel it. Apart from the advantage he derived from Anatole, the very process of dominating another's will was in itself a pleasure, a habit, and a necessity to Dolokhov.
Every one looked at Mitya; he sat silent through the whole of the prosecutor's speech, clenching his teeth, with his hands clasped, and his head bowed. Only from time to time he raised his head and listened, especially when Grushenka was spoken of. When the prosecutor mentioned Rakitin's opinion of her, a smile of contempt and anger passed over his face and he murmured rather audibly, "The Bernards!" When Ippolit Kirillovitch described how he had questioned and tortured him at Mokroe, Mitya raised his head and listened with intense curiosity. At one point he seemed about to jump up and cry out, but controlled himself and only shrugged his shoulders disdainfully. People talked afterwards of the end of the speech, of the prosecutor's feat in examining the prisoner at Mokroe, and jeered at Ippolit Kirillovitch. "The man could not resist boasting of his cleverness," they said.
That which we admire above all, in an encounter of the nature of Waterloo, is the marvellous cleverness of chance. A nocturnal rain, the wall of Hougomont, the hollow road of Ohain, Grouchy deaf to the cannon, Napoleon's guide deceiving him, Bulow's guide enlightening him,--the whole of this cataclysm is wonderfully conducted.
In the eyes of M. Gillenormand, Catherine the Second had made reparation for the crime of the partition of Poland by purchasing, for three thousand roubles, the secret of the elixir of gold, from Bestucheff. He grew animated on this subject: "The elixir of gold," he exclaimed, "the yellow dye of Bestucheff, General Lamotte's drops, in the eighteenth century,--this was the great remedy for the catastrophes of love, the panacea against Venus, at one louis the half-ounce phial. Louis XV. sent two hundred phials of it to the Pope." He would have been greatly irritated and thrown off his balance, had any one told him that the elixir of gold is nothing but the perchloride of iron. M. Gillenormand adored the Bourbons, and had a horror of 1789; he was forever narrating in what manner he had saved himself during the Terror, and how he had been obliged to display a vast deal of gayety and cleverness in order to escape having his head cut off. If any young man ventured to pronounce an eulogium on the Republic in his presence, he turned purple and grew so angry that he was on the point of swooning. He sometimes alluded to his ninety years, and said, "I hope that I shall not see ninety-three twice." On these occasions, he hinted to people that he meant to live to be a hundred.
Statisticians have calculated that France alone makes a deposit of half a milliard every year, in the Atlantic, through the mouths of her rivers. Note this: with five hundred millions we could pay one quarter of the expenses of our budget. The cleverness of man is such that he prefers to get rid of these five hundred millions in the gutter. It is the very substance of the people that is carried off, here drop by drop, there wave after wave, the wretched outpour of our sewers into the rivers, and the gigantic collection of our rivers into the ocean. Every hiccough of our sewers costs us a thousand francs. From this spring two results, the land impoverished, and the water tainted. Hunger arising from the furrow, and disease from the stream.
It happened that not long afterwards the town surrendered, but the fortress would not yield to them because the castellan would not give it up to any one but the duke in person; therefore they exhorted him to come there. This appeared a good opportunity to the duke, as, being invited by them, and not going of his own will, he would awaken no suspicions. And the more to reassure them, he allowed all the French men-at-arms who were with him in Lombardy to depart, except the hundred lancers under Mons. di Candales, his brother-in-law. He left Cesena about the middle of December, and went to Fano, and with the utmost cunning and cleverness he persuaded the Vitelli and Orsini to wait for him at Sinigalia, pointing out to them that any lack of compliance would cast a doubt upon the sincerity and permanency of the reconciliation, and that he was a man who wished to make use of the arms and councils of his friends. But Vitellozzo remained very stubborn, for the death of his brother warned him that he should not offend a prince and afterwards trust him; nevertheless, persuaded by Pagolo Orsini, whom the duke had corrupted with gifts and promises, he agreed to wait.
And that was how a great scandal threatened to affect the kingdom of Bohemia, and how the best plans of Mr. Sherlock Holmes were beaten by a woman's wit. He used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it of late. And when he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always under the honourable title of the woman.
"I tell you you are silly, Alyosha. You know nothing about it, with all your cleverness. I am not offended that he is jealous of a girl like me. I would be offended if he were not jealous. I am like that. I am not offended at jealousy. I have a fierce heart, too. I can be jealous myself. Only what offends me is that he doesn't love me at all. I tell you he is jealous now _on purpose_. Am I blind? Don't I see? He began talking to me just now of that woman, of Katerina, saying she was this and that, how she had ordered a doctor from Moscow for him, to try and save him; how she had ordered the best counsel, the most learned one, too. So he loves her, if he'll praise her to my face, more shame to him! He's treated me badly himself, so he attacked me, to make out I am in fault first and to throw it all on me. 'You were with your Pole before me, so I can't be blamed for Katerina,' that's what it amounts to. He wants to throw the whole blame on me. He attacked me on purpose, on purpose, I tell you, but I'll--"
"After all, you acted wisely. The workmen, when they come to-morrow to stop up that hole, would certainly have found the stiff abandoned there, and it might have been possible, thread by thread, straw by straw, to pick up the scent and reach you. Some one has passed through the sewer. Who? Where did he get out? Was he seen to come out? The police are full of cleverness. The sewer is treacherous and tells tales of you. Such a find is a rarity, it attracts attention, very few people make use of the sewers for their affairs, while the river belongs to everybody. The river is the true grave. At the end of a month they fish up your man in the nets at Saint-Cloud. Well, what does one care for that? It's carrion! Who killed that man? Paris. And justice makes no inquiries. You have done well."
"Joined whom, what clever people?" cried Alyosha, completely carried away. "They have no such great cleverness and no mysteries and secrets.... Perhaps nothing but Atheism, that's all their secret. Your Inquisitor does not believe in God, that's his secret!"
FALCONET, ÉTIENNE MAURICE (1716-1791), French sculptor, was born in Paris. His parents were poor, and he was at first apprenticed to a carpenter, but some of his clay-figures, with the making of which he occupied his leisure hours, attracted the notice of the sculptor Lemoine, who made him his pupil. He found time to study Greek and Latin, and also wrote several _brochures_ on art. His artistic productions are characterized by the same defects as his writings, for though manifesting considerable cleverness and some power of imagination, they display in many cases a false and fantastic taste, the result, most probably, of an excessive striving after originality. One of his most successful statues was one of Milo of Crotona, which secured his admission to the membership of the Academy of Fine Arts in 1754. At the invitation of the empress Catherine he went in 1766 to St Petersburg, where he executed a colossal statue of Peter the Great in bronze. In 1788 he became director of the French Academy of Painting. Many of Falconet's works, being placed in churches, were destroyed at the time of the French Revolution. His "_Nymphe descendant au bain_" is in the Louvre. Entry: FALCONET
The criticism of _Esther_ began in the 18th century. As soon as the questioning spirit arose, the strangeness of many statements in the book leaped into view. A moderate scholar of our day can find no historical nucleus, and calls it a sort of historical romance.[1] The very first verses in the book startle the reader by their exaggerations, e.g. a banquet lasting 180 days, "127 provinces." Farther on, the improbabilities of the plot are noticeable. Esther, on her elevation, keeps her Jewish origin secret (ii. 10; cf. vii. 3 ff.), although she has been taken from the house of her uncle, who is known to be a Jew (iii. 4; cf. vi. 13), and has remained in constant intercourse with him (ii. 11, 19, 20, 22; cf. iv. 4-17). We are further told that the grand-vizier was an Agagite or Amalekite (iii. 1, &c.); would the nobility of Persia have tolerated this? Or did Haman too keep his non-Persian origin secret? Also that Mordecai offered a gross affront to Haman, for which no slighter punishment would satisfy Haman than the destruction of the whole Jewish race (iii. 2-6). Of this savage design eleven months' notice is given (iii. 12-14); and when the danger has been averted by the cleverness of Esther, the provincial Jews are allowed to butcher 75,000, and those in the capital 800 of their Persian fellow-subjects (ix. 6-16). Entry: ESTHER
In 1794 Madame de Genlis fixed her residence at Berlin, but, having been expelled by the orders of King Frederick William, she afterwards settled in Hamburg, where she supported herself for some years by writing and painting. After the revolution of 18th Brumaire (1799) she was permitted to return to France, and was received with favour by Napoleon, who gave her apartments at the arsenal, and afterwards assigned her a pension of 6000 francs. During this period she wrote largely, and produced, in addition to some historical novels, her best romance, _Mademoiselle de Clermont_ (1802). Madame de Genlis had lost her influence over her old pupil Louis Philippe, who visited her but seldom, although he allowed her a small pension. Her government pension was discontinued by Louis XVIII., and she supported herself largely by her pen. Her later years were occupied largely with literary quarrels, notably with that which arose out of the publication of the _Dîners du Baron d'Holbach_ (1822), a volume in which she set forth with a good deal of sarcastic cleverness the intolerance, the fanaticism, and the eccentricities of the "philosophes" of the 18th century. She survived until the 31st of December 1830, and saw her former pupil, Louis Philippe, seated on the throne of France. Entry: GENUS
FORTUNY, MARIANO JOSE MARIA BERNARDO (1838-1874), Spanish painter, was born at Reus on the 11th of June 1838. His parents, who were in poor circumstances, sent him for education to the primary school of his native town, where he received some instruction in the rudiments of art. When he was twelve years old his parents died and he came under the care of his grandfather, who, though a joiner by trade, had made a collection of wax figures, with which he was travelling from town to town. In the working of this show the boy took an active part, modelling and painting many of the figures; and two years later, when he reached Barcelona, the cleverness of his handiwork made so much impression on some people in authority there that they induced the municipality to make him an allowance of forty-two francs monthly, so that he might be enabled to go through a systematic course of study. He entered the Academy of Barcelona and worked there for four years under Claudio Lorenzale, and in March 1857 he gained a scholarship that entitled him to complete his studies in Rome. Then followed a period of more than two years, during which he laboured steadily at copies of the old pictures to which he had access at Rome. To this period an end was put by the outbreak of the war between Spain and the emperor of Morocco, as Fortuny was sent by the authorities of Barcelona to paint the most striking incidents of the campaign. The expedition lasted for about six months only, but it made upon him an impression that was powerful enough to affect the whole course of his subsequent development, and to implant permanently in his mind a preference for the glitter and brilliancy of African colour. He returned to Spain in the summer of 1860, and was commissioned by the city of Barcelona to paint a large picture of the capture of the camps of Muley-el-Abbas and Muley-el-Hamed by the Spanish army. After making a large number of studies he went back to Rome, and began the composition on a canvas fifteen metres long; but though it occupied much of his time during the next few years, he never finished it. He busied himself instead with a wonderful series of pictures, mostly of no great size, in which he showed an astonishing command over vivacities of technique and modulations of colour. He visited Paris in 1868 and shortly afterwards married the daughter of Federico Madrazo, the director of the royal museum at Madrid. Another visit to Paris in 1870 was followed by a two years' stay at Granada, but then he returned to Rome, where he died somewhat suddenly on the 21st of November 1874 from an attack of malarial fever, contracted while painting in the open air at Naples and Portici in the summer of 1874. Entry: FORTUNY
The work which Fortuny accomplished during his short life is distinguished by a superlative facility of execution and a marvellous cleverness in the arrangement of brilliant hues, but the qualities of his art are those that are attainable by a master of technical resource rather than by a deep thinker. His insight into subtleties of illumination was extraordinary, his dexterity was remarkable in the extreme, and as a colourist he was vivacious to the point of extravagance. At the same time in such pictures as "La Vicaria" and "Choosing a Model," and in some of his Moorish subjects, like "The Snake Charmers" and "Moors playing with a Vulture," he showed himself to be endowed with a sensitive appreciation of shades of character and a thorough understanding of the peculiarities of a national type. His love of detail was instinctive, and he chose motives that gave him the fullest opportunity of displaying his readiness as a craftsman. Entry: FORTUNY
FEYDEAU, ERNEST-AIMÉ (1821-1873), French author, was born in Paris, on the 16th of March 1821. He began his literary career in 1844, by the publication of a volume of poetry, _Les Nationales_. Either the partial failure of this literary effort, or his marriage soon afterwards to a daughter of the economist Blanqui, caused him to devote himself to finance and to archaeology. He gained a great success with his novel _Fanny_ (1858), a success due chiefly to the cleverness with which it depicted and excused the corrupt manners of a certain portion of French society. This was followed in rapid succession by a series of fictions, similar in character, but wanting the attraction of novelty; none of them enjoyed the same vogue as _Fanny_. Besides his novels Feydeau wrote several plays, and he is also the author of _Histoire générale des usages funèbres et des sépultures des peuples anciens_ (3 vols., 1857-1861); _Le Secret du bonheur_ (sketches of Algerian life) (2 vols., 1864); and _L'Allemagne en 1871_ (1872), a clever caricature of German life and manners. He died in Paris on the 27th of October 1873. Entry: FEYDEAU
The Viennese are successful in dyeing marmot well, and their cleverness in colouring it with a series of stripes to represent the natural markings of sable which has been done after the garments have been made, so as to obtain symmetry of lines, has secured for them a large trade among the dealers of cheap furs in England and the continent. Entry: WOMBAT
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. To unravel plots and weave counterplots; to meet treachery with fraud; to parry force with sleights of hand; to credit human nature with the basest motives, while the blackest crimes were contemplated with cold enthusiasm for their cleverness, was reckoned then the height of political sagacity. Guicciardini could play the game to perfection. In 1515 Leo X. took him into service, and made him governor of Reggio and Modena. In 1521 Parma was added to his rule, and in 1523 he was appointed viceregent of Romagna by Clement VII. These high offices rendered Guicciardini the virtual master of the papal states beyond the Apennines, during a period of great bewilderment and difficulty. The copious correspondence relating to his administration has recently been published (_Op. ined._ vols. vii., viii.). In 1526 Clement gave him still higher rank as lieutenant-general of the papal army. While holding this commission, he had the humiliation of witnessing from a distance the sack of Rome and the imprisonment of Clement, without being able to rouse the perfidious duke of Urbino into activity. The blame of Clement's downfall did not rest with him; for it was merely his duty to attend the camp, and keep his master informed of the proceedings of the generals (see the Correspondence, _Op. ined._ vols. iv., v.). Yet Guicciardini's conscience accused him, for he had previously counselled the pope to declare war, as he notes in a curious letter to himself written in 1527 (_Op. ined._, x. 104). Clement did not, however, withdraw his confidence, and in 1531 Guicciardini was advanced to the governorship of Bologna, the most important of all the papallord-lieutenancies (Correspondence, _Op. ined._ vol. ix.). This post he resigned in 1534 on the election of Paul III., preferring to follow the fortunes of the Medicean princes. It may here be noticed that though Guicciardini served three popes through a period of twenty years, or perhaps because of this, he hated the papacy with a deep and frozen bitterness, attributing the woes of Italy to the ambition of the church, and declaring he had seen enough of sacerdotal abominations to make him a Lutheran (see _Op. ined._ i. 27, 104, 96, and _Ist. d' It._, ed. Ros., ii. 218). The same discord between his private opinions and his public actions may be traced in his conduct subsequent to 1534. As a political theorist, Guicciardini believed that the best form of government was a commonwealth administered upon the type of the Venetian constitution (_Op. ined._ i. 6; ii. 130 sq.); and we have ample evidence to prove that he had judged the tyranny of the Medici at its true worth (_Op. ined._ i. 171, on the tyrant; the whole _Storia Fiorentina_ and _Reggimento di Firenze_, ib. i. and iii., on the Medici). Yet he did not hesitate to place his powers at the disposal of the most vicious members of that house for the enslavement of Florence. In 1527 he had been declared a rebel by the Signoria on account of his well-known Medicean prejudices; and in 1530, deputed by Clement to punish the citizens after their revolt, he revenged himself with a cruelty and an avarice that were long and bitterly remembered. When, therefore, he returned to inhabit Florence in 1534, he did so as the creature of the dissolute Alessandro de' Medici. Guicciardini pushed his servility so far as to defend this infamous despot at Naples in 1535, before the bar of Charles V., from the accusations brought against him by the Florentine exiles (_Op. ined._ vol. ix.). He won his cause; but in the eyes of all posterity he justified the reproaches of his contemporaries, who describe him as a cruel, venal, grasping seeker after power, eager to support a despotism for the sake of honours, offices and emoluments secured for himself by a bargain with the oppressors of his country. Varchi, Nardi, Jacopo Pitti and Bernardo Segni are unanimous upon this point; but it is only the recent publication of Guicciardini's private MSS. that has made us understand the force of their invectives. To plead loyalty or honest political conviction in defence of his Medicean partianship is now impossible, face to face with the opinions expressed in the _Ricordi politici_ and the _Storia Fiorentina_. Like Machiavelli, but on a lower level, Guicciardini was willing to "roll stones," or to do any dirty work for masters whom, in the depth of his soul, he detested and despised. After the murder of Duke Alessandro in 1537, Guicciardini espoused the cause of Cosimo de' Medici, a boy addicted to field sports, and unused to the game of statecraft. The wily old diplomatist hoped to rule Florence as grand vizier under this inexperienced princeling. He was mistaken, however, in his schemes, for Cosimo displayed the genius of his family for politics, and coldly dismissed his would-be lord-protector. Guicciardini retired in disgrace to his villa, where he spent his last years in the composition of the _Storia d'Italia_. He died in 1540 without male heirs. Entry: GUICCIARDINI