IT is surely unnecessary to make any apology for this second edition of the Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino. Notwithstanding all that has been done in the last fifty years by historians on the one hand, and by imaginative writers on the other, with the object of elucidating the history of that part of Central Italy which lies within the ancient confines of Umbria, or of appreciating the humanism of that Court which was once a pattern for the world, this book of James Dennistoun's remains the standard authority to which every writer within or without Italy must go in dealing in any way with these subjects. This very honourable achievement has been won for the book by the eager and methodical research of the author, who made himself acquainted with all available original sources, and in the years of his sojourn in Italy must have read and turned over a vast number of MSS., of which some have since been printed in various Bollettini, but a great number still remain in those Italian libraries which, always without an efficient catalogue and often without an excuse for one, are at once the delight and the despair of the curious student. For this reason, if for no other, such a work as this was not easy to supersede, and so, though a later writer always has an advantage, it was not outmoded by the careful and loving work of Ugolini in his Storia de' Conti e Duchi d'Urbino, which was written, I think, in exile.

But Dennistoun's Dukes of Urbino is not merely a history of the houses of Montefeltro and Della Rovere, of their famous and most brilliant Court, and of that part of Italy over which they held dominion, but really a work in belles-lettres too, discursive and amusing, as well as instructive. It deals not merely with history, as it seems we have come to understand the word, a thing of politics—in this case the futile and childish politics of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy—but illustrates "the arms, arts, and literature of Italy from 1440 to 1630." And indeed this programme was carried out as well as it could be carried out at the time these volumes were written. The book, which has long been almost unprocurable, is full, as it were, of a great leisure, crammed with all sorts of out-of-the-way learning and curious tales and adventures. Sometimes failing in art, and often we may think in judgment, Dennistoun never fails in this, that he is always interested in the people he writes of, interested in their quarrels and love affairs, their hair-breadth escapes and good fortunes. How eagerly he sides with Duke Guidobaldo, chased out of his city of Urbino by Cesare Borgia! It is as though he were assisting at that sudden flight at midnight, and, whole-heartedly the Duke's man as he was, almost fails to understand what Cesare was aiming at, and quite fails to see what Cesare saw too well—the helplessness of Italy, at the mercy, really, of the unconscious nations of the modern world. Such failures as this make his work, indispensable as it is, less valuable than it might have been, but they by no means detract from the general interest of the story. That is a quarry from which much has been hewn, and a good many of those enduring blocks which go to make up so popular and charming a work as John Inglesant came in the first instance from Dennistoun's volumes.

A second edition then, of such a work, as it seems to me, needs no excuse. What must, perhaps, be excused is my part in it, the intrusion of another personality into what was so completely the author's own. Yet I can truly say that I have intruded myself as little as possible, and, indeed, so far as the text goes, it stands almost as Dennistoun left it, with the correction of such errata as were due partly to the printers and partly to the oversight of the author. The notes which have been my business, my only part in the work, have filled the leisure of three years. They are far from being complete, and are imperfect in a thousand ways, as I know perhaps better than any one else, but they are as good and as useful as I could make them, and represent in some sort the work not of three years, but of ten. As for my intention in republishing Dennistoun's book with notes from my hand, I can frankly say that I undertook it from a love of all that concerns Italy, and especially Umbria, and therefore I have worked at it with joy through the long winter evenings, and in summer I have often raised my eyes from my manuscript to watch the dawn rise over Urbino and the beautiful great hills among which she is throned. And you, too, had you watched her thus, would have been sure that no labour of love could be too great for her. And then Dennistoun's book is so fine a monument of the love England has always borne to Italy. And I would be concerned in that too. Yet sometimes I have thought that, in spite of all my labour—and, though I loved it, labour it was—rather than sitting down to annotate another man's work, I should have done better to write my own. Friends, such as one must hear, were neither slow nor without persistence in impressing this upon me. I heard them and shook my head. I am not an historian, but a man of letters. This book is, after all, the work of one who thought well of facts, while I cannot abide them. For one idea, as I know well, I would give all the facts in the world. So the writing of history is not for me; for history is become a sort of science, and is no longer an art. And therefore I gladly leave her to the friend to whom I humbly dedicate my edition of this book, and to the virile embraces of Mr. William Heywood, who first led me into this nightmare of facts from which I am but just escaped. Let them settle it between them. For me there remains all the uncertainties that, God be thanked, can never be decided or be proved merely to have happened.

Thinking thus, I soon gave up any thought of writing the history of the Counts and Dukes of Urbino myself, and turned a deaf ear to those who would tempt me to it. I went on with my notes, however, partly from the joy one feels in playing with fire and all such mysterious and dangerous things, and partly from a hope that one day they might serve in some sort as finger-posts to an Englishman who should take up this subject and study it over again, from the beginning, more simply than Dennistoun was able to do.

As for Dennistoun's book, it always had my love, and day by day as I have worked through and through it, it has won my respect. Full of digressions, a little long-drawn-out, sometimes short-sighted, sometimes pedantic, it is written with a whole-hearted devotion to the truth and to the country which he loved. The facts are wonderfully sound, and if that part of the book for which it was most highly praised when it was first published—the chapters that deal with the history of Art—is become that which we can praise least, we must remember that in art, in painting more than anything else, fashion is king, and that the thrones from which we have driven Guido Reni, and perhaps Raphael, setting up in their stead other masters, are as likely as not to be in the possession of usurpers to-morrow, and we in as bad a case as our fathers.

Perhaps I may say a word about the illustrations. The book was one which lent itself very easily to illustration, and the great generosity of the publisher in this matter has been of the greatest satisfaction to me. I have sought in selecting my pictures to reflect the spirit of the book, which concerns itself with many a hundred things besides the Counts and Dukes of Urbino. As well as trying to give the reader all the portraits, or nearly all, that I could find, of the Montefeltro and Della Rovere Dukes, their Duchesses and courtiers, the men of letters, and the painters with whom they surrounded themselves, and the pictures of their gallery, I have made an attempt to illustrate the dress of the time—at a wedding, for instance, or in time of mourning; and seeing that this is for the most part a feminine business, I have chosen very many portraits of ladies, not only because they were beautiful, though there was that too, but also because they illustrated the manners of dressing the hair, or the wearing of jewels, and so forth; and I think this may be cause for entertainment as well as knowledge.

With regard certainly to two of the portraits I reproduce, I should like to suggest that they are of more than a superficial importance. I refer to the portraits of "Giulia Diva" and "Cesare Borgia," reproduced on page 330 of Vol. I. from contemporary medals now in the British Museum, by the courtesy of Mr. G.F. Hill, who had casts made for me.

The first, that of "Giulia Diva," I suggest is a portrait of Giulia Bella, Giulia Farnese, that is, mistress of Alexander VI. If it be so it is very precious, for no portrait of her is known to exist, and though in this medal, struck about 1482, she seems already middle-aged, we most probably see there the portrait of her whom the Pope would scarcely let out of his sight. Of the two reputed portraits, the nude figure, lying on the tomb in the apse of St. Peter's, was carved some thirty years after her death, and since the monument it adorns commemorates a Farnese Pope, it is little likely to be the beautiful Giulia who was in some sort the shame and not the boast of her house. Ruined now by the Puritanism that suddenly overwhelmed the Papacy after the Council of Trent, the body is almost completely hidden by the horrid chemise Canova made for her to reassure his master. The portrait of Giulia Farnese, which Vasari tells us is painted in the Borgia apartments, has never been identified.

As to the medal of Cesare Borgia, we are, I think, on surer ground. It bears his name, and was struck, Mr. G.F. Hill tells me, about 1500. In the Borgia apartments, as we know, he was certainly represented, and though his portrait has never been surely identified, this medal agrees so perfectly with Pinturicchio's portrait of the Emperor there, before whom S. Catherine of Alexandria (always supposed to be a portrait of Lucrezia Borgia) pleads, that we may well believe we have in that figure a contemporary portrait of one of the greatest and most romantic personalities then living.

My thanks are due to Mr. J.W. Dennistoun of Dennistoun for his courtesy in allowing me to reproduce the portrait of James Dennistoun, which forms the frontispiece to this work, and for his kindness in lending me the book from which I have drawn a good part of the Memoir which follows this preface. I have also to express my gratitude to Professor Zdekauer, Professor Anselmi, Mr. Edmund G. Gardner, Mr. William Heywood, Mr. G.F. Hill, Mr. William Boulting, and Mrs. Ross, for various assistance and kindness freely given whenever I sought it. I desire also to thank Mr. H.G. Jenkins for the infinite pains he has taken with the illustrations and the production generally of so large a book.

Edward Hutton.

London, September, 1908.