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MACCABEES MACCHIAVELLI. 



and, after brooding over the subject for a time, deter- 

 mined to assassinate the king ; and perpetrated the 

 crime when the king was visiting him at his castle of 

 Inverness. The king's sons were obliged to save 

 themselves by flight; and Macbeth brought the nation 

 to favour his cause, by liberality to the nobility, and by 

 strict justice in his administration. For ten years, he 

 reigned with moderation ; but, after this period, he 

 suddenly became a tyrant. His first victim was Ban- 

 quo, who had been privy to the murder of the king. 

 Feeling insecure, he erected a castle on Dunsinane, 

 from which he could overlook the whole country. 

 This is the legend, which has been adopted by poetry. 

 But history shows no such person as Banquo ; Dun- 

 can was slain near Elgin, and not in Macbeth's own 

 castle ; and Macbeth, though he ascended the throne 

 by violence, had in fact a better claim to it than Dun- 

 can, and was a firm, just, and equitable prince. Mac- 

 duff, thane of Fife,fled to England, and urged Malcolm, 

 the son of the murdered Duncan, to take vengeance. 

 Assisted by Siward, earl of Northumberland, they 

 returned to their country. Macbeth was defeated, 

 fled to his castle, and was slain in the seventeenth 

 year of his reign, A. D. 1057. 



MACCABEES; two apocryphal books of the Old 

 Testament, which contain the history of Judas sur- 

 named Maccabeus, and his brothers, and the wars 

 which they sustained against the kings of Syria, in 

 defence of their religion, and the independence of 

 their country. (See Jews.) The author and the 

 age of these books are uncertain. The council of 

 Trent placed them among the canonical books, but 

 the Protestants have rejected them as apocryphal. 



MACCARONI, MACARONI or MACCHERO- 

 NI ; a preparation of fine flour, which forms a 

 favourite article of food among the Italians. It is 

 eaten in various ways, generally simply boiled, and 

 served up with grated cheese. Maccaroni is gener- 

 ally made in pieces resembling a long pipe handle, 

 of small diameter ; sometimes, however, in other 

 shapes, as flat, square, &c. It is a wholesome food, 

 and a national dish of the Italians, particularly of the 

 Neapolitans. It is made best in the neighbourhood 

 of Naples, whole villages living almost solely by the 

 manufacture ; and, in Naples, it is continually sold 

 in the streets, cooked for the lower classes, particu- 

 larly for the lazzaroni. The pieces being very long, 

 and being held in the fingers during the process of 

 eating, some skill is required to manage them. This 

 fashion of eating yard-long maccaroni, forms a subject 

 of ridicule against the Neapolitans, in more than one 

 Italian comedy. The modes of cooking maccaroni 

 are various ; the simplest are the best. The fashion 

 of cutting it into pieces, and stewing it with eggs, 

 &c., as is done in England, is not to be recommended. 

 Maccaroni is well made at Aix in France, and pretty 

 well also in Germany. 



Maccaroni is also used as a term of contempt for a 

 coxcomb homo crassee Minerva. 



MACCARONI POEMS; a kind of facetious Latin 

 poems, in which are interspersed words from other 

 languages, with Latin inflections. They were first 

 written by Teofilo Folengi, under the name of Mer- 

 lino Coccaio, a learned and witty Benedictine, born in 

 1484, at Mantua. He was a contemporary and friend 

 of Sana'zzario. Ferdinand of Gonzaga, with whom 

 he resided ten years in Sicily, was his patron, and 

 Folengi often celebrates his praises. He spent the 

 rest of his days in a monastery at Bassano, where he 

 died in 1544. Various grave and religious poems of 

 his, in Italian and Latin, are still extant, and are not 

 without value. He is regarded by the Italian poets 

 as the inventor of heroi-comic poetry. His principal 

 poem in this style was called Maccaronea, because it 

 was mixed up of Latin and Italian, as maccaroni is 



&c. 



made up of various ingredients. An edition of thii 

 poem, printed in 1521, is still extant. In imitation 

 of Virgil, he carries the hero of his poem through 

 numerous circumstances, and, at last, to the infernal 

 regions. Here, among other things, he sees the 

 punishment of poets. For every untruth or exagger- 

 ation in their works, devils were appointed to extract 

 a tooth, which grew again every day. This poem 

 contains many satirical accounts of the manners of the 

 age, with beautiful passages in genuine Latin verse. 

 Besides this, he wrote a smaller comic poem, entitled 

 Moschea, or the War of the Gnats and the Emmets 

 a youthful production ; also Eclogues and Epistles ; 

 all in the maccaronic style. Heinsius (Teut, 4th part, 

 p. 171) mentions a German poem of this sort Floia, 

 Cortum versicale de Flois swartibus, illis Deiriculis 

 qua omnesfereMinschos, Mannos, tVeibras, Jungfras, 

 &c., tehuppere, et Spitzibus suis schnaflis steckere ft 

 bitere solent ; Autore Gripholdo Knickknackio ex Flo- 

 landia (anno 1593, 4to), of which he gives the intro- 

 duction. A new edition of this work appeared in 

 1822,. at Hamm ; and a translation at Leipsic, in 1827. 

 We find an example of French maccaronic verses in 

 the third interlude of Moliere's Malade imaginaire. 

 It was introduced into England in the reign of Henry 

 VII., when Skelton exhibited some specimens of it. 

 It was fashionable under Elizabeth, in whose reign a 

 poem on the Armada, of which Warton gives a spe- 

 cimen, was written. Drummond, of Hawthornden, 

 also wrote a maccaronic poem, of which the follow- 

 ing will be a sufficient specimen : 



Convocat extemplo burrowmannos atque ladteos, 

 Jackmannumque hiremannos, pleughdrivettert atque pleugh- 

 mannos, 



Tumbluntesque simul, recoso ex kitchine boyoi, 

 Hunc qui dirtiferas tersit cum dishcloute dishas, 



MACCHIAVELLI, NICCOLO. It is not easy to 

 determine a man's disposition and character from his 

 writings. When, however, as was the case in the 

 governments of antiquity and the Italian republics of 

 the middle ages, a man's writings are more the off- 

 spring of his political situation than mere exercises 

 of his intellect, and especially if they coincide with 

 his conduct, they afford fair grounds for judging of 

 the author's character. This is the case with Niccolo 

 Macchiavelli, the famous Florentine secretary. The 

 prejudices against him, arising from an incorrect 

 understanding of his treatise called 11 Principe (the 

 Prince), have caused him to be regarded as the 

 teacher of a detestable line of policy, called from him 

 Macchiavellism, intended to enable despotism to per- 

 petuate its existence by fraud and violence, though 

 there are few men on record who have shown so much 

 of a truly civic spirit. He was born at Florence, in 

 the year 1469, of a noble family, whose members had 

 enjoyed the highest dignities in the republic. Little is 

 known of his youth, and nothing of his education, 

 except that he studied under Marcellus Virgilius. 

 On account of his distinguished talents, he was very 

 early appointed chancellor of the Florentine repub- 

 lic, and, not long afterwards, was advanced to 

 the post of secretary of state, for which reason he 

 is most commonly called Segretario Fiorentino. 

 When Florence had recovered her liberty, by the 

 expulsion of the Medici (see Medici), and, from fear 

 of the exiled family, had become involved in the 

 ambitious wars and intrigues of Charles VIII., at a 

 time when great political adroitness, and a spirit of 

 genuine republicanism, were required in her envoys, 

 Macchiavelli was several times charged with import- 

 ant embassies. He was four times plenipotentiary 

 at the French court, twice at that of the pope, and 

 twice, also, at that of the emperor Maximilian. The 

 republic acknowledged his great services, but re- 

 warded them sparingly, so that he was sometimes 



