Guicciardini, Bolingbroke, Foscolo

Ugo Foscolo’s critical opinions on Francesco Guicciardini are contained in some critical essays written during Foscolo’s exile in England (1816-1827). While considering the language and style of Guicciardini’s "Storia d’Italia" artificial and pompous, Foscolo admires the wide perspective of Guicciardini’s work (which is, in fact, a ‘history of Europe’) and praises him as the first historian to study the origins and development of the law of nations and the first to suggest the principle of the balance of power. He ascribes this latter opinion to Lord Bolingbroke, probably referring to a passage of Bolingbroke’s "Letters on the Study and Use of History".