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To give them their Due, they ſoar a Step higher than their Predeceſſors, and may be called Men of Wiſdom and Vertù (take heed you do not read Virtue).

A Catalogue of a Truly Valuable Assemblage of Articles of Virtu of William Chinnery, Esq. Brought from Gillwell, Essex[…].

All these connotations, even the positive and moral ones, are within the range of significations Machiavelli wants us to hear in “virtù.” For him the word suggests a kind of flexibility that can initiate effective, efficient, and energetic action based on a courageous assertion of the will and an ability to execute the products of one's own calculations. Such calculations are a significant adjunct to his ideas about virtù: they outline what might be called an internal or mental virtù.