Identifier: libraryofworldsbe08warn (find matches)
Title: Library of the world's best literature, ancient and modern
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: Warner, Charles Dudley, 1829-1900 Mabie, Hamilton Wright, 1846-1916 Runkle, Lucia Isabella Gilbert, 1844- Warner, George H., 1883-1919
Subjects: Literature Literature
Publisher: New York : International Society
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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rly resemble excellence,ought, if they are persons of truth and honesty, to describe their lifewith their own hand; but they ought not to attempt so fine an enter-prise till they have passed the age of forty.n Cellini was past fifty-eight when he began writing, and going backto his earliest boyhood, he set down the facts of his long career ashe remembered them. Of course he is the hero who recounts hisown story, and like all heroes of romance he plays the leading part,is always in the right, and comes out handsomely in the end. Carp-ing critics who tax him with lack of truth in dealing with hisenemies, and with pleading his own cause too well, are apt to forgetthat he wrote long after the events were past, and that to an ever-active imagination ruminating over bygone happenings, facts becomeunconsciously colored to assume the hue the mind wishes them tohave. Yet the fidelity and accuracy of his memory are remarkable,and his faculty for seeing, combined with his dramatic way of putting
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ASTOft. LENOXTILDE N P IONS BENVENUTO CELLINI 3375 things most vividly, flashes before our eyes the scenes he recounts.He does not describe much; he indicates a characteristic feature,habit, or attitude; as for example, in referring to a man he disliked,as having ) — allthat is needed to make us see the man from Cellinis point of view.Again, he adds much to the vivacity of the narrative by reportingconversation as a dialogue, even if he has it himself at second-hand.So in his trenchant, nervous manner this keen observer, while aimingto recount only the facts of his own life and to set himself on abecoming pedestal in the eyes of posterity, gives us at the same timeflash-lights of the whole period in which he played a part. PopesClement VII. and Paul III., Cosimo de Medici and his Duchess, theKing of France and Madame d Estampes, cardinals, nobles, princes,and courtiers, artists of every description, burghers and the commonfolk

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