Page:The Life of Benvenuto Cellini Vol 1.djvu/112

Rh one to be generally recommended is that of Signor B. Bianchi, founded upon the preceding edition of Molini. Tassi and Molini, I must state, were the first editors to avail themselves of the original or parent codex, while Bianchi compared Molini's printed text throughout with the autograph. This authoritative MS. belongs to the Laurentian collection in Florence. It was written for the most part by Michele di Goro Vestri, the youth whom Cellini employed as his amanuensis; in some parts also by himself, and again by a second amanuensis. Perhaps we owe its abrupt and infelicitous conclusion to the fact that Benvenuto disliked the trouble of writing with his own hand. From notes upon the codex, it appears that this was the MS. submitted to Benedetto Varchi in 1559. It once belonged to Andrea, the son of Lorenzo Cavalcanti. His son, Lorenzo Cavalcanti, gave it to the poet Redi, who used it as a testo di lingua for the Delia Cruscan vocabulary. Subsequently it passed into the hands of the booksellers, and was bought by L. Poirot,who bequeathed it, on his death in 1825, to the Laurentian Library.

The autobiography has been translated into German by Goethe, into French by Leopold Leclanché, and into English by Nugent and Roscoe. The German version, I need hardly say, is an excellent piece of pure and solid style; and, for the most part, I have found it reproduce the meaning of the