Page:The Life of Benvenuto Cellini Vol 1.djvu/21



N "La Cousine Bette" Balzac has an illuminating note on one phase of the artistic temperament. He is speaking of Wenceslas Steinbock, the sculptor, and of the way in which his statue of Marshal Montcornet somehow fails to get itself turned into a masterpiece. Describing the Pole as wasting a large proportion of his time in talking about the statue instead of working at it, he thus continues: "He talked admirably about art, and in the eyes of the world he maintained his reputation as a great artist by his powers of conversation and criticism. There are many clever men in Paris who spend their lives in talking themselves out, and are content with a sort of drawing-room celebrity. . . . At the same time, these half artists are delightful; men like them and cram them with praise; they even seem superior to the true artists, who are taxed with conceit, unsociableness, contempt of the laws of society. "Benvenuto Cellini was a kind of Steinbock. He had an immense amount of energy, but he did not concentrate it and send it through the right channels with the devoted instinct of the great artist. The parallel is not to be overdone. Indeed, if we carry it too far, it is bound to break down, for Cellini was every inch a man, and there is a deplorably effeminate weakness about