Page:The Life of Benvenuto Cellini Vol 1.djvu/38

Rh the heart of things, to explore the secrets of nature in a passion of awed delight, and then to realize some splendid conception with the noble authority of a Donatello, a Verrocchio or a Michael Angelo. But he was to win his reward when, in his fiftyeighth year, he crowned his lifelong indulgence in what he himself called "natural bragging" with the writing of his Autobiography.

There are half a dozen different points of view from which this famous book appears in a good light. To begin with, in interesting the world in Cellini, it has interested the world in his works, and has thus fostered the fame of the latter. Secondly, these pages are invaluable for the pictures they contain of Italian society in the author's day. He touched life at many points, mingling not only with artists but with princes and prelates. He had a "devouring" eye and a good memory. A thing once seen stayed in his mind; a thing once heard by him was well remembered, and when he dictated his memoirs he gave them the vitality of a daily journal. Moreover, he was of the race of Boccaccio, which is to say that he was a born story-teller, a man who naturally dramatised his experiences as he came to relate them, making the most of a personality or a situation, and, above all, flinging over everything an air of reality, of movement. How far did he swerve from the facts, if he swerved at all, in the framing of this wonderful narrative? It is practically impossible to say, but I am not sure that the point is, in the last resort, of any