[37] Our author has given ample opportunities to Mr. Tenhove, a Dutch writer on nearly the same subject with his own, to display a disparity of manner singularly contrasting with his own sober and authentic page. Mr. T. is apparently a wit and a man of feeling, but at all times ready to sacrifice matter to whim, or to substitute assertion for proof: thus, in talking of the celebrated cameo representing the punishment of Marsyas, once the property of Lorenzo, he tells us, that of old it belonged to Nero, who used it as the seal of his death-warrants, and who probably assumed the attitude of the Apollo engraved on it, whilst he assisted at the flogging of one Menedemus, a singer who had excited his jealousy; a tale partly invented, partly perverted from Suetonius, who tells something similar of Caligula and Apelles. In another place, (p. 178, note b.) after ridiculing with somewhat prolix propriety the Florentine custom of substituting, even in grave writing, the nicknames of their countrymen to their real ones, he adds, that it is a custom laughed at and disapproved by the rest of Italian writers, though undoubtedly he had read of Cola di Rienzi, Massaniello, Titta Borghese, Giorgione, Il Tintoretto, Frà Bastiano, and Titian himself. " Pauperis esset numerare pecus."
[38] Giorgio Vasari and Ascanio Condivi. Our author, though a patient admirer of the first, is offended at the "insufferable minuteness" of the second. It would be unfair to consider Condivi as the literary competitor of Vasari, yet great respect is to be paid to a narrative composed under the immediate eye of Michaelagnolo himself. His "Otto scudi al mese poco più o meno," whether they reflect much or little honour on the liberality of Lorenzo, have at least a right to rank with the "quattro mazzi, che erano quaranti libbre da candele di sego," which, the knight of Arezzo informs us, he sent as a present to Michaelagnolo. Vasari Vita di M. A. B. tom. vi. p. 328.
[39] This lady is called Mrs. Wollstonecraft, instead of Mary Wollstonecraft, throughout this Narrative, in conformity to the memoirs which have hitherto appeared of her.
[40] This and subsequent quotations respecting Mrs. Wollstonecraft are taken from her letters to Fuseli.
[41] "Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by William Godwin."
[42] Mrs. Bysshe Shelly.
[43] Mr. Meyer was a painter of reputation, both in miniature and enamel.
[44] La Terribil Via, applied by Agostino Caracci to Michael Angelo.
[45] This alludes to Mr. Fuseli's proposals for a gallery filled with pictures painted by him from subjects taken from Milton's Paradise Lost.
[46] This elegant translation, in verse, was published under the title of "The Nurse."