What a liar was Benvenuto Cellini!--who can believe a word he says? To hang a dog on his oath would be a judicial murder. Yet when we lay down his Memoirs and let our thoughts travel back to those far-off days he tells us of, there we see him standing, in bold relief, against the black sky of the past, the very man he was. Not more surely did he, with that rare skill of his, stamp the image of Clement VII. on the papal currency, than he did the impress of his own singular personality upon every word he spoke and every sentence he wrote.
We ought, of course, to hate him, but do we? A murderer he has written himself down. A liar he stands self-convicted of being. Were any one in the nether world bold enough to call him thief, it may be doubted whether Rhadamanthus would award him the damages for which we may be certain he would loudly clamor. Why do we not hate him? Listen to him:--
"Upon my uttering these words, there was a general outcry, the noblemen affirming that I promised too much. But one of them, who was a great philosopher, said in my favor, 'From the admirable symmetry of shape and happy physiognomy of this young man, I venture to engage that he will perform all he promises, and more.' The Pope replied, 'I am of the same opinion;' then calling Trajano, his gentleman of the bedchamber, he ordered him to fetch me five hundred ducats."
And so it always ended: suspicions, aroused most reasonably, allayed most unreasonably, and then--ducats. He deserved hanging, but he died in his bed. He wrote his own memoirs after a fashion that ought to have brought posthumous justice upon him, and made them a literary gibbet, on which he should swing, a creaking horror, for all time; but nothing of the sort has happened. The rascal is so symmetrical, and his physiognomy, as it gleams upon us through the centuries, so happy, that we cannot withhold our ducats, though we may accompany the gift with a shower of abuse.
This only proves the profundity of an observation made by Mr. Bagehot--a man who carried away into the next world more originality of thought than is now to be found in the Three Estates of the Realm. Whilst remarking upon the extraordinary reputation of the late Francis Horner and the trifling cost he was put to in supporting it, Mr. Bagehot said that it proved the advantage of "keeping an atmosphere."
The common air of heaven sharpens men's judgments. Poor Horner, but for that kept atmosphere of his always surrounding him, would have been bluntly asked "what he had done since he was breeched," and in reply he could only have muttered something about the currency. As for our special rogue Cellini, the question would probably have assumed this shape: "Rascal, name the crime you have not committed, and account for the omission."
But these awkward questions are not put to the lucky people who keep their own atmospheres. The critics, before they can get at them, have to step out of the every-day air, where only achievements count and the Decalogue still goes for something, into the kept atmosphere, which they have no sooner breathed than they begin to see things differently, and to measure the object thus surrounded with a tape of its own manufacture. Horner--poor, ugly, a man neither of words nor deeds--becomes one of our great men; a nation mourns his loss and erects his statue in the Abbey. Mr. Bagehot gives several instances of the same kind, but he does not mention Cellini, who is however in his own way an admirable example.
You open his book--a Pharisee of the Pharisees. Lying, indeed! Why, you hate prevarication. As for murder, your friends know you too well to mention the subject in your hearing, except in immediate connection with capital punishment. You are of course willing to make some allowance for Cellini's time and place--the first half of the sixteenth century and Italy! "Yes," you remark, "Cellini shall have strict justice at my hands." So you say as you settle yourself in your chair and begin to read. We seem to hear the rascal laughing in his grave. His spirit breathes upon you from his book--peeps at you roguishly as you turn the pages. His atmosphere surrounds you; you smile when you ought to frown, chuckle when you should groan, and--oh, final triumph!--laugh aloud when, if you had a rag of principle left, you would fling the book into the fire. Your poor moral sense turns away with a sigh, and patiently awaits the conclusion of the second volume.
How cautiously does he begin, how gently does he win your ear by his seductive piety! I quote from Mr. Roscoe's translation:--
"It is a duty incumbent on upright and credible men of all ranks, who have performed anything noble or praiseworthy, to record, in their own writing, the events of their lives; yet they should not commence this honorable task before they have passed their fortieth year. Such at least is my opinion now that I have completed my fifty-eighth year, and am settled in Florence, where, considering the numerous ills that constantly attend human life, I perceive that I have never before been so free from vexations and calamities, or possessed of so great a share of content and health as at this period. Looking back on some delightful and happy events of my life, and on many misfortunes so truly overwhelming that the appalling retrospect makes me wonder how I have reached this age in vigor and prosperity, through God's goodness I have resolved to publish an account of my life; and ... I must, in commencing my narrative, satisfy the public on some few points to which its curiosity is usually directed; the first of which is to ascertain whether a man is descended from a virtuous and ancient family.... I shall therefore now proceed to inform the reader how it pleased God that I should come into the world."