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."