ery point to doubt, and subject to
attack by plausible conjecture. In the absence of contemporary documents
and other trustworthy sources of instruction, he is tempted to substitute
his own hypotheses for tradition and to reconstruct the faulty outlines of
forgotten history according to his own ideas of fitness. The Germans have
been our masters in this species of destructive, dubitative, restorative
criticism; and it is undoubtedly flattering to the historian's vanity to
constitute himself a judge and arbiter in cases where tact and ingenuity
may claim to sift the scattered fragment of confused narration. Yet to
resist this temptation is in many cases a plain and simple duty.
Tradition, when not positively disproved, should be allowed to have its
full value; and a sounder historic sense is exercised in adopting its
testimony with due caution, than in recklessly rejecting it and
substituting guesses which the lack of knowledge renders unsubstantial.
Tradition may err about dates, details, and names. It is just here that
antiquarian research can render valuable help. But there are occasions
when the perusal of documents and the exercise of what is called the
higher criticism afford no surer basis for opinion. If in such cases a
legend has been formed and recorded, the student will advance further
toward comprehending the spirit of his subject by patiently considering
what he knows to be in part perhaps a mythus, than by starting with the
foregone conclusion that the legend must of necessity be worthless, and
that his cunning will suffice to supply the missing clue.[57]

Thus much I have said by way of preface to what follows upon Niccola
Pisano. Almost all we know about him is derived from a couple of
inscriptions, a few contracts, and his Life by Giorgio Vasari. It is clear
that Vasari often wrote with carelessness, confusing dates and places, and
taking no pains to verify the truth of his assertions. Much of Niccola's
biography reads like a legend in his pages--the popular and oral tradition
of a great man, whose panegyric it was more easy in the sixteenth century
to adorn with rhetoric than to chronicle the details of his life with
scrupulous fidelity. A well-founded conviction of Vasari's frequent
inaccuracy has induced recent critics to call in question many hitherto
accepted points about the nationality and training of Pisano. The
discussion, of their arguments I leave for the appendix, contenting myself
at present