ission of murder he is self-reliant, coolly calculating, fierce
and fatal as a tiger. Yet his religious fervour is sincere; his impulses
are generous; and his heart on the whole is good. His vanity is
inordinate; and his unmistakable courage is impaired, to Northern
apprehension, by swaggering bravado.

The mixture of these qualities in a personality so natural and so clearly
limned renders Cellini a most precious subject for the student of
Renaissance life and character. Even supposing him to have been
exceptionally passionate, he was made of the same stuff as his
contemporaries. We are justified in concluding this not only from
collateral evidence and from what he tells us, but also from the meed of
honour he received. In Europe of the present day he could hardly fail to
be regarded as a ruffian, a dangerous disturber of morality and order. In
his own age he was held in high esteem and buried by his fellow-citizens
with public ceremonies. A funeral oration was pronounced over his grave
"in praise both of his life and works, and also of his excellent
disposition of mind and body."[345] He dictated the memoirs that paint him
as bloodthirsty, sensual, and revengeful, in the leisure of his old age,
and left them with complacency to serve as witness of his manly virtues to
posterity. Even Vasari, whom he hated, and who reciprocated his ill-will,
records that "he always showed himself a man of great spirit and veracity,
bold, active, enterprising, and formidable to his enemies; a man, in
short, who knew as well how to speak to princes as to exert himself in his
art."

Enough has been said to prove that Cellini was not inferior to the average
morality of the Renaissance, and that we are justified in accepting his
life as a valuable historical document.[346] To give a detailed account of
a book pronounced by Horace Walpole "more amusing than any novel,"
received by Parini and Tiraboschi as the most delightful masterpiece of
Italian prose, translated into German by Goethe, and placed upon his index
of select works by Auguste Comte, may seem superfluous. Yet I cannot
afford to omit from my plan the most singular and characteristic episode
in the private history of the Italian Renaissance. I need it for the
concrete illustration of much that has been said in this and the preceding
volumes of my work.

Cellini was born of respectable parents at Florence on the night of All
Saints' Day in 1500, and was called Benvenuto to record