to clear up some unaccountable
mistakes or omissions which appear in that series of volumes, written
at long intervals, and by different hands. Mr. Fuseli has alluded to
them in utter astonishment; and cannot account for Vasari's "incredible
dereliction of reminiscence, which prompted him to transfer what he had
rightly ascribed to Giorgione in one edition to the elder Parma in the
subsequent ones." Again: "Vasari's memory was either so treacherous, or
his rapidity in writing so inconsiderate, that his account of the
Capella Sistina, and the stanze of Raffaello, is a mere heap of errors
and unpardonable confusion." Even Bottari, his learned editor, is at a
loss how to account for his mistakes. Mr. Fuseli finely observes--"He
has been called the Herodotus of our art; and if the main simplicity of
his narrative, and the desire of heaping anecdote on anecdote, entitle
him in some degree to that appellation, we ought not to forget that the
information of every day adds something to the authenticity of the Greek
historian, whilst every day furnishes matter to question the credibility
of the Tuscan." All this strongly confirms the suspicion that Vasari
employed different hands at different times to write out his work. Such
mistakes would occur to a new writer, not always conversant with the
subject he was composing on, and the disjointed materials of which were
often found in a disordered state. It is, however, strange that neither
Bottari nor Tiraboschi appears to have been aware that Vasari employed
others to write for him; we see that from the first suggestion of the
work he had originally proposed that Paulus Jovius should hold the pen
for him.

The principle illustrated in this article might be pursued; but the
secret history of two great works so well known is as sufficient as
twenty others of writings less celebrated. The literary phenomenon which
had puzzled the calm inquiring Hume to cry out "a miracle!" has been
solved by the discovery of a little fact on Literary Unions, which
derives importance from this circumstance.[82]

FOOTNOTES:

[80] I draw my information from a very singular manuscript in the
Lansdowne collection, which I think has been mistaken for a boy's
ciphering book, of which it has much the appearance, No. 741, fo.
57, as it stands in the auctioneer's catalogue. It appears to be a
collection closely written, extracted out of Anthony Wood's papers;
and as I have discovered i