Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), November 15, 1845, vol. 2, no. 19, p. ???, col. ?

[page 289, column 1, continued:]

Wiley & Putnam's Foreign Library. No. 1. Vol. II. Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini. Written by Himself. Translated by Thomas Roscoe, Esq..

We made but scant mention last week of this interesting work; but we may supply the omission of words of our own by the following well written remarks from the Evening Post:

A better book than the autobiography of BENVENUTO CELLINI could hardly have been chosen for the first number of the Foreign Library. The old adage “ce n’ est que le premier pas qui coute!” must have been in the minds of the publishers in the selection. It is a very happy one, and if it is to be taken as an indication of the works which are to follow, augurs well for their success.

In the original, this book is a classic. Its reputation among Italian critics is very great, and by scholars, all the world over, it has always been regarded as giving Cellini high rank as an author. To American readers it is comparatively unknown. The present translation has never before been published in this country; it is extremely felicitous and spirited; one forgets entirely that he is not leading the author's own words in his own tongue, so admirably are the difficulties of translation overcome. The notes and observations of the Italian editor are included in this edition, and form an instructive and interesting addition to the text.

Benvenuto Cellini was born at Florence, in the year 1500. — There and at Rome he spent the greater part of his life. He died in 1570. His eminence as an artist, or rather, artisan in gold, silver and precious stones, and his exploits in the service of the state, and in the course of his personal adventures, made him famous in Italy and throughout Europe. The shop in which he worked is pointed out on one of the bridges at Florence, and specimens [column 2:] of his handicraft are carefully preserved as heir-looms in ancient families, and exhibited as curiosities of note in the cabinets of virtuosi, and in royal museums.

At the age of fifty-eight he wrote his autobiography. Thus the narrative embraces the first half of the sixteenth century, a brilliant and eventful era. During the time, the fine arts reached the culminating point in Italy, under the patronage of the Medici, in the works of Michael Angelo, Raffael, and Titian. — These great masters, and others of almost equal eminence, were contemporaries and intimates of Cellini, and figure in his pages. Besides these, the circle of his acquaintance and friendship included many of the first men of his times; he was the favorite and confidant of two popes, of a king, and of cardinals and dukes royal without number. The pictures he gives of the habits and manners, the ways of thinking, speaking and acting of the men with whom he came in contact, especially the more illustrious, are vivid and life-like, and doubtless more correct from the fact of their being incidental and unstudied, and no part of the author's main design. — The great object of Cellini's book is his own glorification. He is his own hero. He reaches the very acme of egotism. Not even his “Holiness” himself can stand on the same level — it is “ego et pontifex meus” throughout, and the same disrespect of persons marks his intercourse with the whole tribe of dignitaries. Never was genius more conscious of itself and its divine prerogatives; never was a man predestined to immortality with a fuller acquiescence on his own part. This spirit pervades the book, and is hall the secret of its excellence. It is an egotism that forces our admiration. One cannot help sympathising with the complete self-satisfaction of the author. A man so perfectly at ease with himself is invulnerable to censure, he disarms prejudice and forestals criticism by asserting the infallibility of his own judgment. He is always in the right — his opinion invariably correct; his taste never at fault; his quarrel never unjust. He maintains himself in all sons of controversies with a firmness which would pass current anywhere for obstinacy; suffers daily contradiction from “fools,” “simpletons” and “blockheads,” unmoved; receives as matters of course the flatteries of princes; and executes summary vengeance on his foes, as though he were the appointed arbiter of fate. All this, while it would be disgusting in most autobiographies, gives to this one of its highest charms. It is impossible to find fault with Cellini for his egotism; one might as well quarrel with Swift for his humor.

So with regard to his exaggerations. Some of his stories are exceedingly marvellous, and far more creditable to his imagination than his veracity. As an artist he was famous for giving rare tints to diamonds and other precious stones — his facility as an author in imparting a happy gloss of the fanciful to a rough narrative of facts is no less admirable. The Preface attributes most of his exaggeration to his “confined education, his susceptible nerves, his superlative credulity and superstition, and his wild imagination.” To this fair apology it may be added, that a “strict adherence to truth,” and a rigid “abstinence from fiction,” was by no means the characteristic of the writers of his time, especially where their own exploits formed the subject matter of their narrations. — Cellini's book is a running commentary on the era in which he lived — it reflects with wonderful accuracy and minuteness the very form and spirit of the age; but it partakes of it itself. The incredibility of his stories, his sublime indifference to dates and circumstances, his neglect of historic order or precision, while they unfit the book to be what it does not pretend to be, a work of historical accuracy, make it more faithful to the lime in which it was written. We are almost driven to make as anomalous an assertion as this, that if the book had been more reliable it would have been less authentic.