When the
Constable de Bourbon attacked Rome, in 1527, Cellini was of great
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Constable de Bourbon attacked Rome, in 1527, Cellini was of great
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Warner - World's Best Literature - v06 - Cal to Chr
The rush and excitement of those
thrilling years is mirrored fully in the life and poetry of Catullus.
Fashion, travel, politics, criticism, all the thousandfold and ever-
changing events and interests of the age, come before us in their
most vivid form and at their highest pressure, in this brief volume
of lyrics. But all come involved with and overshadowed by a story
wholly personal to himself and immortal in its fascination: the story
of an immense and ill-fated love that "fed its life's flame with self-
substantial fuel," and mounted in the morning glories of sunrise only
to go down in thunder and tempest before noon.
VALERIUS CATULLUS
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3360
CATULLUS
There are perhaps no love poems in the world like these. Of
Sappho, seemingly the greatest poet of her sex, we can only dally
with surmise from mutilated fragments. No one else in the ancient
world comes into the account. The Middle Ages involved love inex-
tricably with mysticism. When Europe shook the Middle Ages off,
it had begun to think. Exquisite reflections on love, innocent pas-
torals, adorable imagery,- these it could produce; in the France of
the Pleiade for instance, or in the England of Greene and Campion:
but thought and passion keep ill company. Once only, a century
ago, a genius as fierce and flame-like as that of Catullus rose to the
height of this argument. An intractable language, sterilizing sur-
roundings, bad models, imperfect education, left Burns hopelessly
distanced; yet the quintessential flame that he shares with Catullus
has served to make him the idol of a nation, and a household word
among many millions of his race.
Clodia, the "Lady of the Sonnets» in Catullus, whom he calls
Lesbia by a transparent fiction, has no ambiguous or veiled person-
ality. She was one of the most famous and most scandalous women
of her time. By birth and marriage she belonged to the innermost
circle of that more than royal Roman aristocracy which had accu-
mulated the wealth of the world into its hands, and sent out its
younger sons carelessly to misgovern and pillage empires.
Catullus made her acquaintance, she was a married woman some six
or seven years older than himself. "Through a little arc of heaven"
the poems show his love running its sorrowful and splendid course.
Rapture of tenderness, infatuation, revolt, relapse, re-entanglement,
agonized stupor, the stinging pain of reviving life, fierce love pass-
ing into as fierce a hatred, all sweep before us in dazzling language
molded out of pure air and fire.
So far, Burns alone, and Burns only at his rarer heights, can give
a modern reader some idea of Catullus. But Burns had little educa-
tion and less taste; and so when he leaves the ground of direct per-
sonal emotion,- that is to say, in nineteen-twentieths of his poetry,—
he is constantly on the edge, and often over it, of tawdriness,
vulgarity, commonplace. Catullus was master of all the technical
skill then known to poetry. Without anything approaching the
immense learning of Virgil or Milton, he had, like Shelley among
English poets, the instincts and training of a scholar. It is this fine
scholarship- the eye and hand of the trained artist in language —
combined with his lucid and imperious simplicity, like that of some
gifted and terrible child, that makes him unique among poets.
When he leaves the golden fields of poetry and dashes into political
lampoons, or insolent and unquotable attacks on people (men or
women) who had the misfortune to displease him, he becomes like
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CATULLUS
3361
Burns again, Burns the satirist; yet even here nimbler witted, lighter
of touch, with the keenness of the rapier rather than of the Northern
axe-edge.
-
His scholarliness-like that of most scholars - Iwas not without
its drawbacks. His immediate literary masters, the Greeks of the
Alexandrian school, were a coterie of pedants; it would be idle to
claim that he remained unaffected by their pedantry. In the last
years of his life he seems to have lost himself somewhat in technical
intricacies and elaborate metrical experiments; in translations from
that prince in preciosity, the Alexandrian Callimachus; and idyllic
pieces of overloaded ornament studied from the school of Theocritus.
The longest and most ambitious poem of these years, the epic idyl
on 'The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis,' is full of exquisite beauties
of detail, but taken in its whole effect is languid, cloying, and
monotonous. He makes a more brilliant success in his other long
poem, the famous 'Atys,' the single example in Latin of the large-
scale lyric so familiar to Greece and England.
But indeed in every form of lyric poetry attempted by him, his
touch is infallible. The lovely poems of travel which he wrote
during and after a voyage to Asia are as unequaled in their sunny
beauty as the love-lyrics are in fire and passion. Alongside of these
there are little funny verses to his friends, and other verses to his
enemies which they probably did not think funny in the least;
verses of occasion and verses of compliment; and verses of sym-
pathy, with a deep human throb in them that shows how little his
own unhappy love had embittered him or shut him up in selfish
broodings. Two of these pieces are pre-eminent beyond all the rest.
The one is a marriage song written by him for the wedding of two
of his friends, Mallius Torquatus and Vinia Aurunculeia. In its
straightforward unassuming grace, in its musical clearness, in the
picture it draws, with so gentle and yet so refined and distinguished
a touch, of common household happiness, it is worthy of its closing
place in the golden volume of his lyrics.
The other is a brief poem, only ten lines long, written at his
brother's grave near Troy. It is one of the best known of Latin
poems; and before its sorrow, its simplicity, its piteous tenderness,
the astonishing cadence of its rhythms, praise itself seems almost
profanation.
"Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago—" so
Tennyson in one of his own beautiful lyrics addresses Catullus; and
it is this unsurpassed tenderness that more than all his other admi-
rable qualities, than his consummate technical skill, than his white
heat of passion, than his "clearness as of the terrible crystal," brings
him and keeps him near our hearts.
VI-211
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3362
CATULLUS
That wonderful Ciceronian age has left its mark as few ages
have, deep upon human history. The conquests and legislation of
Julius Cæsar determined the future of Europe and laid the founda-
tion of the modern world. The prose invented by Cicero became
and still remains the common language of civilized mankind. Among
the poems of Catullus are verses addressed to both of these men; but
his own young ivy-crowned brows shine out of the darkness and the
distance, with no less pure a radiance and no less imperishable a
fame.
--
I. W.
W. Markail
NOTE. In Mr. Mackail's closing phrase the lover of Ovid will note an
echo from that poet's famous elegy suggested by the premature death of still
another Roman singer, Tibullus. Among the kindred spirits — says Ovid —
who will welcome the new-comer to the Elysian fields, -
"Thou, O learnèd Catullus, thy young brows ivy-encircled,
Bringing thy Calvus with thee, wilt to receive him appear. »
DEDICATION FOR A VOLUME OF LYRICS
THS
HIS dainty little book and new,
Just polished with the pumice, who
Shall now receive ? — Cornelius, you!
For these my trifles even then
You counted of some value, when
You only of Italian men
Into three tomes had dared to cast
The story of all ages past,
Learned, O Jupiter, and vast!
―
So take it, prize it as you may.
-And, gracious Virgin, this I pray:
That it shall live beyond our day!
ED.
Translation of William C. Lawton.
## p. 3363 (#337) ###########################################
CATULLUS
3363
A MORNING CALL
ARUS would take me t'other day
To see a little girl he knew,-
Pretty and witty in her way,
VAR
With impudence enough for two.
Scarce are we seated, ere she chatters
(As pretty girls are wont to do)
About all persons, places, matters:
"And pray, what has been done for you? »
--
"Bithynia, lady! " I replied,
"Is a fine province for a prætor;
For none (I promise you) beside,
And least of all am I her debtor. "
"Sorry for that! " said she. "However,
You have brought with you, I dare say,
Some litter-bearers; none so clever
In any other part as they.
"Bithynia is the very place
For all that's steady, tall, and straight;
It is the nature of the race.
Could you not lend me six or eight? "
"Why, six or eight of them or so,"
Said I, determined to be grand;
"My fortune is not quite so low
But these are still at my command. "
"You'll send them ? »
"Willingly! " I told her,
Although I had not here or there
One who could carry on his shoulder
The leg of an old broken chair.
-
"Catullus! what a charming hap is
Our meeting in this sort of way!
I would be carried to Serapis
To-morrow! "-"Stay, fair lady, stay!
"You overvalue my intention.
Yes, there are eight. .
I merely had forgot to mention
That they are Cinna's, and not mine. "
there may be nine:
Paraphrase of W. S. Landor.
## p. 3364 (#338) ###########################################
3364
CATULLUS
HOME TO SIRMIO
D
EAR Sirmio, that art the very eye
Of islands and peninsulas, that lie
Deeply embosomed in calm inland lake,
Or where the waves of the vast ocean break;
Joy of all joys, to gaze on thee once more!
I scarce believe that I have left the shore
Of Thynia, and Bithynia's parching plain,
And gaze on thee in safety once again!
Oh, what more sweet than when, from care set free,
The spirit lays its burden down, and we,
With distant travel spent, come home and spread
Our limbs to rest along the wished-for bed!
This, this alone, repays such toils as these!
Smile, then, fair Sirmio, and thy master please,-
And you, ye dancing waters of the lake,
Rejoice; and every smile of home awake!
WITH
Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.
HEART-BREAK
your Catullus ill it fares, alas!
O Cornificius, and most wearily;
Still worse with all the days and hours that pass.
And with what greeting do you comfort me?
The least of boons, and easiest to bestow;
Wroth am I, that my love is answered so.
A word of greeting, pray you; what you please;
More sad than tear-drops of Simonides!
Translation of W. C. Lawton.
TO CALVUS IN BEREAVEMENT
I'
F THERE be aught, my Calvus, that out of our sorrowing proffered
Unto the voiceless dead grateful or welcome may be,
When we revive with insatiate longing our ancient affection,
When for the ties we lament, broken, that once have been ours,
Though Quintilia grieve for her own untimely departure,
Yet in thy faithful love greater, be sure, is her joy.
Translation of W. C. Lawton.
## p. 3365 (#339) ###########################################
CATULLUS
3365
THE PINNACE
TH
HIS pinnace, friends, which here you see,
Avers erewhile she used to be
Unmatched for speed, and could outstrip
Triumphantly the fastest ship
That ever swam, or breasted gale,
Alike with either oar or sail.
And this, she says, her haughty boast,
The stormy Adriatic coast,
The Cyclad islands, Rhodes the grand,
Rude Thrace, the wild Propontic strand,
Will never venture to gainsay;
Nor yet the Euxine's cruel bay,
Where in her early days she stood,
This bark to be, a shaggy wood;
For from her vocal locks full oft,
Where o'er Cytorus far aloft
The fitful mountain-breezes blow,
She piped and whistled loud or low.
To thee, Amastris, on thy rocks,
To thee, Cytorus, clad with box,
Has long been known, my bark avers,
This little history of hers.
In her first youth, she doth protest,
She stood upon your topmost crest,
First in your waters dipped her oars,
First bore her master from your shores
Anon unscathed o'er many a deep,
In sunshine and in storm to sweep;
Whether the breezes, as she flew,
From larboard or from starboard blew,
Or with a wake of foam behind,
She scudded full before the wind.
Nor to the gods of ocean e'er
For her was offered vow or prayer,
Though from yon farthest ocean drear
She came to this calm crystal mere.
But these are things of days gone past.
Now, anchored here in peace at last,
## p. 3366 (#340) ###########################################
3366
CATULLUS
To grow to hoary age, lies she,
And dedicates herself to thee,
Who hast alway her guardian been,
Twin Castor, and thy brother twin!
Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.
AN INVITATION TO DINNER
I'
F THE gods will, Fabullus mine,
With me right heartily you'll dine.
Bring but good cheer-that chance is thine
Some days hereafter;
Mind, a fair girl too, wit, and wine,
And merry laughter.
Bring these - you'll feast on kingly fare;
But bring them-for my purse-I swear
The spiders have been weaving there;
But thee I'll favor
With a pure love, or what's more rare,
More sweet of savor,
An unguent I'll before you lay
The Loves and Graces t'other day
Gave to my girl-smell it - you'll pray
The gods, Fabullus,
To make you turn all nose straightway.
Yours aye, CATULLUS.
Translation of James Cranstoun.
A BROTHER'S GRAVE
ROTHER! o'er many lands and oceans borne,
B I reach thy grave, death's last sad rite to pay;
To call thy silent dust in vain, and mourn,
Since ruthless fate has hurried thee away:
Woe's me! yet now upon thy tomb I lay -
All soaked with tears for thee, thee loved so well-
What gifts our fathers gave the honored clay
Of valued friends; take them, my grief they tell:
And now, forever hail! forever fare thee well!
Translation of James Cranstoun.
## p. 3367 (#341) ###########################################
CATULLUS
3367
FAREWELL TO HIS FELLOW-OFFICERS
HE milder breath of Spring is nigh;
The stormy equinoctial sky
THE
To Zephyr's gentle breezes yields.
Behind me soon the Phrygian fields,
Nicæa's sun-beat realm, shall lie.
To Asia's famous towns we'll hie.
My heart, that craves to wander free,
Throbs even now expectantly.
With zeal my joyous feet are strong;
Farewell, dear comrades, loved so long!
Afar together did we roam;
Now ways diverse shall lead us home.
Translation of W. C. Lawton.
VERSES FROM AN EPITHALAMIUM
Α
ND now, ye gates, your wings unfold!
The virgin draweth nigh. Behold
The torches, how upon the air
They shake abroad their gleaming hair!
Come, bride, come forth! no more delay!
The day is hurrying fast away!
But lost in shame and maiden fears,
She stirs not,-weeping, as she hears
The friends that to her tears reply,-
"Thou must advance, the hour is nigh!
Come, bride, come forth! no more delay!
The day is hurrying fast away! "
Dry up thy tears! For well I trow,
No woman lovelier than thou,
Aurunculeia, shall behold
The day all panoplied in gold,
And rosy light uplift his head
Above the shimmering ocean's bed!
As in some rich man's garden-plot,
With flowers of every hue inwrought,
Stands peerless forth with drooping brow
The hyacinth, so standest thou!
Come, bride, come forth! no more delay'
The day is hurrying fast away!
## p. 3368 (#342) ###########################################
3368
CATULLUS
Soon my eyes shall see, mayhap,
Young Torquatus on the lap
Of his mother, as he stands
Stretching out his tiny hands,
And his little lips the while
Half-open on his father smile.
And oh! may he in all be like
Manlius his sire, and strike
Strangers, when the boy they meet,
As his father's counterfeit,
And his face the index be
Of his mother's chastity!
Him, too, such fair fame adorn,
Son of such a mother born,
That the praise of both entwined
Call Telemachus to mind,
With her who nursed him on her knee,
Unparagoned Penelope!
Now, virgins, let us shut the door!
Enough we've toyed, enough and more!
But fare ye well, ye loving pair,
We leave ye to each other's care;
And blithely let your hours be sped
In joys of youth and lustyhed!
Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.
NOTE. The remaining poems of our selection are all associated with the
famous passion for Lesbia.
L'
LOVE IS ALL
ET us, Lesbia darling, still
Live our life, and love our fill;
Heeding not a jot, howe'er
Churlish dotards chide or stare!
Suns go down, but 'tis to rise
Brighter in the morning skies;
But when sets our little light,
We must sleep in endless night.
A thousand kisses grant me, sweet:
With a hundred these complete;
Lip me a thousand more, and then
Another hundred give again.
## p. 3369 (#343) ###########################################
CATULLUS
3369
A thousand add to these, anon
A hundred more, then hurry one
Kiss after kiss without cessation,
Until we lose all calculation;
So envy shall not mar our blisses
By numbering up our tale of kisses.
Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.
ELEGY ON LESBIA'S SPARROW
L
OVES and Graces, mourn with me,
Mourn, fair youths, where'er ye be!
Dead my Lesbia's sparrow is,
Sparrow that was all her bliss,
Than her very eyes more dear;
For he made her dainty cheer;
Knew her well, as any maid
Knows her mother; never strayed
From her bosom, but would go
Hopping round her to and fro,
And to her, and her alone,
Chirruped with such pretty tone.
Now he treads that gloomy track
Whence none ever may come back.
Out upon you, and your power,
Which all fairest things devour,
Orcus's gloomy shades, that e'er
Ye took my bird that was so fair!
Ah, the pity of it! Thou
Poor bird, thy doing 'tis, that now
My loved one's eyes are swollen and red,
With weeping for her darling dead.
Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.
"FICKLE AND CHANGEABLE EVER »
N
EVER a soul but myself, though Jove himself were to woo her,
Lesbia says she would choose, might she have me for her
mate.
Says- but what woman will say to a lover on fire to possess her,
Write on the bodiless wind, write on the stream as it runs.
Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.
## p. 3370 (#344) ###########################################
3370
CATULLUS
TWO CHORDS
HATE and love-the why I cannot tell,
But by my tortures know the fact too well.
Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.
LAST WORD TO LESBIA
FURIUS and Aurelius! comrades sweet!
O
Who to Ind's farthest shore with me would roam,
Where the far-sounding Orient billows beat
Their fury into foam;
Or to Hyrcania, balm-breathed Araby,
The Sacian's or the quivered Parthian's land,
Or where seven-mantled Nile's swoll'n waters dye
The sea with yellow sand;
Or cross the lofty Alpine fells, to view
Great Cæsar's trophied fields, the Gallic Rhine,
The paint-smeared Briton race, grim-visaged crew,
Placed by earth's limit line;
To all prepared with me to brave the way,
To dare whate'er the eternal gods decree-
These few unwelcome words to her convey
Who once was all to me.
Still let her revel with her godless train,
Still clasp her hundred slaves to passion's thrall,
Still truly love not one, but ever drain
The life-blood of them all.
Nor let her more my once fond passion heed,
For by her faithlessness 'tis blighted now,
Like flow'ret on the verge of grassy mead
Crushed by the passing plow.
Translation of James Cranstoun.
## p. 3371 (#345) ###########################################
3371
BENVENUTO CELLINI
(1500-1571)
MONG the three or four best autobiographies of the world's
literature, the 'Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini are unique
as the self-delineation of the most versatile of craftsmen, a
bizarre genius, and a typical exponent of the brilliant period of the
later Italian Renaissance. As a record of the ways of living and
modes of thinking of that fascinating epoch, they are more lively
and interesting than history, more entertaining, if more true to
fact, than a romance. As one of his Italian critics, Baretti, put it:-
"The life of Benvenuto Cellini, written by himself in the pure and
unsophisticated idiom of the Florentine people, surpasses every book
in our literature for the delight it affords the reader. " This is
high praise for the product of a literature that boasts of Boccaccio's
'Decameron,' and gave birth to the novelle, the parent of modern
fiction. Yet the critics of other nations have echoed this praise.
Auguste Comte, the positivist philosopher, included it in his limited
list for the reading of reformed humanity, and Goethe, laying aside
his own creative work, deemed it worth his time and attention to
translate into German.
Benvenuto Cellini was born at Florence in 1500. The father, Gio-
vanni Cellini, a musician and maker of musical instruments, intended
that the boy should likewise become a musician; but young Ben-
venuto very early showed strong leaning toward the plastic art, and
detested the flute he was forced to practice. The first chapters of
the 'Memoirs' are a most lively description of the struggles between
the wishes of the father and those of the son, until the latter finally
prevailed, and at fifteen years of age he was apprenticed to a gold-
smith of Florence. He made rapid progress, and soon attracted
notice as a skilled craftsman. At the same time, to please his father,
toward whom he everywhere professes the most filial feeling, he
continued "that confounded flute-playing" as a side issue. This
accomplishment, however, did him a good turn at the Papal court
later on. After various youthful escapades, street broils, and quarrels
with his father, he fled in monk's disguise to Rome in 1521.
A vase
made for the Bishop of Salamanca drew upon him the notice of
Pope Clement VII. , who appointed him court musician and also
employed him in his proper profession of goldsmith.
When the
Constable de Bourbon attacked Rome, in 1527, Cellini was of great
## p. 3372 (#346) ###########################################
3372
BENVENUTO CELLINI
service to the Pope in defending the city. He boasts of having from
the ramparts shot the Bourbon; and indeed, if one were to take him
strictly at his word, his valor and skill as an engineer saved the
castle of San Angelo and the Pope. However his lively imagination
may have overrated his own importance, yet it is certain that his
military exploit paved the way for his return to Florence, where for
a time he devoted himself to the execution of bronze medals and
coins. The most famous of the former are Hercules and the Nemean
Lion, and Atlas supporting the world.
On the elevation of Paul III. to the Papacy we again find Cellini at
Rome, working for the Pope and other eminent people. His extraor-
dinary abilities brought him not only into the notice of the courts,
but also drew him into the brilliant literary and artistic society of
the Eternal City. With unrivaled vividness he flashes before us in a
few bold strokes the artists of the decadent Renaissance, the pupils
of Raphael, led by Giulio Romano, with their worship of every form
of physical beauty and their lack of elevation of thought. In conse-
quence of the plottings of his implacable enemy, Pier Luigi, natural
son of Paul III. , he was arrested on the charge of having during the
sack of Rome embezzled Pontifical gold and jewels to the amount of
eighty thousand ducats. Though the charge was groundless, he was
committed to the castle of San Angelo. His escape is narrated in
one of the most thrilling chapters of the 'Memoirs. ' He went in hid-
ing to the Cardinal Cornaro, but was delivered up again to the Pope
by an act of most characteristic sixteenth-century Italian policy, and
was cast into a loathsome underground dungeon of the castle. It
was damp, swarming with vermin, and for two hours of the day only
received light through a little aperture. Here he languished for
many months, with only the chronicles of Giovanni Billani and an
Italian Bible to solace him. Now at last his recklessness and bravado
forsook him. He took on the airs of a saint, gave himself up to
mysticism, grew delirious and had his famous visions-angels visit-
ing him, who talked with him about religion.
In 1539 he was finally released at the intercession of the cardinal
Ippolito d'Este, who came from France to invite him to enter the
King's service. Cellini's account of his residence in France has great
historic value as throwing vivid side-lights on that interesting period
in the development of French social life, when Francis I. was laying
the foundation of the court society which was later on brought to
perfection by Louis XIV.
Cellini was one among that crowd of
Italian artists gathered at the court in Paris and Versailles, whose
culture was to refine the manners of the French warrior barons. He
worked for five years at Fontainebleau and in Paris. Among his
works there, still extant, are a pair of huge silver candelabra, the
## p. 3373 (#347) ###########################################
BENVENUTO CELLINI
3373
gates of Fontainebleau, and a nymph in bronze, reposing among
trophies of the chase, now in the Louvre. Among other marks of
royal favor he was presented with a castle, Le Petit Nesle. His
efforts to gain possession of this grant are among the amusing epi-
sodes of his narrative.
He had as usual numerous quarrels, and falling into disfavor with
Madame d'Estampes, the King's favorite, he suddenly left Paris and
returned alone to Florence. The remainder of his life he passed
mainly in the service of Duke Cosimo de' Medici. The chapters of
his narrative dealing with this portion give a most vivid picture of
artist life at an Italian court in the sixteenth century. To this third
and last period belongs the work on which his fame as sculptor
rests, the bronze Perseus holding the head of Medusa, completed in
1554 and still standing in the Loggia de' Lanzi in Florence. It is a
typical monument of the Renaissance, and was received with univer-
sal applause by all Italy. Odes and sonnets in Italian, Greek, and
Latin were written in its praise. His minute description of its cast-
ing, and of his many trials during that process, are among the most
interesting passages of the narrative.
In 1558 he began to write his memoirs, dictating them for the
greater part to an amanuensis; and he carried them down to the
year 1562. The events of the remaining nine years of his life are to
be gathered from contemporary documents. In 1558 he received the
tonsure and first ecclesiastical orders, but married two years later,
and died in 1571. He was buried with great pomp in the Church of
the Annunciata in Florence.
Besides his 'Memoirs' he also wrote treatises on the goldsmith's
art and on sculpture, with especial reference to bronze-founding.
They are of great value as manuals of the craftsmanship of the
Renaissance, and excellent specimens of good Italian style as applied
to technical exposition. And like all cultivated artists of his time
Cellini also tried his hand at poetry; but his lack of technical train-
ing as a writer comes out even more in his verse than in his prose.
The life of Benvenuto was one of incessant activity, laying hold of the
whole domain of the plastic arts: of restless wanderings from place
to place; and of rash deeds of violence. He lived to the full the life
of his age, in all its glory and all its recklessness. As the most
famous goldsmith of his time, he worked for all the great personages
of the day, and put himself on a footing of familiar acquaintance.
with popes and princes. As an artist he came into contact with all
the phases of Italian society, since a passion for external beauty was
at that time the heritage of the Italian people, and art bodied forth
the innermost life of the period. Furniture, plate, and personal
adornments were not turned out wholesale by machinery as they are
## p. 3374 (#348) ###########################################
3374
BENVENUTO CELLINI
!
to-day, but engaged the individual attention of the most skilled
craftsmen. The memory and the traditions of Raphael Sanzio were
still cherished by his pupils when Cellini first came to Rome into the
brilliant circle of Giulio Romano and his friends; Michelangelo's fres-
coes were studied with rapturous admiration by the young Benvenuto,
and later on he proudly recorded some words of praise of the mighty
genius whom he worshiped; and at this time, too, Titian and Tinto-
retto set the heart of Venice aglow with the splendor and color of
their marvelous canvases. The contemporary though not the peer
of those masters of the brush and the chisel, Cellini, endowed with
a keen feeling for beauty, a dexterous hand, and a lively imagination,
in his versatility reached out toward a wider sphere of activity, and
laid hold of life at more points, than they.
He reflected the Renaissance, not merely on its higher artistic
aspect, but he touched it also on its lower darker levels of brute pas-
sion, coarseness, and vindictiveness. He had more than one murder to
his account, and he did not slur over them in his narrative, for in his
make-up the bravo was equally prominent with the artist.
Yet we
must remember that homicides were of common occurrence in those
days, defended by casuists and condoned by the Church. Avenging
one's honor, or punishing an insult with the dagger, were as much a
social custom as the adornment of the body with exquisitely wrought
fabrics and jewelry. But just because Cellini was so thoroughly
awake to all the influences about him, and so entirely bent on living
his life, his 'Memoirs' are perennially fresh and attractive. They
are the plain unvarnished annals of a career extraordinary even in
that age of uncommon experiences; they were written, as he says,
because "all men of whatever quality they be, who have done any-
thing of excellence, or which may properly resemble excellence,
ought, if they are persons of truth and honesty, to describe their life
with their own hand; but they ought not to attempt so fine an enter-
prise till they have passed the age of forty. "
Cellini was past fifty-eight when he began writing, and going back
to his earliest boyhood, he set down the facts of his long career as
he remembered them. Of course he is the hero who recounts his
own story, and like all heroes of romance he plays the leading part,
is always in the right, and comes out handsomely in the end. Carp-
ing critics who tax him with lack of truth in dealing with his
enemies, and with pleading his own cause too well, are apt to forget
that he wrote long after the events were past, and that to an ever-
active imagination ruminating over bygone happenings, facts become
unconsciously colored to assume the hue the mind wishes them to
have. Yet the fidelity and accuracy of his memory are remarkable,
and his faculty for seeing, combined with his dramatic way of putting
## p. 3375 (#349) ###########################################
BENVENUTO CELLINI
3375
things most vividly, flashes before our eyes the scenes he recounts.
He does not describe much; he indicates a characteristic feature,
habit, or attitude; as for example, in referring to a man he disliked,
as having "long spidery hands and a shrill gnat-like voice" - all
that is needed to make us see the man from Cellini's point of view.
Again, he adds much to the vivacity of the narrative by reporting
conversation as a dialogue, even if he has it himself at second-hand.
So in his trenchant, nervous manner this keen observer, while aiming
to recount only the facts of his own life and to set himself on a
becoming pedestal in the eyes of posterity, gives us at the same time
flash-lights of the whole period in which he played a part. Popes
Clement VII. and Paul III. , Cosimo de' Medici and his Duchess, the
King of France and Madame d' Estampes, cardinals, nobles, princes,
and courtiers, artists of every description, burghers and the common
folk, — all with whom he came in contact,- are brought before us in a
living pageant. Looking back over his checkered career, he lives his
intense life over again, and because he himself saw so vividly at the
time, he makes us see now. We have here invaluable pictures, by
an eye-witness and actor, of the sack of Rome, the plague and siege
of Florence, the pomp of Charles V. at Rome. He withdraws the
curtains from the Papal policies and court intrigues, not with a
view to writing history, but because he happened to have some rela-
tions with those princes and wished to tell us about them. Again,
he was no critic of the manners of his time, yet he presents most
faithful pictures of artist life in Rome, Paris, and Florence.
He was
not given to introspection and self-criticism, but he describes himself
as well as others, not by analysis but by deeds and words. He had
no literary training; he wrote as he talked, and gained his effect by
simplicity.
-
He was recognized as the first goldsmith of his time; yet as a
man also his contemporaries speak well of him, for he embodied the
virtues of his age, while his morals did not fall below the average
code of the Renaissance. Vasari says:-"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 with princes as to exert himself in his art. "
J. A. Symonds, that inspiring student of the Italian Renaissance,
sums up his impressions of the book and the man as follows:
"I am confident that every one who may have curiously studied Italian
history and letters will pronounce this book to be at one and the same time
the most perfect extant monument of vernacular Tuscan prose, and also the
most complete and lively source of information we possess regarding man-
ners, customs, ways of feeling, and modes of acting, in the Court. Those who
have made themselves thoroughly familiar with Cellini's Memoirs possess the
## p. 3376 (#350) ###########################################
3376
BENVENUTO CELLINI
substance of that many-sided epoch in the form of an epitome. It is the first
book which a student of the Italian Renaissance should handle in order to
obtain the right direction for his more minute researches. It is the last book
to which he should return at the close of his exploratory voyages. At the
commencement he will find it invaluable for placing him at the exactly proper
point of view. At the end he will find it no less invaluable for testing and
verifying the conclusion he has drawn from various sources and a wide cir-
cumference of learning. From the pages of this book the genius of the
Renaissance, incarnate in a single personality, leans forth and speaks to us.
Nowhere else, to my mind, do we find the full character of the epoch so
authentically stamped. That is because this is no work of art or of reflection,
but the plain utterance of a man who lived the whole life of his age, who felt
its thirst for glory, who shared its adoration of the beautiful, who blent its
paganism and its superstition, who represented its two main aspects of exqui-
site sensibility to form and almost brutal ruffianism. We must not expect
from Cellini the finest, highest, purest accents of the Renaissance.
For students of that age he is at once more and less than his contemporaries:
less, inasmuch as he distinguished himself by no stupendous intellectual qual-
ities; more, inasmuch as he occupied a larger sphere than each of them
singly. He was the first goldsmith of his time, an adequate sculptor, a rest-
less traveler, an indefatigable workman, a Bohemian of the purest water, a
turbulent bravo, a courtier and companion of princes; finally, a Florentine
who used his native idiom with incomparable vivacity of style. "
THE ESCAPE FROM PRISON
From the 'Memoirs': Symonds's Translation
THE
HE castellan was subject to a certain sickness, which came
upon him every year and deprived him of his wits. The
sign of its approach was that he kept continually talking,
or rather jabbering, to no purpose. These humors took a dif-
ferent shape each year; one time he thought he was an oil-jar;
another time he thought he was a frog, and hopped about as
frogs do; another time he thought he was dead, and then they
had to bury him; not a year passed but he got some such hypo-
chondriac notions into his head. At this season he imagined
that he was a bat, and when he went abroad to take the air he
used to scream like bats in a high thin tone; and then he would
flap his hands and body as though he were about to fly. The
doctors, when they saw the fit was coming on him, and his old
servants, gave him all the distractions they could think of; and
since they had noticed that he derived much pleasure from my
conversation, they were always fetching me to keep him com-
pany. At times the poor man detained me for four or five
## p. 3377 (#351) ###########################################
BENVENUTO CELLINI
3377
stricken hours without ever letting me cease talking. He used
to keep me at his table, eating opposite to him, and never
stopped chatting and making me chat; but during those dis-
courses I contrived to make a good meal. He, poor man, could
neither eat nor sleep; so that at last he wore me out. I was at
the end of my strength; and sometimes when I looked at him,
I noticed that his eyeballs were rolling in a frightful manner,
one looking one way and the other in another.
He took it into his head to ask me whether I had ever had
a fancy to fly. I answered that it had always been my ambi-
tion to do those things which offer the greatest difficulties to
men, and that I had done them; as to flying, the God of Nature
had gifted me with a body well suited for running and leaping
far beyond the common average, and that with the talents I
possessed for manual art I felt sure I had the courage to try
flying. He then inquired what methods I should use; to which
I answered that, taking into consideration all flying creatures,
and wishing to imitate by art what they derived from nature,
none was so apt a model as the bat.
No sooner had the poor man heard the name bat, which
recalled the humor he was suffering under, than he cried out at
the top of his voice:-" He says true. - he says true; the bat's
the thing - the bat's the thing! " Then he turned to me and
said, "Benvenuto, if one gave you the opportunity, should you
have the heart to fly? " I said that if he would set me at
liberty, I felt quite up to flying down to Prato, after making
myself a pair of wings out of waxed linen. Thereupon he
replied: "I too should be prepared to take flight; but since the
Pope has bidden me guard you as though you were his own
eyes, and I know you a clever devil who would certainly escape,
I shall now have you locked up with a hundred keys in order
to prevent you slipping through my fingers. " I then began to
implore him, and remind him that I might have fled, but that
on account of the word which I had given him I would never
have betrayed his trust; therefore I begged him for the love of
God, and by the kindness he had always shown me, not to add
greater evils to the misery of my present situation. While I
was pouring out these entreaties, he gave strict orders to have
me bound and taken and locked up in prison. On seeing that
it could not be helped, I told him before all his servants: "Lock
me well up, and keep good watch on me; for I shall certainly
VI-212
## p. 3378 (#352) ###########################################
3378
BENVENUTO CELLINI
contrive to escape. " So they took me and confined me with the
utmost care. I then began to deliberate upon the best way of
making my escape. No sooner had I been locked in, than I
went about exploring my prison; and when I thought I had dis-
covered how to get out of it, I pondered the means of descend-
ing from the lofty keep, for so the great round central tower is
called. I took those new sheets of mine, which, as I have said
already, I had cut in strips and sewn together; then I reckoned
up the quantity which would be sufficient for my purpose.
Having made this estimate and put all things in order, I took
out a pair of pincers which I had abstracted from a Savoyard
belonging to the guard of the castle. This man superintended
the casks and cisterns; he also amused himself with carpenter-
ing. Now he possessed several pairs of pincers, among which
was one both big and heavy. I then, thinking it would suit my
purpose, took it and hid it in my straw mattress. The time had
now come for me to use it; so I began to try the nails which
kept the hinges of my door in place. The door was double, and
the clinching of the nails could not be seen; so that when I at-
tempted to draw one out, I met with the greatest trouble; in
the end however I succeeded. When I had drawn the first nail,
I bethought me how to prevent its being noticed. For this pur-
pose I mixed some rust, which I had scraped from old iron,
with a little wax, obtaining exactly the same color as the heads
of the long nails which I had extracted. Then I set myself to
counterfeit these heads and place them on the holdfasts; for each
nail I extracted I made counterfeit in wax. I left the hinges
attached to their door-posts at top and bottom by means of some
of the same nails that I had drawn; but I took care to cut these
and replace them lightly, so that they only just supported the
irons of the hinges.
All this I performed with the greatest difficulty, because the
castellan kept dreaming every night that I had escaped, which
made him send from time to time to inspect my prison. The
man who came had the title and behavior of a catchpoll. He
was called Bozza, a serving-man. Giovanni never entered my
prison without saying something offensive to me. He came from
the district of Prato, and had been an apothecary in the town
there. Every evening he minutely examined the holdfasts of the
hinges and the whole chamber, and I used to say: "Keep a
good watch over me, for I am resolved by all means to escape. "
## p. 3379 (#353) ###########################################
BENVENUTO CELLINI
3379
These words bred a great enmity between him and me, so
that I was obliged to use precautions to conceal my tools; that
is to say, my pincers and a great big poniard and other appur-
tenances. All these I put away together in my mattress, where I
also kept the strips of linen I had made. When day broke,
I used immediately to sweep my room out; and though I am by
nature a lover of cleanliness, at that time I kept myself unusually
spick and span. After sweeping up, I made my bed as daintily
as I could, laying flowers upon it, which a Savoyard used to
bring me nearly every morning. He had the care of the cistern
and the casks, and also amused himself with carpentering; it was
from him I stole the pincers which I used in order to draw out
the nails from the holdfasts of the hinges.
Well, to return to the subject of my bed; when Bozza and
Pedignone came, I always told them to give it a wide berth, so
as not to dirty and spoil it for me. Now and then, just to irri-
tate me, they would touch it lightly, upon which I cried: "Ah,
dirty cowards! I'll lay my hand on one of your swords there,
and will do you a mischief that will make you wonder.
Do you
think you are fit to touch the bed of a man like me? When I
chastise you I shall not heed my own life, for I am certain to
take yours.
Let me alone then with my troubles and my tribu-
lations, and don't give me more annoyance than I have already;
if not, I shall make you see what a desperate man is able to
do. " These words they reported to the castellan, who gave them
express orders never to go near my bed, and when they came to
me, to come without swords; but for the rest to keep a watchful
guard upon me.
Having thus secured my bed from meddlers, I felt as though
the main point was gained; for there lay all things useful to my
venture. It happened on the evening of a certain feast-day that
the castellan was seriously indisposed; his humors grew extrava-
gant; he kept repeating that he was a bat, and if they heard
that Benvenuto had flown away, they must let him go to catch
me up, since he could fly by night most certainly "as well or
better than myself"; for it was thus he argued:-"Benvenuto is
a counterfeit bat, but I am a real one; and since he is committed
to my care, leave me to act; I shall be sure to catch him. " He
had passed several nights in this frenzy, and had worn out all
his servants; whereof I received full information through divers
channels, but especially from the Savoyard, who was my friend at
heart.
## p. 3380 (#354) ###########################################
3380
BENVENUTO CELLINI
On the evening of that feast-day, then, I made up my mind
to escape, come what might; and first I prayed most devoutly to
God, imploring his Divine Majesty to protect and succor me in
that so perilous a venture. Afterwards I set to work at all the
things I needed, and labored the whole of the night. It was two
hours before daybreak when at last I removed those hinges with
the greatest toil; but the wooden panel itself, and the bolt too,
offered such resistance that I could not open the door; so I had
to cut into the wood; yet in the end I got it open, and shoulder-
ing the strips of linen which I had rolled up like bundles of flax
upon two sticks, I went forth and directed my steps toward the
latrines of the keep. Spying from within two tiles upon the
roof, I was able at once to clamber up with ease. I wore a
white doublet with a pair of white hose and a pair of half-boots,
into which I had stuck the poniard I have mentioned.
After scaling the roof, I took one end of my linen roll and
attached it to a piece of antique tile which was built into the
fortress wall; it happened to jut out scarcely four fingers. In
order to fix the band, I gave it the form of a stirrup. When I
had attached it to that piece of tile, I turned to God and said:
"Lord God, give aid to my good cause; you know that it is
good; you see that I am aiding myself. " Then I let myself go
gently by degrees, supporting myself with the sinews of my
arms, until I touched the ground. There was no moonshine, but
the light of a fair open heaven. When I stood upon my feet on
solid earth, I looked up at the vast height which I had descended
with such spirit; and went gladly away, thinking I was free. But
this was not the case; for the castellan on the side of the fortress
had built two lofty walls, the space between which he used for
stable and hen-yard; the place was barred with thick iron bolts
outside. I was terribly disgusted to find there was no exit from
this trap; but while I paced up and down debating what to
do, I stumbled on a long pole which was covered up with
straw. Not without great trouble, I succeeded in placing it
against the wall, and then swarmed up it by the force of my
arms until I reached the top. But since the wall ended in a
sharp ridge, I had not strength enough to drag the pole up
after me. Accordingly I made my mind up to use a portion of
the second roll of linen which I had there; the other was left
hanging from the keep of the castle. So I cut a piece off, tied
it to the pole, and clambered down the wall, enduring the
utmost toil and fatigue. I was quite exhausted, and moreover
## p. 3381 (#355) ###########################################
BENVENUTO CELLINI
3381
had flayed the inside of my hands, which bled freely. This
compelled me to rest awhile, and I bathed my hands in my own
urine.
When I thought that my strength was recovered, I advanced
quickly toward the last rampart, which faces toward Prato.
There I put my bundle of linen lines down upon the ground,
meaning to fasten them round a battlement, and descend the
lesser as I had the greater height. But no sooner had I placed
the linen than I became aware behind me of a sentinel, who
was going the rounds. Seeing my designs interrupted and my
life in peril, I resolved to face the guard. This fellow, when he
noticed my bold front, and that I was marching on him with
weapon in hand, quickened his pace and gave me a wide berth.
I had left my lines some little way behind, so I turned with
hasty steps to regain them; and though I came within sight of
another sentinel, he seemed as though he did not choose to take
notice of me. Having found my lines and attached them to the
battlement, I let myself go. On the descent, whether it was
that I thought I had really come to earth and relaxed my grasp
to jump, or whether my hands were so tired that they could not
keep their hold, at any rate I fell, struck my head in falling,
and lay stunned for more than an hour and a half, so far as I
could judge.
·
It was just upon daybreak, when the fresh breeze which
blows an hour before the sun revived me; yet I did not imme-
diately recover my senses, for I thought my head had been cut
off, and fancied that I was in purgatory. With time, little by
little my faculties returned, and I perceived that I was outside
the castle, and in a flash remembered all my adventures. I was
aware of the wound in my head before I knew my leg was
broken; for I put my hands up and withdrew them covered
with blood. Then I searched the spot well, and judged and
ascertained that I had sustained no injury of consequence there;
but when I wanted to stand up, I discovered that my right leg
was broken three inches above the heel. Not even this dismayed
me: I drew forth my poniard with its scabbard; the latter had
a metal point ending in a large ball, which had caused the
fracture of my leg; for the bone coming into violent contact
with the ball, and not being able to bend, had snapped at that
point. I threw the sheath away, and with the poniard cut a
piece of the linen which I had left. Then I bound my leg up
## p. 3382 (#356) ###########################################
3382
BENVENUTO CELLINI
as well as I could, and crawled on all fours with the poniard in
my hand toward the city gate. When I reached it, I found it
shut; but I noticed a stone just beneath the door which did not
appear to be very firmly fixed. This I attempted to dislodge;
after setting my hands to it, and feeling it move, it easily gave
way, and I drew it out. Through the gap thus made I crept
into the town.
THE CASTING OF PERSEUS
From the Memoirs: Symonds's Translation
A
BANDONED thus to my own resources, I took new courage and
banished the sad thoughts which kept recurring to my
mind, making me often weep bitter tears of repentance for
having left France; for though I did so only to revisit Florence,
my sweet birthplace, in order that I might charitably succor my
six nieces, this good action, as I well perceived, had been the
beginning of my great misfortune. Nevertheless I felt convinced.
that when my Perseus was accomplished, all these trials would be
turned to high felicity and glorious well-being.
Accordingly I strengthened my heart, and with all the forces
of my body and my purse, employing what little money still
remained to me, I set to work. First I provided myself with
several loads of pine-wood from the forests of Serristori, in the
neighborhood of Montelupo. While these were on their way, I
clothed my Perseus with the clay which I had prepared many
months beforehand, in order that it might be duly seasoned.
After making its clay tunic (for that is the term used in this
art) and properly arming it and fencing it with iron girders, I
began to draw the wax out by means of a slow fire. This
melted and issued through numerous air-vents I had made; for
the more there are of these the better will the mold fill. When
I had finished drawing off the wax, I constructed a funnel-
shaped furnace all round the model of my Perseus. It was built
of bricks, so interlaced, the one above the other, that numerous
apertures were left for the fire to exhale it. Then I began to
lay on wood by degrees, and kept it burning two whole days
and nights.
thrilling years is mirrored fully in the life and poetry of Catullus.
Fashion, travel, politics, criticism, all the thousandfold and ever-
changing events and interests of the age, come before us in their
most vivid form and at their highest pressure, in this brief volume
of lyrics. But all come involved with and overshadowed by a story
wholly personal to himself and immortal in its fascination: the story
of an immense and ill-fated love that "fed its life's flame with self-
substantial fuel," and mounted in the morning glories of sunrise only
to go down in thunder and tempest before noon.
VALERIUS CATULLUS
## p. 3360 (#334) ###########################################
3360
CATULLUS
There are perhaps no love poems in the world like these. Of
Sappho, seemingly the greatest poet of her sex, we can only dally
with surmise from mutilated fragments. No one else in the ancient
world comes into the account. The Middle Ages involved love inex-
tricably with mysticism. When Europe shook the Middle Ages off,
it had begun to think. Exquisite reflections on love, innocent pas-
torals, adorable imagery,- these it could produce; in the France of
the Pleiade for instance, or in the England of Greene and Campion:
but thought and passion keep ill company. Once only, a century
ago, a genius as fierce and flame-like as that of Catullus rose to the
height of this argument. An intractable language, sterilizing sur-
roundings, bad models, imperfect education, left Burns hopelessly
distanced; yet the quintessential flame that he shares with Catullus
has served to make him the idol of a nation, and a household word
among many millions of his race.
Clodia, the "Lady of the Sonnets» in Catullus, whom he calls
Lesbia by a transparent fiction, has no ambiguous or veiled person-
ality. She was one of the most famous and most scandalous women
of her time. By birth and marriage she belonged to the innermost
circle of that more than royal Roman aristocracy which had accu-
mulated the wealth of the world into its hands, and sent out its
younger sons carelessly to misgovern and pillage empires.
Catullus made her acquaintance, she was a married woman some six
or seven years older than himself. "Through a little arc of heaven"
the poems show his love running its sorrowful and splendid course.
Rapture of tenderness, infatuation, revolt, relapse, re-entanglement,
agonized stupor, the stinging pain of reviving life, fierce love pass-
ing into as fierce a hatred, all sweep before us in dazzling language
molded out of pure air and fire.
So far, Burns alone, and Burns only at his rarer heights, can give
a modern reader some idea of Catullus. But Burns had little educa-
tion and less taste; and so when he leaves the ground of direct per-
sonal emotion,- that is to say, in nineteen-twentieths of his poetry,—
he is constantly on the edge, and often over it, of tawdriness,
vulgarity, commonplace. Catullus was master of all the technical
skill then known to poetry. Without anything approaching the
immense learning of Virgil or Milton, he had, like Shelley among
English poets, the instincts and training of a scholar. It is this fine
scholarship- the eye and hand of the trained artist in language —
combined with his lucid and imperious simplicity, like that of some
gifted and terrible child, that makes him unique among poets.
When he leaves the golden fields of poetry and dashes into political
lampoons, or insolent and unquotable attacks on people (men or
women) who had the misfortune to displease him, he becomes like
## p. 3361 (#335) ###########################################
CATULLUS
3361
Burns again, Burns the satirist; yet even here nimbler witted, lighter
of touch, with the keenness of the rapier rather than of the Northern
axe-edge.
-
His scholarliness-like that of most scholars - Iwas not without
its drawbacks. His immediate literary masters, the Greeks of the
Alexandrian school, were a coterie of pedants; it would be idle to
claim that he remained unaffected by their pedantry. In the last
years of his life he seems to have lost himself somewhat in technical
intricacies and elaborate metrical experiments; in translations from
that prince in preciosity, the Alexandrian Callimachus; and idyllic
pieces of overloaded ornament studied from the school of Theocritus.
The longest and most ambitious poem of these years, the epic idyl
on 'The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis,' is full of exquisite beauties
of detail, but taken in its whole effect is languid, cloying, and
monotonous. He makes a more brilliant success in his other long
poem, the famous 'Atys,' the single example in Latin of the large-
scale lyric so familiar to Greece and England.
But indeed in every form of lyric poetry attempted by him, his
touch is infallible. The lovely poems of travel which he wrote
during and after a voyage to Asia are as unequaled in their sunny
beauty as the love-lyrics are in fire and passion. Alongside of these
there are little funny verses to his friends, and other verses to his
enemies which they probably did not think funny in the least;
verses of occasion and verses of compliment; and verses of sym-
pathy, with a deep human throb in them that shows how little his
own unhappy love had embittered him or shut him up in selfish
broodings. Two of these pieces are pre-eminent beyond all the rest.
The one is a marriage song written by him for the wedding of two
of his friends, Mallius Torquatus and Vinia Aurunculeia. In its
straightforward unassuming grace, in its musical clearness, in the
picture it draws, with so gentle and yet so refined and distinguished
a touch, of common household happiness, it is worthy of its closing
place in the golden volume of his lyrics.
The other is a brief poem, only ten lines long, written at his
brother's grave near Troy. It is one of the best known of Latin
poems; and before its sorrow, its simplicity, its piteous tenderness,
the astonishing cadence of its rhythms, praise itself seems almost
profanation.
"Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago—" so
Tennyson in one of his own beautiful lyrics addresses Catullus; and
it is this unsurpassed tenderness that more than all his other admi-
rable qualities, than his consummate technical skill, than his white
heat of passion, than his "clearness as of the terrible crystal," brings
him and keeps him near our hearts.
VI-211
## p. 3362 (#336) ###########################################
3362
CATULLUS
That wonderful Ciceronian age has left its mark as few ages
have, deep upon human history. The conquests and legislation of
Julius Cæsar determined the future of Europe and laid the founda-
tion of the modern world. The prose invented by Cicero became
and still remains the common language of civilized mankind. Among
the poems of Catullus are verses addressed to both of these men; but
his own young ivy-crowned brows shine out of the darkness and the
distance, with no less pure a radiance and no less imperishable a
fame.
--
I. W.
W. Markail
NOTE. In Mr. Mackail's closing phrase the lover of Ovid will note an
echo from that poet's famous elegy suggested by the premature death of still
another Roman singer, Tibullus. Among the kindred spirits — says Ovid —
who will welcome the new-comer to the Elysian fields, -
"Thou, O learnèd Catullus, thy young brows ivy-encircled,
Bringing thy Calvus with thee, wilt to receive him appear. »
DEDICATION FOR A VOLUME OF LYRICS
THS
HIS dainty little book and new,
Just polished with the pumice, who
Shall now receive ? — Cornelius, you!
For these my trifles even then
You counted of some value, when
You only of Italian men
Into three tomes had dared to cast
The story of all ages past,
Learned, O Jupiter, and vast!
―
So take it, prize it as you may.
-And, gracious Virgin, this I pray:
That it shall live beyond our day!
ED.
Translation of William C. Lawton.
## p. 3363 (#337) ###########################################
CATULLUS
3363
A MORNING CALL
ARUS would take me t'other day
To see a little girl he knew,-
Pretty and witty in her way,
VAR
With impudence enough for two.
Scarce are we seated, ere she chatters
(As pretty girls are wont to do)
About all persons, places, matters:
"And pray, what has been done for you? »
--
"Bithynia, lady! " I replied,
"Is a fine province for a prætor;
For none (I promise you) beside,
And least of all am I her debtor. "
"Sorry for that! " said she. "However,
You have brought with you, I dare say,
Some litter-bearers; none so clever
In any other part as they.
"Bithynia is the very place
For all that's steady, tall, and straight;
It is the nature of the race.
Could you not lend me six or eight? "
"Why, six or eight of them or so,"
Said I, determined to be grand;
"My fortune is not quite so low
But these are still at my command. "
"You'll send them ? »
"Willingly! " I told her,
Although I had not here or there
One who could carry on his shoulder
The leg of an old broken chair.
-
"Catullus! what a charming hap is
Our meeting in this sort of way!
I would be carried to Serapis
To-morrow! "-"Stay, fair lady, stay!
"You overvalue my intention.
Yes, there are eight. .
I merely had forgot to mention
That they are Cinna's, and not mine. "
there may be nine:
Paraphrase of W. S. Landor.
## p. 3364 (#338) ###########################################
3364
CATULLUS
HOME TO SIRMIO
D
EAR Sirmio, that art the very eye
Of islands and peninsulas, that lie
Deeply embosomed in calm inland lake,
Or where the waves of the vast ocean break;
Joy of all joys, to gaze on thee once more!
I scarce believe that I have left the shore
Of Thynia, and Bithynia's parching plain,
And gaze on thee in safety once again!
Oh, what more sweet than when, from care set free,
The spirit lays its burden down, and we,
With distant travel spent, come home and spread
Our limbs to rest along the wished-for bed!
This, this alone, repays such toils as these!
Smile, then, fair Sirmio, and thy master please,-
And you, ye dancing waters of the lake,
Rejoice; and every smile of home awake!
WITH
Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.
HEART-BREAK
your Catullus ill it fares, alas!
O Cornificius, and most wearily;
Still worse with all the days and hours that pass.
And with what greeting do you comfort me?
The least of boons, and easiest to bestow;
Wroth am I, that my love is answered so.
A word of greeting, pray you; what you please;
More sad than tear-drops of Simonides!
Translation of W. C. Lawton.
TO CALVUS IN BEREAVEMENT
I'
F THERE be aught, my Calvus, that out of our sorrowing proffered
Unto the voiceless dead grateful or welcome may be,
When we revive with insatiate longing our ancient affection,
When for the ties we lament, broken, that once have been ours,
Though Quintilia grieve for her own untimely departure,
Yet in thy faithful love greater, be sure, is her joy.
Translation of W. C. Lawton.
## p. 3365 (#339) ###########################################
CATULLUS
3365
THE PINNACE
TH
HIS pinnace, friends, which here you see,
Avers erewhile she used to be
Unmatched for speed, and could outstrip
Triumphantly the fastest ship
That ever swam, or breasted gale,
Alike with either oar or sail.
And this, she says, her haughty boast,
The stormy Adriatic coast,
The Cyclad islands, Rhodes the grand,
Rude Thrace, the wild Propontic strand,
Will never venture to gainsay;
Nor yet the Euxine's cruel bay,
Where in her early days she stood,
This bark to be, a shaggy wood;
For from her vocal locks full oft,
Where o'er Cytorus far aloft
The fitful mountain-breezes blow,
She piped and whistled loud or low.
To thee, Amastris, on thy rocks,
To thee, Cytorus, clad with box,
Has long been known, my bark avers,
This little history of hers.
In her first youth, she doth protest,
She stood upon your topmost crest,
First in your waters dipped her oars,
First bore her master from your shores
Anon unscathed o'er many a deep,
In sunshine and in storm to sweep;
Whether the breezes, as she flew,
From larboard or from starboard blew,
Or with a wake of foam behind,
She scudded full before the wind.
Nor to the gods of ocean e'er
For her was offered vow or prayer,
Though from yon farthest ocean drear
She came to this calm crystal mere.
But these are things of days gone past.
Now, anchored here in peace at last,
## p. 3366 (#340) ###########################################
3366
CATULLUS
To grow to hoary age, lies she,
And dedicates herself to thee,
Who hast alway her guardian been,
Twin Castor, and thy brother twin!
Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.
AN INVITATION TO DINNER
I'
F THE gods will, Fabullus mine,
With me right heartily you'll dine.
Bring but good cheer-that chance is thine
Some days hereafter;
Mind, a fair girl too, wit, and wine,
And merry laughter.
Bring these - you'll feast on kingly fare;
But bring them-for my purse-I swear
The spiders have been weaving there;
But thee I'll favor
With a pure love, or what's more rare,
More sweet of savor,
An unguent I'll before you lay
The Loves and Graces t'other day
Gave to my girl-smell it - you'll pray
The gods, Fabullus,
To make you turn all nose straightway.
Yours aye, CATULLUS.
Translation of James Cranstoun.
A BROTHER'S GRAVE
ROTHER! o'er many lands and oceans borne,
B I reach thy grave, death's last sad rite to pay;
To call thy silent dust in vain, and mourn,
Since ruthless fate has hurried thee away:
Woe's me! yet now upon thy tomb I lay -
All soaked with tears for thee, thee loved so well-
What gifts our fathers gave the honored clay
Of valued friends; take them, my grief they tell:
And now, forever hail! forever fare thee well!
Translation of James Cranstoun.
## p. 3367 (#341) ###########################################
CATULLUS
3367
FAREWELL TO HIS FELLOW-OFFICERS
HE milder breath of Spring is nigh;
The stormy equinoctial sky
THE
To Zephyr's gentle breezes yields.
Behind me soon the Phrygian fields,
Nicæa's sun-beat realm, shall lie.
To Asia's famous towns we'll hie.
My heart, that craves to wander free,
Throbs even now expectantly.
With zeal my joyous feet are strong;
Farewell, dear comrades, loved so long!
Afar together did we roam;
Now ways diverse shall lead us home.
Translation of W. C. Lawton.
VERSES FROM AN EPITHALAMIUM
Α
ND now, ye gates, your wings unfold!
The virgin draweth nigh. Behold
The torches, how upon the air
They shake abroad their gleaming hair!
Come, bride, come forth! no more delay!
The day is hurrying fast away!
But lost in shame and maiden fears,
She stirs not,-weeping, as she hears
The friends that to her tears reply,-
"Thou must advance, the hour is nigh!
Come, bride, come forth! no more delay!
The day is hurrying fast away! "
Dry up thy tears! For well I trow,
No woman lovelier than thou,
Aurunculeia, shall behold
The day all panoplied in gold,
And rosy light uplift his head
Above the shimmering ocean's bed!
As in some rich man's garden-plot,
With flowers of every hue inwrought,
Stands peerless forth with drooping brow
The hyacinth, so standest thou!
Come, bride, come forth! no more delay'
The day is hurrying fast away!
## p. 3368 (#342) ###########################################
3368
CATULLUS
Soon my eyes shall see, mayhap,
Young Torquatus on the lap
Of his mother, as he stands
Stretching out his tiny hands,
And his little lips the while
Half-open on his father smile.
And oh! may he in all be like
Manlius his sire, and strike
Strangers, when the boy they meet,
As his father's counterfeit,
And his face the index be
Of his mother's chastity!
Him, too, such fair fame adorn,
Son of such a mother born,
That the praise of both entwined
Call Telemachus to mind,
With her who nursed him on her knee,
Unparagoned Penelope!
Now, virgins, let us shut the door!
Enough we've toyed, enough and more!
But fare ye well, ye loving pair,
We leave ye to each other's care;
And blithely let your hours be sped
In joys of youth and lustyhed!
Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.
NOTE. The remaining poems of our selection are all associated with the
famous passion for Lesbia.
L'
LOVE IS ALL
ET us, Lesbia darling, still
Live our life, and love our fill;
Heeding not a jot, howe'er
Churlish dotards chide or stare!
Suns go down, but 'tis to rise
Brighter in the morning skies;
But when sets our little light,
We must sleep in endless night.
A thousand kisses grant me, sweet:
With a hundred these complete;
Lip me a thousand more, and then
Another hundred give again.
## p. 3369 (#343) ###########################################
CATULLUS
3369
A thousand add to these, anon
A hundred more, then hurry one
Kiss after kiss without cessation,
Until we lose all calculation;
So envy shall not mar our blisses
By numbering up our tale of kisses.
Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.
ELEGY ON LESBIA'S SPARROW
L
OVES and Graces, mourn with me,
Mourn, fair youths, where'er ye be!
Dead my Lesbia's sparrow is,
Sparrow that was all her bliss,
Than her very eyes more dear;
For he made her dainty cheer;
Knew her well, as any maid
Knows her mother; never strayed
From her bosom, but would go
Hopping round her to and fro,
And to her, and her alone,
Chirruped with such pretty tone.
Now he treads that gloomy track
Whence none ever may come back.
Out upon you, and your power,
Which all fairest things devour,
Orcus's gloomy shades, that e'er
Ye took my bird that was so fair!
Ah, the pity of it! Thou
Poor bird, thy doing 'tis, that now
My loved one's eyes are swollen and red,
With weeping for her darling dead.
Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.
"FICKLE AND CHANGEABLE EVER »
N
EVER a soul but myself, though Jove himself were to woo her,
Lesbia says she would choose, might she have me for her
mate.
Says- but what woman will say to a lover on fire to possess her,
Write on the bodiless wind, write on the stream as it runs.
Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.
## p. 3370 (#344) ###########################################
3370
CATULLUS
TWO CHORDS
HATE and love-the why I cannot tell,
But by my tortures know the fact too well.
Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.
LAST WORD TO LESBIA
FURIUS and Aurelius! comrades sweet!
O
Who to Ind's farthest shore with me would roam,
Where the far-sounding Orient billows beat
Their fury into foam;
Or to Hyrcania, balm-breathed Araby,
The Sacian's or the quivered Parthian's land,
Or where seven-mantled Nile's swoll'n waters dye
The sea with yellow sand;
Or cross the lofty Alpine fells, to view
Great Cæsar's trophied fields, the Gallic Rhine,
The paint-smeared Briton race, grim-visaged crew,
Placed by earth's limit line;
To all prepared with me to brave the way,
To dare whate'er the eternal gods decree-
These few unwelcome words to her convey
Who once was all to me.
Still let her revel with her godless train,
Still clasp her hundred slaves to passion's thrall,
Still truly love not one, but ever drain
The life-blood of them all.
Nor let her more my once fond passion heed,
For by her faithlessness 'tis blighted now,
Like flow'ret on the verge of grassy mead
Crushed by the passing plow.
Translation of James Cranstoun.
## p. 3371 (#345) ###########################################
3371
BENVENUTO CELLINI
(1500-1571)
MONG the three or four best autobiographies of the world's
literature, the 'Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini are unique
as the self-delineation of the most versatile of craftsmen, a
bizarre genius, and a typical exponent of the brilliant period of the
later Italian Renaissance. As a record of the ways of living and
modes of thinking of that fascinating epoch, they are more lively
and interesting than history, more entertaining, if more true to
fact, than a romance. As one of his Italian critics, Baretti, put it:-
"The life of Benvenuto Cellini, written by himself in the pure and
unsophisticated idiom of the Florentine people, surpasses every book
in our literature for the delight it affords the reader. " This is
high praise for the product of a literature that boasts of Boccaccio's
'Decameron,' and gave birth to the novelle, the parent of modern
fiction. Yet the critics of other nations have echoed this praise.
Auguste Comte, the positivist philosopher, included it in his limited
list for the reading of reformed humanity, and Goethe, laying aside
his own creative work, deemed it worth his time and attention to
translate into German.
Benvenuto Cellini was born at Florence in 1500. The father, Gio-
vanni Cellini, a musician and maker of musical instruments, intended
that the boy should likewise become a musician; but young Ben-
venuto very early showed strong leaning toward the plastic art, and
detested the flute he was forced to practice. The first chapters of
the 'Memoirs' are a most lively description of the struggles between
the wishes of the father and those of the son, until the latter finally
prevailed, and at fifteen years of age he was apprenticed to a gold-
smith of Florence. He made rapid progress, and soon attracted
notice as a skilled craftsman. At the same time, to please his father,
toward whom he everywhere professes the most filial feeling, he
continued "that confounded flute-playing" as a side issue. This
accomplishment, however, did him a good turn at the Papal court
later on. After various youthful escapades, street broils, and quarrels
with his father, he fled in monk's disguise to Rome in 1521.
A vase
made for the Bishop of Salamanca drew upon him the notice of
Pope Clement VII. , who appointed him court musician and also
employed him in his proper profession of goldsmith.
When the
Constable de Bourbon attacked Rome, in 1527, Cellini was of great
## p. 3372 (#346) ###########################################
3372
BENVENUTO CELLINI
service to the Pope in defending the city. He boasts of having from
the ramparts shot the Bourbon; and indeed, if one were to take him
strictly at his word, his valor and skill as an engineer saved the
castle of San Angelo and the Pope. However his lively imagination
may have overrated his own importance, yet it is certain that his
military exploit paved the way for his return to Florence, where for
a time he devoted himself to the execution of bronze medals and
coins. The most famous of the former are Hercules and the Nemean
Lion, and Atlas supporting the world.
On the elevation of Paul III. to the Papacy we again find Cellini at
Rome, working for the Pope and other eminent people. His extraor-
dinary abilities brought him not only into the notice of the courts,
but also drew him into the brilliant literary and artistic society of
the Eternal City. With unrivaled vividness he flashes before us in a
few bold strokes the artists of the decadent Renaissance, the pupils
of Raphael, led by Giulio Romano, with their worship of every form
of physical beauty and their lack of elevation of thought. In conse-
quence of the plottings of his implacable enemy, Pier Luigi, natural
son of Paul III. , he was arrested on the charge of having during the
sack of Rome embezzled Pontifical gold and jewels to the amount of
eighty thousand ducats. Though the charge was groundless, he was
committed to the castle of San Angelo. His escape is narrated in
one of the most thrilling chapters of the 'Memoirs. ' He went in hid-
ing to the Cardinal Cornaro, but was delivered up again to the Pope
by an act of most characteristic sixteenth-century Italian policy, and
was cast into a loathsome underground dungeon of the castle. It
was damp, swarming with vermin, and for two hours of the day only
received light through a little aperture. Here he languished for
many months, with only the chronicles of Giovanni Billani and an
Italian Bible to solace him. Now at last his recklessness and bravado
forsook him. He took on the airs of a saint, gave himself up to
mysticism, grew delirious and had his famous visions-angels visit-
ing him, who talked with him about religion.
In 1539 he was finally released at the intercession of the cardinal
Ippolito d'Este, who came from France to invite him to enter the
King's service. Cellini's account of his residence in France has great
historic value as throwing vivid side-lights on that interesting period
in the development of French social life, when Francis I. was laying
the foundation of the court society which was later on brought to
perfection by Louis XIV.
Cellini was one among that crowd of
Italian artists gathered at the court in Paris and Versailles, whose
culture was to refine the manners of the French warrior barons. He
worked for five years at Fontainebleau and in Paris. Among his
works there, still extant, are a pair of huge silver candelabra, the
## p. 3373 (#347) ###########################################
BENVENUTO CELLINI
3373
gates of Fontainebleau, and a nymph in bronze, reposing among
trophies of the chase, now in the Louvre. Among other marks of
royal favor he was presented with a castle, Le Petit Nesle. His
efforts to gain possession of this grant are among the amusing epi-
sodes of his narrative.
He had as usual numerous quarrels, and falling into disfavor with
Madame d'Estampes, the King's favorite, he suddenly left Paris and
returned alone to Florence. The remainder of his life he passed
mainly in the service of Duke Cosimo de' Medici. The chapters of
his narrative dealing with this portion give a most vivid picture of
artist life at an Italian court in the sixteenth century. To this third
and last period belongs the work on which his fame as sculptor
rests, the bronze Perseus holding the head of Medusa, completed in
1554 and still standing in the Loggia de' Lanzi in Florence. It is a
typical monument of the Renaissance, and was received with univer-
sal applause by all Italy. Odes and sonnets in Italian, Greek, and
Latin were written in its praise. His minute description of its cast-
ing, and of his many trials during that process, are among the most
interesting passages of the narrative.
In 1558 he began to write his memoirs, dictating them for the
greater part to an amanuensis; and he carried them down to the
year 1562. The events of the remaining nine years of his life are to
be gathered from contemporary documents. In 1558 he received the
tonsure and first ecclesiastical orders, but married two years later,
and died in 1571. He was buried with great pomp in the Church of
the Annunciata in Florence.
Besides his 'Memoirs' he also wrote treatises on the goldsmith's
art and on sculpture, with especial reference to bronze-founding.
They are of great value as manuals of the craftsmanship of the
Renaissance, and excellent specimens of good Italian style as applied
to technical exposition. And like all cultivated artists of his time
Cellini also tried his hand at poetry; but his lack of technical train-
ing as a writer comes out even more in his verse than in his prose.
The life of Benvenuto was one of incessant activity, laying hold of the
whole domain of the plastic arts: of restless wanderings from place
to place; and of rash deeds of violence. He lived to the full the life
of his age, in all its glory and all its recklessness. As the most
famous goldsmith of his time, he worked for all the great personages
of the day, and put himself on a footing of familiar acquaintance.
with popes and princes. As an artist he came into contact with all
the phases of Italian society, since a passion for external beauty was
at that time the heritage of the Italian people, and art bodied forth
the innermost life of the period. Furniture, plate, and personal
adornments were not turned out wholesale by machinery as they are
## p. 3374 (#348) ###########################################
3374
BENVENUTO CELLINI
!
to-day, but engaged the individual attention of the most skilled
craftsmen. The memory and the traditions of Raphael Sanzio were
still cherished by his pupils when Cellini first came to Rome into the
brilliant circle of Giulio Romano and his friends; Michelangelo's fres-
coes were studied with rapturous admiration by the young Benvenuto,
and later on he proudly recorded some words of praise of the mighty
genius whom he worshiped; and at this time, too, Titian and Tinto-
retto set the heart of Venice aglow with the splendor and color of
their marvelous canvases. The contemporary though not the peer
of those masters of the brush and the chisel, Cellini, endowed with
a keen feeling for beauty, a dexterous hand, and a lively imagination,
in his versatility reached out toward a wider sphere of activity, and
laid hold of life at more points, than they.
He reflected the Renaissance, not merely on its higher artistic
aspect, but he touched it also on its lower darker levels of brute pas-
sion, coarseness, and vindictiveness. He had more than one murder to
his account, and he did not slur over them in his narrative, for in his
make-up the bravo was equally prominent with the artist.
Yet we
must remember that homicides were of common occurrence in those
days, defended by casuists and condoned by the Church. Avenging
one's honor, or punishing an insult with the dagger, were as much a
social custom as the adornment of the body with exquisitely wrought
fabrics and jewelry. But just because Cellini was so thoroughly
awake to all the influences about him, and so entirely bent on living
his life, his 'Memoirs' are perennially fresh and attractive. They
are the plain unvarnished annals of a career extraordinary even in
that age of uncommon experiences; they were written, as he says,
because "all men of whatever quality they be, who have done any-
thing of excellence, or which may properly resemble excellence,
ought, if they are persons of truth and honesty, to describe their life
with their own hand; but they ought not to attempt so fine an enter-
prise till they have passed the age of forty. "
Cellini was past fifty-eight when he began writing, and going back
to his earliest boyhood, he set down the facts of his long career as
he remembered them. Of course he is the hero who recounts his
own story, and like all heroes of romance he plays the leading part,
is always in the right, and comes out handsomely in the end. Carp-
ing critics who tax him with lack of truth in dealing with his
enemies, and with pleading his own cause too well, are apt to forget
that he wrote long after the events were past, and that to an ever-
active imagination ruminating over bygone happenings, facts become
unconsciously colored to assume the hue the mind wishes them to
have. Yet the fidelity and accuracy of his memory are remarkable,
and his faculty for seeing, combined with his dramatic way of putting
## p. 3375 (#349) ###########################################
BENVENUTO CELLINI
3375
things most vividly, flashes before our eyes the scenes he recounts.
He does not describe much; he indicates a characteristic feature,
habit, or attitude; as for example, in referring to a man he disliked,
as having "long spidery hands and a shrill gnat-like voice" - all
that is needed to make us see the man from Cellini's point of view.
Again, he adds much to the vivacity of the narrative by reporting
conversation as a dialogue, even if he has it himself at second-hand.
So in his trenchant, nervous manner this keen observer, while aiming
to recount only the facts of his own life and to set himself on a
becoming pedestal in the eyes of posterity, gives us at the same time
flash-lights of the whole period in which he played a part. Popes
Clement VII. and Paul III. , Cosimo de' Medici and his Duchess, the
King of France and Madame d' Estampes, cardinals, nobles, princes,
and courtiers, artists of every description, burghers and the common
folk, — all with whom he came in contact,- are brought before us in a
living pageant. Looking back over his checkered career, he lives his
intense life over again, and because he himself saw so vividly at the
time, he makes us see now. We have here invaluable pictures, by
an eye-witness and actor, of the sack of Rome, the plague and siege
of Florence, the pomp of Charles V. at Rome. He withdraws the
curtains from the Papal policies and court intrigues, not with a
view to writing history, but because he happened to have some rela-
tions with those princes and wished to tell us about them. Again,
he was no critic of the manners of his time, yet he presents most
faithful pictures of artist life in Rome, Paris, and Florence.
He was
not given to introspection and self-criticism, but he describes himself
as well as others, not by analysis but by deeds and words. He had
no literary training; he wrote as he talked, and gained his effect by
simplicity.
-
He was recognized as the first goldsmith of his time; yet as a
man also his contemporaries speak well of him, for he embodied the
virtues of his age, while his morals did not fall below the average
code of the Renaissance. Vasari says:-"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 with princes as to exert himself in his art. "
J. A. Symonds, that inspiring student of the Italian Renaissance,
sums up his impressions of the book and the man as follows:
"I am confident that every one who may have curiously studied Italian
history and letters will pronounce this book to be at one and the same time
the most perfect extant monument of vernacular Tuscan prose, and also the
most complete and lively source of information we possess regarding man-
ners, customs, ways of feeling, and modes of acting, in the Court. Those who
have made themselves thoroughly familiar with Cellini's Memoirs possess the
## p. 3376 (#350) ###########################################
3376
BENVENUTO CELLINI
substance of that many-sided epoch in the form of an epitome. It is the first
book which a student of the Italian Renaissance should handle in order to
obtain the right direction for his more minute researches. It is the last book
to which he should return at the close of his exploratory voyages. At the
commencement he will find it invaluable for placing him at the exactly proper
point of view. At the end he will find it no less invaluable for testing and
verifying the conclusion he has drawn from various sources and a wide cir-
cumference of learning. From the pages of this book the genius of the
Renaissance, incarnate in a single personality, leans forth and speaks to us.
Nowhere else, to my mind, do we find the full character of the epoch so
authentically stamped. That is because this is no work of art or of reflection,
but the plain utterance of a man who lived the whole life of his age, who felt
its thirst for glory, who shared its adoration of the beautiful, who blent its
paganism and its superstition, who represented its two main aspects of exqui-
site sensibility to form and almost brutal ruffianism. We must not expect
from Cellini the finest, highest, purest accents of the Renaissance.
For students of that age he is at once more and less than his contemporaries:
less, inasmuch as he distinguished himself by no stupendous intellectual qual-
ities; more, inasmuch as he occupied a larger sphere than each of them
singly. He was the first goldsmith of his time, an adequate sculptor, a rest-
less traveler, an indefatigable workman, a Bohemian of the purest water, a
turbulent bravo, a courtier and companion of princes; finally, a Florentine
who used his native idiom with incomparable vivacity of style. "
THE ESCAPE FROM PRISON
From the 'Memoirs': Symonds's Translation
THE
HE castellan was subject to a certain sickness, which came
upon him every year and deprived him of his wits. The
sign of its approach was that he kept continually talking,
or rather jabbering, to no purpose. These humors took a dif-
ferent shape each year; one time he thought he was an oil-jar;
another time he thought he was a frog, and hopped about as
frogs do; another time he thought he was dead, and then they
had to bury him; not a year passed but he got some such hypo-
chondriac notions into his head. At this season he imagined
that he was a bat, and when he went abroad to take the air he
used to scream like bats in a high thin tone; and then he would
flap his hands and body as though he were about to fly. The
doctors, when they saw the fit was coming on him, and his old
servants, gave him all the distractions they could think of; and
since they had noticed that he derived much pleasure from my
conversation, they were always fetching me to keep him com-
pany. At times the poor man detained me for four or five
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BENVENUTO CELLINI
3377
stricken hours without ever letting me cease talking. He used
to keep me at his table, eating opposite to him, and never
stopped chatting and making me chat; but during those dis-
courses I contrived to make a good meal. He, poor man, could
neither eat nor sleep; so that at last he wore me out. I was at
the end of my strength; and sometimes when I looked at him,
I noticed that his eyeballs were rolling in a frightful manner,
one looking one way and the other in another.
He took it into his head to ask me whether I had ever had
a fancy to fly. I answered that it had always been my ambi-
tion to do those things which offer the greatest difficulties to
men, and that I had done them; as to flying, the God of Nature
had gifted me with a body well suited for running and leaping
far beyond the common average, and that with the talents I
possessed for manual art I felt sure I had the courage to try
flying. He then inquired what methods I should use; to which
I answered that, taking into consideration all flying creatures,
and wishing to imitate by art what they derived from nature,
none was so apt a model as the bat.
No sooner had the poor man heard the name bat, which
recalled the humor he was suffering under, than he cried out at
the top of his voice:-" He says true. - he says true; the bat's
the thing - the bat's the thing! " Then he turned to me and
said, "Benvenuto, if one gave you the opportunity, should you
have the heart to fly? " I said that if he would set me at
liberty, I felt quite up to flying down to Prato, after making
myself a pair of wings out of waxed linen. Thereupon he
replied: "I too should be prepared to take flight; but since the
Pope has bidden me guard you as though you were his own
eyes, and I know you a clever devil who would certainly escape,
I shall now have you locked up with a hundred keys in order
to prevent you slipping through my fingers. " I then began to
implore him, and remind him that I might have fled, but that
on account of the word which I had given him I would never
have betrayed his trust; therefore I begged him for the love of
God, and by the kindness he had always shown me, not to add
greater evils to the misery of my present situation. While I
was pouring out these entreaties, he gave strict orders to have
me bound and taken and locked up in prison. On seeing that
it could not be helped, I told him before all his servants: "Lock
me well up, and keep good watch on me; for I shall certainly
VI-212
## p. 3378 (#352) ###########################################
3378
BENVENUTO CELLINI
contrive to escape. " So they took me and confined me with the
utmost care. I then began to deliberate upon the best way of
making my escape. No sooner had I been locked in, than I
went about exploring my prison; and when I thought I had dis-
covered how to get out of it, I pondered the means of descend-
ing from the lofty keep, for so the great round central tower is
called. I took those new sheets of mine, which, as I have said
already, I had cut in strips and sewn together; then I reckoned
up the quantity which would be sufficient for my purpose.
Having made this estimate and put all things in order, I took
out a pair of pincers which I had abstracted from a Savoyard
belonging to the guard of the castle. This man superintended
the casks and cisterns; he also amused himself with carpenter-
ing. Now he possessed several pairs of pincers, among which
was one both big and heavy. I then, thinking it would suit my
purpose, took it and hid it in my straw mattress. The time had
now come for me to use it; so I began to try the nails which
kept the hinges of my door in place. The door was double, and
the clinching of the nails could not be seen; so that when I at-
tempted to draw one out, I met with the greatest trouble; in
the end however I succeeded. When I had drawn the first nail,
I bethought me how to prevent its being noticed. For this pur-
pose I mixed some rust, which I had scraped from old iron,
with a little wax, obtaining exactly the same color as the heads
of the long nails which I had extracted. Then I set myself to
counterfeit these heads and place them on the holdfasts; for each
nail I extracted I made counterfeit in wax. I left the hinges
attached to their door-posts at top and bottom by means of some
of the same nails that I had drawn; but I took care to cut these
and replace them lightly, so that they only just supported the
irons of the hinges.
All this I performed with the greatest difficulty, because the
castellan kept dreaming every night that I had escaped, which
made him send from time to time to inspect my prison. The
man who came had the title and behavior of a catchpoll. He
was called Bozza, a serving-man. Giovanni never entered my
prison without saying something offensive to me. He came from
the district of Prato, and had been an apothecary in the town
there. Every evening he minutely examined the holdfasts of the
hinges and the whole chamber, and I used to say: "Keep a
good watch over me, for I am resolved by all means to escape. "
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BENVENUTO CELLINI
3379
These words bred a great enmity between him and me, so
that I was obliged to use precautions to conceal my tools; that
is to say, my pincers and a great big poniard and other appur-
tenances. All these I put away together in my mattress, where I
also kept the strips of linen I had made. When day broke,
I used immediately to sweep my room out; and though I am by
nature a lover of cleanliness, at that time I kept myself unusually
spick and span. After sweeping up, I made my bed as daintily
as I could, laying flowers upon it, which a Savoyard used to
bring me nearly every morning. He had the care of the cistern
and the casks, and also amused himself with carpentering; it was
from him I stole the pincers which I used in order to draw out
the nails from the holdfasts of the hinges.
Well, to return to the subject of my bed; when Bozza and
Pedignone came, I always told them to give it a wide berth, so
as not to dirty and spoil it for me. Now and then, just to irri-
tate me, they would touch it lightly, upon which I cried: "Ah,
dirty cowards! I'll lay my hand on one of your swords there,
and will do you a mischief that will make you wonder.
Do you
think you are fit to touch the bed of a man like me? When I
chastise you I shall not heed my own life, for I am certain to
take yours.
Let me alone then with my troubles and my tribu-
lations, and don't give me more annoyance than I have already;
if not, I shall make you see what a desperate man is able to
do. " These words they reported to the castellan, who gave them
express orders never to go near my bed, and when they came to
me, to come without swords; but for the rest to keep a watchful
guard upon me.
Having thus secured my bed from meddlers, I felt as though
the main point was gained; for there lay all things useful to my
venture. It happened on the evening of a certain feast-day that
the castellan was seriously indisposed; his humors grew extrava-
gant; he kept repeating that he was a bat, and if they heard
that Benvenuto had flown away, they must let him go to catch
me up, since he could fly by night most certainly "as well or
better than myself"; for it was thus he argued:-"Benvenuto is
a counterfeit bat, but I am a real one; and since he is committed
to my care, leave me to act; I shall be sure to catch him. " He
had passed several nights in this frenzy, and had worn out all
his servants; whereof I received full information through divers
channels, but especially from the Savoyard, who was my friend at
heart.
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BENVENUTO CELLINI
On the evening of that feast-day, then, I made up my mind
to escape, come what might; and first I prayed most devoutly to
God, imploring his Divine Majesty to protect and succor me in
that so perilous a venture. Afterwards I set to work at all the
things I needed, and labored the whole of the night. It was two
hours before daybreak when at last I removed those hinges with
the greatest toil; but the wooden panel itself, and the bolt too,
offered such resistance that I could not open the door; so I had
to cut into the wood; yet in the end I got it open, and shoulder-
ing the strips of linen which I had rolled up like bundles of flax
upon two sticks, I went forth and directed my steps toward the
latrines of the keep. Spying from within two tiles upon the
roof, I was able at once to clamber up with ease. I wore a
white doublet with a pair of white hose and a pair of half-boots,
into which I had stuck the poniard I have mentioned.
After scaling the roof, I took one end of my linen roll and
attached it to a piece of antique tile which was built into the
fortress wall; it happened to jut out scarcely four fingers. In
order to fix the band, I gave it the form of a stirrup. When I
had attached it to that piece of tile, I turned to God and said:
"Lord God, give aid to my good cause; you know that it is
good; you see that I am aiding myself. " Then I let myself go
gently by degrees, supporting myself with the sinews of my
arms, until I touched the ground. There was no moonshine, but
the light of a fair open heaven. When I stood upon my feet on
solid earth, I looked up at the vast height which I had descended
with such spirit; and went gladly away, thinking I was free. But
this was not the case; for the castellan on the side of the fortress
had built two lofty walls, the space between which he used for
stable and hen-yard; the place was barred with thick iron bolts
outside. I was terribly disgusted to find there was no exit from
this trap; but while I paced up and down debating what to
do, I stumbled on a long pole which was covered up with
straw. Not without great trouble, I succeeded in placing it
against the wall, and then swarmed up it by the force of my
arms until I reached the top. But since the wall ended in a
sharp ridge, I had not strength enough to drag the pole up
after me. Accordingly I made my mind up to use a portion of
the second roll of linen which I had there; the other was left
hanging from the keep of the castle. So I cut a piece off, tied
it to the pole, and clambered down the wall, enduring the
utmost toil and fatigue. I was quite exhausted, and moreover
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BENVENUTO CELLINI
3381
had flayed the inside of my hands, which bled freely. This
compelled me to rest awhile, and I bathed my hands in my own
urine.
When I thought that my strength was recovered, I advanced
quickly toward the last rampart, which faces toward Prato.
There I put my bundle of linen lines down upon the ground,
meaning to fasten them round a battlement, and descend the
lesser as I had the greater height. But no sooner had I placed
the linen than I became aware behind me of a sentinel, who
was going the rounds. Seeing my designs interrupted and my
life in peril, I resolved to face the guard. This fellow, when he
noticed my bold front, and that I was marching on him with
weapon in hand, quickened his pace and gave me a wide berth.
I had left my lines some little way behind, so I turned with
hasty steps to regain them; and though I came within sight of
another sentinel, he seemed as though he did not choose to take
notice of me. Having found my lines and attached them to the
battlement, I let myself go. On the descent, whether it was
that I thought I had really come to earth and relaxed my grasp
to jump, or whether my hands were so tired that they could not
keep their hold, at any rate I fell, struck my head in falling,
and lay stunned for more than an hour and a half, so far as I
could judge.
·
It was just upon daybreak, when the fresh breeze which
blows an hour before the sun revived me; yet I did not imme-
diately recover my senses, for I thought my head had been cut
off, and fancied that I was in purgatory. With time, little by
little my faculties returned, and I perceived that I was outside
the castle, and in a flash remembered all my adventures. I was
aware of the wound in my head before I knew my leg was
broken; for I put my hands up and withdrew them covered
with blood. Then I searched the spot well, and judged and
ascertained that I had sustained no injury of consequence there;
but when I wanted to stand up, I discovered that my right leg
was broken three inches above the heel. Not even this dismayed
me: I drew forth my poniard with its scabbard; the latter had
a metal point ending in a large ball, which had caused the
fracture of my leg; for the bone coming into violent contact
with the ball, and not being able to bend, had snapped at that
point. I threw the sheath away, and with the poniard cut a
piece of the linen which I had left. Then I bound my leg up
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3382
BENVENUTO CELLINI
as well as I could, and crawled on all fours with the poniard in
my hand toward the city gate. When I reached it, I found it
shut; but I noticed a stone just beneath the door which did not
appear to be very firmly fixed. This I attempted to dislodge;
after setting my hands to it, and feeling it move, it easily gave
way, and I drew it out. Through the gap thus made I crept
into the town.
THE CASTING OF PERSEUS
From the Memoirs: Symonds's Translation
A
BANDONED thus to my own resources, I took new courage and
banished the sad thoughts which kept recurring to my
mind, making me often weep bitter tears of repentance for
having left France; for though I did so only to revisit Florence,
my sweet birthplace, in order that I might charitably succor my
six nieces, this good action, as I well perceived, had been the
beginning of my great misfortune. Nevertheless I felt convinced.
that when my Perseus was accomplished, all these trials would be
turned to high felicity and glorious well-being.
Accordingly I strengthened my heart, and with all the forces
of my body and my purse, employing what little money still
remained to me, I set to work. First I provided myself with
several loads of pine-wood from the forests of Serristori, in the
neighborhood of Montelupo. While these were on their way, I
clothed my Perseus with the clay which I had prepared many
months beforehand, in order that it might be duly seasoned.
After making its clay tunic (for that is the term used in this
art) and properly arming it and fencing it with iron girders, I
began to draw the wax out by means of a slow fire. This
melted and issued through numerous air-vents I had made; for
the more there are of these the better will the mold fill. When
I had finished drawing off the wax, I constructed a funnel-
shaped furnace all round the model of my Perseus. It was built
of bricks, so interlaced, the one above the other, that numerous
apertures were left for the fire to exhale it. Then I began to
lay on wood by degrees, and kept it burning two whole days
and nights.
