And with what
greeting
do you comfort me?
Warner - World's Best Literature - v06 - Cal to Chr
In 1623 he was elected pensionary of Dordrecht, and
although he hesitated in leaving Zeeland, he finally decided to accept
the office. In 1625 he added to his duties those of Curator of Ley-
den University. His literary work was consequently laid aside.
In 1627 Cats accompanied Albert Joachimi as ambassador to Lon-
don to open negotiations for a navigation treaty. He was only partly
successful in his mission, but was met with much consideration by
Charles I. , who decorated him with the order of St. Jovis.
after his return he lost his wife after a brief illness.
Shortly
<
While he was writing Trouwring' (Wedding Ring), a collection.
of epic and lyric poems, he was elected Secretary of State in 1636,
and in 1645 Keeper of the Great Seal and Governor. But he had
the experience in his public life that a crown may often be a crown
of thorns; and in 1651 he begged to be released from his burden-
some office. His demand was granted, and on this occasion Cats fell
on his knees in the presence of the States-General and thanked God
for taking away his heavy burden He was once more persuaded to
join an embassy to England. Cromwell had meanwhile come to
power; Cats and his fellow-travelers returned with but little accom-
plished, and the old statesman and poet saw himself free to spend
the last years of his life on his place Zorgvliet, which he had built
outside of The Hague on the way to Scheveningen, in the midst of
the Dunes. Although he may not have been a great statesman, he
had felt the responsibility of his calling. He was never quite equal
to it, and often felt himself helpless and small against the encroach-
ment of the Powers. But honesty and patriotism were his to the
fullest extent.
The last eight years of his life he spent in Zorgvliet in undis-
turbed peace. He returned to his literary labors and wrote 'Onder-
dom en Buitenleven' (Age and Country Life), Hofgedachtess'
(Court Thoughts), and his rhymed autobiography Twee-entaghtig-
jarig Leven' (A Life of Eighty-two Years). He seems to have kept
his warm interest and joy in life to the very last.
## p. 3356 (#330) ###########################################
3356
JACOB CATS
FEAR AFTER THE TROUBLE
WHILE ago I read a tale methinks is curious.
A Perhaps to every one the story may be useful:
Therefore in timeliness unto the light I drag it,
In hope that all who read, in it will find a pleasure.
A lord once lived of old, whose joy it was to wander
In field and flowery mead, quite to his heart's contentment.
A horse he had withal, so sage that, slept the rider,
It home would wisely go, without the knight to waken.
And so it came to pass that one day forthward faring,
To dine, the cavalier by a good friend was bidden.
He met with welcome glad; good wine went freely flowing.
At last, for all such cheer, the guest must take his leave.
Himself then he prepared to climb into his saddle,
And turned his beast about, that home were soon attained.
The day was bleak and raw; the sun of light was chary;
Through clouds before its face, a pallid light descended.
The wise steed careful stepped onward along the highway,
Its sober rider borne, as custom was, unwearied.
Anon the usual drowse closed up the rider's eyelids:
His beast walked calmly on, in faithfulness of service;
The man, profoundly sleeping, traveled as he was wonted;
The time at last brought near when he should reach his dwell-
ing.
But lo! a friend is met, who questions him in wonder:-
:-
"How possible it was his steed had brought him thither ? »
The knight responded straight -"Why, I the way have ridden
That, during seven years, I constantly have come;
My beast on which I sit hath borne me duly houseward-
The midnight's dark itself makes not his foot unsteady. "
"How, friend? " his questioner cried, "even when the bridge is
broken?
The stream to cross at all, no other means I know:
This wondrous horse of thine old Perseus must have owned,
Who fought the dragon once, and cut its head to pieces.
Things sure are as they were! You came not flying hither!
It seems to me, belike, a ghost has been your cheater.
To take it otherwise, the joke to me seems pointless.
Not possible it is, this story that you tell me.
But that o'er such a thing no wrangling be between us,
Come to the bridge with me; I gladly will be escort.
## p. 3357 (#331) ###########################################
JACOB CATS
3357
The spot and fact themselves, in proof I straight will disclose,
That you may note how ill goes with your word the matter. "
Whereto so long a speech? The Knight was well persuaded;
The flood is reached again, the truth of things lies open!
Bridge is there none indeed-rests but a strip of planking,
Crossing the rushing wave, narrow and all unsteady.
The foot of man must needs with prudence o'er it tiptoe,
The nerve and will be firm to reach that further goal.
The foot that is not true, that left or right shall waver,
Drowns in the flood below the passenger unlucky.
When now the man of naps marks all at once the bridge,
Notes well the narrow path, marks the too slender footway,
His shock in truth is great; loud his poor heart goes beating.
In fear and shudders cold, the scene he stands and pictures;
Sees with a frightened eye just how his path has served him.
And more and more his soul sickens with tardy terror,
More to his heart the blood, driven away, goes rushing;-
That hour of fear to him brought him an endless illness.
Look now, how odd it seems! He well in peace had ridden,
Suffering no mishap, spared from the thing all mischief-
Utterly downcast is, whereas his danger's over!
Fear makes him sick at heart, deep in his being centred.
Questions now any one what be this tale's life-lesson?
Him shall I gladly give what in it lies, methinks;
Speak out as best I can what as a maxim's plainest:-
Friendly is never he sparing of bread and counsel.
The man who rode his way safely and lost in slumber,
He unto whom occurred just this strange bit of fortune,
Like is he (it meseems) unto the lustful mortal,
Evil in earthly course, given to sottish living,
Wandering on, shut-eyed, lost in the way of pleasure,
Taking no slightest notice of the abyss so open:
Never with heed made blessed, not with his conscience warned:
How at his side is Death, prompt to cut off the living!
But with our Lord God's grace, suddenly on him bestowed,
Opening wide his eye-then, not till then, he's awakened.
Terror absorbs his soul, holy the fear that takes it;
Now is the sinner roused, sees for the first his doings.
Wondering see him stand, uttering loud his outery:
"Awful has been my blindness, dreadful my soul's delusion.
How could I be so tricked? how could my sleep so grip me?
I who, in touch with death, careless my ease was taking! "
Happy in truth the man fallen in no such peril,
## p. 3358 (#332) ###########################################
3358
JACOB CATS
Since with a careful eye watches he every footstep,
Blessed in that God himself insight to him has granted
What was his danger to feel; how he has made escapement.
Translation through the German by E. Irenæus Stevenson.
"A RICH MAN LOSES HIS CHILD, A POOR MAN LOSES
HIS COW »
Co
OME hither, pray, O friends! Let me my sorrow tell you.
Wordless such loss to bear, my heart indeed endures not:
All that the soul downweighs seems to a man less bitter,
If to the friendly ear sorrow can be but uttered.
Dead is my neighbor's child: dead is my only cow.
Comfort has fled from him; fled from me every joying.
So do we sorrow, both, reft of our peace each bosom :
He that his child is dead-I that my cow is taken.
Look you now, friends! how strange ay, and how sad Fate's
dealings!
I well had spared a child - one cow he well had wanted.
Turn things about, thou Death! Less evil seem thy doings.
Full is my house too full surely is full his cow-house!
Death, take his stalls for prey, or choose from out my seven!
There have you, Death, full room; less to us too the trouble.
Certain the pain's forgot -ay, and forgotten quickly,
When, in the greater herd, one little wolf's a robber!
What do I murmur thus? Ever is Death one earless.
Lost on him good advice, argument on him wasted.
Onward he moves, this Death, pallid and wholly blindly.
Oftenest he a guest just where his call's least needed.
Ah, who can calm my grief; who, pray, shall still my neighbor's?
Just as we would not choose, so unto each it happens! —
He who is rich must lose all that means nearest heirship,
I, the poor man, O God! stripped of my one possession!
Translation through the German by E. Irenæus Stevenson.
## p. 3359 (#333) ###########################################
3359
CATULLUS
(84-54 B. C. ? )
BY J. W. MACKAIL
HE last thirty years of the Roman Republic are, alike in
thought and action, one of the high-water marks of the
world's history. This is the age of Cicero and of Julius
Cæsar. This brief period includes the conquest of Gaul, the invasion
of Britain, the annexation of the Asiatic monarchies founded by
Alexander's marshals; the final collapse of the Roman oligarchy
which had subdued the whole known world; the development of the
stateliest and most splendid prose that the world has ever seen or is
ever likely to see; and lastly, a social life
among the Roman upper classes so brill-
iant, so humane, so intimately known to us
from contemporary historians, poets, ora-
tors, letter-writers, that we can live in it
with as little stretch of imagination as we
can live in the England of Queen Anne.
Among the foremost figures of this won-
derful period is Valerius Catullus, the first
of Latin lyric poets, and perhaps the third,
alongside of Sappho and Shelley, in the
supreme rank of the lyric poets of the
world.
He represents in his life and his genius
the fine flower of his age and country. He
was born at Verona of a wealthy and distinguished family, while
Italy was convulsed by the civil wars of Marius and Sulla; he died
at the age of thirty, while Cæsar was completing the conquest of
Gaul, and the Republic, though within a few days of its extinction,
still seemed full of the pride of life. 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
## 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.
although he hesitated in leaving Zeeland, he finally decided to accept
the office. In 1625 he added to his duties those of Curator of Ley-
den University. His literary work was consequently laid aside.
In 1627 Cats accompanied Albert Joachimi as ambassador to Lon-
don to open negotiations for a navigation treaty. He was only partly
successful in his mission, but was met with much consideration by
Charles I. , who decorated him with the order of St. Jovis.
after his return he lost his wife after a brief illness.
Shortly
<
While he was writing Trouwring' (Wedding Ring), a collection.
of epic and lyric poems, he was elected Secretary of State in 1636,
and in 1645 Keeper of the Great Seal and Governor. But he had
the experience in his public life that a crown may often be a crown
of thorns; and in 1651 he begged to be released from his burden-
some office. His demand was granted, and on this occasion Cats fell
on his knees in the presence of the States-General and thanked God
for taking away his heavy burden He was once more persuaded to
join an embassy to England. Cromwell had meanwhile come to
power; Cats and his fellow-travelers returned with but little accom-
plished, and the old statesman and poet saw himself free to spend
the last years of his life on his place Zorgvliet, which he had built
outside of The Hague on the way to Scheveningen, in the midst of
the Dunes. Although he may not have been a great statesman, he
had felt the responsibility of his calling. He was never quite equal
to it, and often felt himself helpless and small against the encroach-
ment of the Powers. But honesty and patriotism were his to the
fullest extent.
The last eight years of his life he spent in Zorgvliet in undis-
turbed peace. He returned to his literary labors and wrote 'Onder-
dom en Buitenleven' (Age and Country Life), Hofgedachtess'
(Court Thoughts), and his rhymed autobiography Twee-entaghtig-
jarig Leven' (A Life of Eighty-two Years). He seems to have kept
his warm interest and joy in life to the very last.
## p. 3356 (#330) ###########################################
3356
JACOB CATS
FEAR AFTER THE TROUBLE
WHILE ago I read a tale methinks is curious.
A Perhaps to every one the story may be useful:
Therefore in timeliness unto the light I drag it,
In hope that all who read, in it will find a pleasure.
A lord once lived of old, whose joy it was to wander
In field and flowery mead, quite to his heart's contentment.
A horse he had withal, so sage that, slept the rider,
It home would wisely go, without the knight to waken.
And so it came to pass that one day forthward faring,
To dine, the cavalier by a good friend was bidden.
He met with welcome glad; good wine went freely flowing.
At last, for all such cheer, the guest must take his leave.
Himself then he prepared to climb into his saddle,
And turned his beast about, that home were soon attained.
The day was bleak and raw; the sun of light was chary;
Through clouds before its face, a pallid light descended.
The wise steed careful stepped onward along the highway,
Its sober rider borne, as custom was, unwearied.
Anon the usual drowse closed up the rider's eyelids:
His beast walked calmly on, in faithfulness of service;
The man, profoundly sleeping, traveled as he was wonted;
The time at last brought near when he should reach his dwell-
ing.
But lo! a friend is met, who questions him in wonder:-
:-
"How possible it was his steed had brought him thither ? »
The knight responded straight -"Why, I the way have ridden
That, during seven years, I constantly have come;
My beast on which I sit hath borne me duly houseward-
The midnight's dark itself makes not his foot unsteady. "
"How, friend? " his questioner cried, "even when the bridge is
broken?
The stream to cross at all, no other means I know:
This wondrous horse of thine old Perseus must have owned,
Who fought the dragon once, and cut its head to pieces.
Things sure are as they were! You came not flying hither!
It seems to me, belike, a ghost has been your cheater.
To take it otherwise, the joke to me seems pointless.
Not possible it is, this story that you tell me.
But that o'er such a thing no wrangling be between us,
Come to the bridge with me; I gladly will be escort.
## p. 3357 (#331) ###########################################
JACOB CATS
3357
The spot and fact themselves, in proof I straight will disclose,
That you may note how ill goes with your word the matter. "
Whereto so long a speech? The Knight was well persuaded;
The flood is reached again, the truth of things lies open!
Bridge is there none indeed-rests but a strip of planking,
Crossing the rushing wave, narrow and all unsteady.
The foot of man must needs with prudence o'er it tiptoe,
The nerve and will be firm to reach that further goal.
The foot that is not true, that left or right shall waver,
Drowns in the flood below the passenger unlucky.
When now the man of naps marks all at once the bridge,
Notes well the narrow path, marks the too slender footway,
His shock in truth is great; loud his poor heart goes beating.
In fear and shudders cold, the scene he stands and pictures;
Sees with a frightened eye just how his path has served him.
And more and more his soul sickens with tardy terror,
More to his heart the blood, driven away, goes rushing;-
That hour of fear to him brought him an endless illness.
Look now, how odd it seems! He well in peace had ridden,
Suffering no mishap, spared from the thing all mischief-
Utterly downcast is, whereas his danger's over!
Fear makes him sick at heart, deep in his being centred.
Questions now any one what be this tale's life-lesson?
Him shall I gladly give what in it lies, methinks;
Speak out as best I can what as a maxim's plainest:-
Friendly is never he sparing of bread and counsel.
The man who rode his way safely and lost in slumber,
He unto whom occurred just this strange bit of fortune,
Like is he (it meseems) unto the lustful mortal,
Evil in earthly course, given to sottish living,
Wandering on, shut-eyed, lost in the way of pleasure,
Taking no slightest notice of the abyss so open:
Never with heed made blessed, not with his conscience warned:
How at his side is Death, prompt to cut off the living!
But with our Lord God's grace, suddenly on him bestowed,
Opening wide his eye-then, not till then, he's awakened.
Terror absorbs his soul, holy the fear that takes it;
Now is the sinner roused, sees for the first his doings.
Wondering see him stand, uttering loud his outery:
"Awful has been my blindness, dreadful my soul's delusion.
How could I be so tricked? how could my sleep so grip me?
I who, in touch with death, careless my ease was taking! "
Happy in truth the man fallen in no such peril,
## p. 3358 (#332) ###########################################
3358
JACOB CATS
Since with a careful eye watches he every footstep,
Blessed in that God himself insight to him has granted
What was his danger to feel; how he has made escapement.
Translation through the German by E. Irenæus Stevenson.
"A RICH MAN LOSES HIS CHILD, A POOR MAN LOSES
HIS COW »
Co
OME hither, pray, O friends! Let me my sorrow tell you.
Wordless such loss to bear, my heart indeed endures not:
All that the soul downweighs seems to a man less bitter,
If to the friendly ear sorrow can be but uttered.
Dead is my neighbor's child: dead is my only cow.
Comfort has fled from him; fled from me every joying.
So do we sorrow, both, reft of our peace each bosom :
He that his child is dead-I that my cow is taken.
Look you now, friends! how strange ay, and how sad Fate's
dealings!
I well had spared a child - one cow he well had wanted.
Turn things about, thou Death! Less evil seem thy doings.
Full is my house too full surely is full his cow-house!
Death, take his stalls for prey, or choose from out my seven!
There have you, Death, full room; less to us too the trouble.
Certain the pain's forgot -ay, and forgotten quickly,
When, in the greater herd, one little wolf's a robber!
What do I murmur thus? Ever is Death one earless.
Lost on him good advice, argument on him wasted.
Onward he moves, this Death, pallid and wholly blindly.
Oftenest he a guest just where his call's least needed.
Ah, who can calm my grief; who, pray, shall still my neighbor's?
Just as we would not choose, so unto each it happens! —
He who is rich must lose all that means nearest heirship,
I, the poor man, O God! stripped of my one possession!
Translation through the German by E. Irenæus Stevenson.
## p. 3359 (#333) ###########################################
3359
CATULLUS
(84-54 B. C. ? )
BY J. W. MACKAIL
HE last thirty years of the Roman Republic are, alike in
thought and action, one of the high-water marks of the
world's history. This is the age of Cicero and of Julius
Cæsar. This brief period includes the conquest of Gaul, the invasion
of Britain, the annexation of the Asiatic monarchies founded by
Alexander's marshals; the final collapse of the Roman oligarchy
which had subdued the whole known world; the development of the
stateliest and most splendid prose that the world has ever seen or is
ever likely to see; and lastly, a social life
among the Roman upper classes so brill-
iant, so humane, so intimately known to us
from contemporary historians, poets, ora-
tors, letter-writers, that we can live in it
with as little stretch of imagination as we
can live in the England of Queen Anne.
Among the foremost figures of this won-
derful period is Valerius Catullus, the first
of Latin lyric poets, and perhaps the third,
alongside of Sappho and Shelley, in the
supreme rank of the lyric poets of the
world.
He represents in his life and his genius
the fine flower of his age and country. He
was born at Verona of a wealthy and distinguished family, while
Italy was convulsed by the civil wars of Marius and Sulla; he died
at the age of thirty, while Cæsar was completing the conquest of
Gaul, and the Republic, though within a few days of its extinction,
still seemed full of the pride of life. 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
## 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
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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
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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.
