"In addition to these solid merits, his life, as Horace Walpole put it, is 'more amusing than any novel.' We have a real man to deal with,--a man so realistically brought before us that we seem to hear him speak and see him move; a man, moreover, whose eminently characteristic works of art in a great measure still survive among us. Yet the adventures of this potent human actuality will bear comparison with those of Gil Bias, or the Comte de Monte Cristo, or Quentin Durward, or Les Trois Mousquetaires, for their variety and pungent interest. * * * * * * * * * "But what was the man himself? It is just this question which I have half promised to answer, implying that, as a translator, I have some special right to speak upon the subject. "Well, then: I seem to know Cellini first of all as a man possessed by intense, absorbing egotism; violent, arrogant, self-assertive, passionate; conscious of great gifts for art, physical courage, and personal address. . . . To be self-reliant in all circumstances; to scheme and strike, if need be, in support of his opinion or his right; to take the law into his own hands for the redress of injury or insult;--this appeared to him the simple duty of an honorable man. . . . He possessed the temperament of a born artist, blent in almost equal proportions with that of a born bravo. Throughout the whole of his tumultuous career these two strains contended in his nature for mastery. Upon the verge of fifty-six, when a man's blood has generally cooled, we find that he was released from prison on bail, and bound over to keep the peace for a year with some enemy whose life was probably in danger; and when I come to speak about his homicides, it will be obvious that he enjoyed killing live men quite as much as casting bronze statues. * * * * * * * * * "He consistently poses as an injured man, whom malevolent scoundrels and malignant stars conspired to persecute. Nor does he do this with any bad faith. His belief in himself remained firm as adamant, and he candidly conceived that he was under the special providence of a merciful and loving God, who appreciated his high and virtuous qualities." Bearing in mind that all the seemingly fabulous anecdotes related of Cellini, or put into his own mouth, by Dumas, are actually told by himself in his Autobiography, the conclusions of Mr. Symonds as to the artist's veracity cannot fail to be interesting:--