"Among Cellini's faults I do not reckon either baseness or lying. He was not a rogue, and he meant to be veracious. This contradicts the commonplace and superficial view of his character so flatly that I must support my opinion at some length. Of course I shall not deny that a fellow endowed with such overweening self-conceit, when he comes to write about himself, will set down much which cannot be taken entirely on trust. . . . Men of his stamp are certain to exaggerate their own merits, and to pass lightly over things not favorable to the ideal they present. But this is very different from lying; and of calculated mendacity Cellini stands almost universally accused. I believe that view to be mistaken." Passing from general considerations to particular instances of Cellini's alleged falsehoods, the learned translator proceeds to discuss at some length many of the miraculous experiences and remarkable statements of Cellini, which are to be found in these volumes. For example, the founding of Florence by an imaginary ancestor of his own, named Fiorino da Cellino, a captain in the army of Julius Cæsar; and his claim that he shot the Constable of Bourbon from the ramparts of Rome in 1527, as to which Mr. Symonds says: "Bourbon had been shot dead in the assault of Rome upon that foggy morning, and Cellini had certainly discharged his arquebuse from the ramparts. . . . If it were possible to put his thoughts about this event into a syllogism, it would run as follows: 'Somebody shot Bourbon; I shot somebody; being what I am, I am inclined to think the somebody I shot was Bourbon."