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. BENVENUTO CELLINI (1500-1571) Among 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.