This, if I am not deceived, is the objection that can be most frequently, and almost continually urged against the work. The other strictures to be met with in authors are, for the most part, exaggerations of writers, offended at Vasari for his silence or his criticisms, on the works of the artists of their country. There is nothing so flattering to the vanity of an author, as defending the character of his native place, and of those citizens who have rendered her illustrious. In whatever manner he writes, all his countrymen, who are all the world to him, think him in the right; and in the coffeehouses he frequents, in the shops of the booksellers, and in all public places, they hail him as the public advocate. Hence we need not be surprised that such an author writes as if his country had appointed him her champion, assumes a spirit of hostility, and then the transition is easy from a just defence to an injurious attack. From such causes some writers appear to me actuated by unbecoming enmity to Vasari. The passages of the first edition, cancelled in the second, have been quoted against him; he has incurred odium for some deformed portraits, as if he was accountable for the defects of nature; his most innocent expressions have been tortured into a sinister meaning; his enemies would have us believe that, intending to exalt his darling Florentines, he neglected the other Italian artists, as if, in order to do justice to these, he had not travelled and sought for information, although often in vain, as I before mentioned. The historians of all the other schools have used him as the commentators of Virgil treated Servius; all have abused him, and all have availed themselves of his labours. For if all the information collected by Vasari concerning the old masters of the Venetian, Bolognese, and Lombard schools be taken away, how imperfect does their history remain? In my opinion, therefore, he deserves our best thanks for what he has done, and much forbearance for what he has omitted.