Benvenuto enlarges upon the joys of drawing from the life and expatiates upon the greatness of Michelangelo in much the same spirit and with much the same fury of admiration with which Berlioz descants upon the rapture of conducting an orchestra and dilates upon the beauty of _Divinites du Styx_ or the adagio of the so-called _Moonlight Sonata_. It is written of Benvenuto, in connection with Vasari's attack upon that cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore which himself was wont to call 'the marvel of beautiful things,' that if he had lived to see the result, 'Certo non capirebbe nelle pelle; _E saltando_, _e correndo_, _e fulminando_, S' andrebbe querelando, E per tutto gridando ad alta voce _Giorgin d'Arezzo meterebbe in croce_, Oggi universalmente Odiato della gente _Quasi publico ladro e assassino_'; and you are reminded irresistibly of Berlioz betrampling Lachnith and the ingenious Castil-Blaze and defending Beethoven against the destructive pedantry of Fetis. And, just as the _Vita_ is invaluable as a personal record of artist-life in the Italy of the Renaissance, so are the _Memoires_ invaluable as a personal record of the works and ways of musicians in the Paris of the Romantic revival. Berlioz is revealed in them for one of the race of the giants. He is the musician of 1830, as Delacroix is the painter; and his work is as typical and as significant as the _Sardanapale_ and the _Faust_ lithographs. His Theory of Autobiography. To read the _Memoires_ is to feel that in writing them the great musician deliberately set himself to win the heart of posterity. He believed in himself, and he believed in his music: he divined that one day or another he would be legendary as well as immortal; and he took an infinite deal of pains to make certain that the ideal which was presently to represent him in men's minds should be an ideal of which he could thoroughly approve. It is fair to note that in this care for the good will and the good word of the future he was not by any means alone. The _romantiques_, indeed, were keen--from Napoleon downwards--to make the very best of themselves. The poet of the _Legende des Siecles_, for example, went early to work to arrange the story of his life and character at least as carefully as he composed the audiences of his _premieres_; and he did it with so light a hand, and with such a sense of the importance of secrecy, that it is even now by no means so well and widely known as it should be that _Victor Hugo raconte par un Temoin de sa Vie_ is the work of the hero's wife, and was not only inspired but may also have been revised and prepared for publication by the hero himself. Again, the dramatist of _Antony_ and the novelist of _Bragelonne_ was never so happy as when he was engaged upon the creation of what he hoped would be the historical Dumas; he made volume after volume of delightful reading out of his own impressions and adventures; he turned himself into