was called to be a biographer, but it is to his loyalty to his people that we owe his "Parallel Lives." In their composition he was guided by the desire to show the arrogant Romans and the later Greeks in whose midst he lived, that a great Hellenic man of affairs could be put in worthy comparison with every outstanding Roman general and statesman. SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHIC BIOGRAPHY IN ANTIQUITY Biography in antiquity was a branch of science and also a branch of philosophy. Scientific biography was interested in facts as such, in the collocation of miscellaneous information about persons. It laid claim to objectivity of details, but left free room for individuality to display itself in their selection. The principle of choice might be pruriency, political, class, or philosophic animosity, or mere love of scandal. Such biography might be with or without style, with or without painstaking: it was commonly without critical method. The precipitate of much lost scientific biography lies before us in the "Lives of the Twelve Cæsars" by Plutarch's contemporary, Suetonius. In Plutarch's "Parallel Lives," we have, on the other hand, the precipitate of much lost philosophic biography. He stands for us at the end of a long development, in the course of which many contemporary, or approximately contemporary, biographies were produced, each to be superseded perhaps by its successor, as they all were finally superseded and destroyed by those of Plutarch. The plundering of the countless books and pamphlets, plays, and memoirs, cited in the "Parallel Lives," the culling of the multitude of anecdotes and bons mots with which they are set and enlivened, were by no means the personal work of Plutarch. Many, if not most, of them he found gathered for him by his nameless predecessors. He was under no professional sense of duty to look up and verify his references, and he regularly omitted to do it. Mistakes abound in Plutarch's "Lives." But even the historian finds them pardonable when he has the assurance that the materials in conjunction with which they appear were taken by men of greater patience and leisure than Plutarch from works, many of them lost, reaching back over the centuries to the earliest Greek literature. PLUTARCH'S OWN CONTRIBUTION TO HIS “LIVES” The "Lives" of Plutarch are thus in a sense the product of many ages and of many minds. But, like medieval cathedrals, they have unity of design and style. This is not wholly the result of their origin in a community of philosophic biographers. It is in large part the result of Plutarch's own architectonic powers. He was far from being a colorless and characterless compiler. His "Lives" seldom seem "lumpy." They reveal, throughout, the quaint personality of the author. His philosophic standpoint is betrayed in almost every line of criticism they contain. His mastery of literary technique is never wanting. The quiet humor, unobtrusive and delicate, is unmistakably his. Piquancy is a Greek trait, and Plutarch was a Greek. He is never indecent, as his contemporaries understood that term, but he never forgot the natural human interest in the intimate relations of men and women. His dramatic sense needs no more than mention: Shakespeare's debt to Plutarch in his "Julius Cæsar," "Coriolanus," and "Antony and Cleopatra" speaks volumes on this point. Yet, when everything has been said in praise of his fine qualities, it is still true that his mind, like that of the philosophic biographers who preceded him, was an unfortunate medium for the great men of affairs of antiquity to have to pass through on their way to us. They were all sicklied over by the pale cast of ethical interpretation. Men of flesh and blood, actuated by all the reasons and passions of which human beings of diverse but distinguished endowments were capable, tend to appear as puppets exemplifying laudable virtues and deterrent vices. Man whose natures are truly revealed only in the work which they accomplished are isolated from their societies, and characterized by what they did or said at insignificant moments. Trivialities serve Plutarch's purpose of ethical portraiture as well as or better than the historic triumphs and failures of his heroes. Trite ethical considerations are made decisive for the formation of policies and the reaching of decisions instead of the realities of each historical situation. Hence one of the chief duties of modern historians and modern historical biographers has been to murder "Plutarch's men," and put in their stead the real statesmen and generals of ancient times. The latter part of their task, however, they could not even attempt without the materials Plutarch furnishes to them. As for the difficulty of the former, it is well disclosed by the story Mahaffy tells of the illiterate Irish peasant who said of a certain fortunate neighbor that "he had as many lives as Plutarch." T III. BENVENUTO CELLINI BY PROFESSOR CHANDLER RATHFON POST HE Italian Renaissance' produced many works, such as the polemics of the humanists upon subjects that have long since lost their significance, which are interesting rather as illustrations of cultural conditions than for their intrinsic value. Compositions like the pastoral romance of Sannazzaro, or the dramas based upon Senecan or upon Plautine and Terentian models, acquire importance as revivals of ancient literary types and as the seeds from which later great masterpieces were to be evolved. Much smaller is the number of works in which, as in the sonnets of Michelangelo, the absolute value preponderates over the historical. Still fewer, such as the writings of Machiavelli,2 have the distinction of possessing an equal interest archæologically and in themselves, and to this class the "Autobiography" of Benvenuto Cellini3 belongs. No other production of the period embodies more vividly the tendencies of the Renaissance or enjoys a more universal and enduring appeal. We can best appreciate it by considering it under these two aspects. CELLINI AS A TYPE OF RENAISSANCE INDIVIDUALISM Its great importance as a document for the study of contemporary Italian life is obvious to the reader, but its temper also is strikingly related to certain spiritual movements of the day. Of the two determinative characteristics of the Renaissance, humanism, or the devotion to antiquity, and individualism, or the devotion to selfdevelopment, Benvenuto emphasizes the latter. The very natural transition from a study of self to the study of other personalities gave rise to the genre known as biography, eminent instances of 1 See Professor Potter's lecture on the Renaissance in the course on History. 2 Harvard Classics, xxxvi, 7ff; and xxvii, 363ff. 3 H. C., xxxi. The dates of his life are 1500-1571; the "Autobiography" was first published in 1568. which are Vespasiano da Bisticci's "Lives of Illustrious Men," and Giorgio Vasari's more renowned "Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects." Autobiography, however, is an even more pronounced manifestation of individualism, and as the composer of the first great and definite example of this literary form in modern times, Benvenuto stands forth as a brilliant exponent of his age. It is possible, doubtless, for an author to exhibit in an autobiography little of his own individuality, confining himself largely, like Trollope, to a narrative of events and a discussion of his books; but such was not the spirit of the sixteenth century, and Benvenuto even exceeds his time. He strips to the very soul. Unblushingly he lays bare alike his virtues and his vices, his public and his most private actions, his loves and hatreds. He seems unconscious of modesty's existence, and takes a palpable delight, which, by the magic of his style, he causes the reader to share, in analyzing his own passions and in recounting his own deeds and misdeeds; typical and widely varying examples are the affair with the Sicilian girl, Angelica, the terrible revenge for his brother's assassination," the celestial visions experienced in his long and gruesome in carceration. THE CORRECTNESS OF HIS ESTIMATE OF HIMSELF Hand in hand with this attitude struts an exalted opinion of his own charms, prowess, and artistic superiority. In his conceit (for it is only a heroic form of this defect), he embodies not only individualism but also the concurrent phenomenon of humanism, which resurrected from ancient Rome such self-appreciation as appears so disagreeably in Cicero. With his high estimate of his own art modern criticism does not unqualifiedly agree. Of his labor as goldsmith so little that is certainly authentic remains that judg ment is difficult; the chief extant example, the saltcellar of Francis I. now in the Imperial Treasury at Vienna, is unpleasant in composition and too ornate. In his few plastic works on a large scale, one of which, the bronze bust of Bindo Altoviti, America is fortunate enough to possess in the wonderful collection of Mrs. John L. 5 H. C., xxxi, 98-106. 4 H. C., xxxi, 127–138. |