Author Description

Excerpt from The Life of Benvenuto Cellini, Vol. 1 There are diverse motives for autobio raphy, but Cellini' s {was that which most certai nyi leads to success. Yet it was not all conscious, andy' Is vaguely, if at all, shadowed forth in the opening lines of his Memoirs, which might lead readers to suppose he wrote mainly to record his gratitude for perils safely passed and very partially in those scattered passages, where he declares the task he has set himself to be the relation of his professional career. With him motive and qualification are one - a supreme interest in himself. If a writer use his own story as a peg on which to hang the history of his time, or of the movements in which he Is interested, it is a thousand chances to one but his book is third-rate. Cellini never ran that risk. He is always frankly in the foreground Of his pictures of the world. Contem porary dramas where he plays no part are never put on his stage. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.