s sad account of himself--"Ever since 1400, have I gone on
struggling, and eating the bread of others, until 1421; after which I
returned to Florence, where I found myself plundered, and in debt, and
totally destitute." The reader will be surprised at his remedy, and the
modern Poor-law Commissioners, those "Indociles pauperiem pati," will
deny the test of destitution, and feel a separating impulse; for he
continues--"I took a wife, and went to Pisa, where I mended the roads
about the gates, and staid four years." The tax returns afford curious
documents. We have that of Massaccio:--"Declaration of the means of
Tommaso di Giovanni, called Massaccio, and of his brother Giovanni, to
the officers of the fisc, detailing their miserable means, inability,
and liability--We live in the house of Andrea Macigni, for which we pay
ten florins a-year." "The son of this Andrea bound himself apprentice in
the studio of Nendi Bicci for two years, in 1458, aged seventeen, to
have fifteen florins and a pair of shoes yearly."[8]

It was the custom of writers, in the time of Cennino, to neglect the
precept of Horace. They did not rush "in medias res"--Cennino in
particular. He not only begins with the beginning of every particular
thing, or invention, or practice; but thinks it necessary to commence
his work on the arts with a much earlier fact than the production of
Leda's egg--even with the creation of the world--and immediately deduces
the art of painting from the fall of Adam, who was from that event
compelled to labor; hence invention--hence the art. His book is,
however, written in a pious spirit; nor have we now-a-days any right, in
good taste, to ridicule his mixing up with his reverence for the
Creator, and the Virgin Mary, and all saints in general, and St
Eustachius, and St Francis, St John the Baptist, St Anthony of Padua,
"the reverence of Giotto of Taddeo, and of Agnolo the master of
Cennino;" nor do we in the least doubt, nay, admire his happy zeal, when
he says that he begins his book "for the utility, and good, and
advantage of those who would attain perfection in the arts." We said
that this is a beautiful volume; the few plates and illustrations are
not the least of its charms: they are drawn on stone by the translator.
We hail the republication of every old work on the arts; and although as
yet we have not been so fortunate as to discover the vehicle of Titian
or Correggio, we do not despair. In a former paper, if we mi