The Autobiography is his best monument, better even than the Perseus. There was too much vehemence about him, he used too many gestures, and it seems the most natural thing in the world that his fame should be preserved in a work of literature rather than in a work of art. He was of too impulsive a habit to make immortal statues. But there is no denying that where the Italian was vulnerable was in just that foible which Balzac, in his penetrating way, hits off so well. Indeed, if we carry it too far, it is bound to break down, for Cellini was every inch a man, and there is a deplorably effeminate weakness about ​Wenceslas. He had an immense amount of energy, but he did not concentrate it and send it through the right channels with the devoted instinct of the great artist. "Benvenuto Cellini was a kind of Steinbock. At the same time, these half artists are delightful men like them and cram them with praise they even seem superior to the true artists, who are taxed with conceit, unsociableness, contempt of the laws of society. There are many clever men in Paris who spend their lives in talking themselves out, and are content with a sort of drawing-room celebrity. Describing the Pole as wasting a large proportion of his time in talking about the statue instead of working at it, he thus continues: "He talked admirably about art, and in the eyes of the world he maintained his reputation as a great artist by his powers of conversation and criticism. He is speaking of Wenceslas Steinbock, the sculptor, and of the way in which his statue of Marshal Montcornet somehow fails to get itself turned into a masterpiece. N "La Cousine Bette" Balzac has an illuminating note on one phase of the artistic temperament.
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