It was then too that he met the agreeable and convivial Rustici, of whom I have said something in the chapter on the Baptistery, and quickly became something of a bloodfor by this time, the second decade of the sixteenth century, the simplicity of the early artists had given place to dashing sophistication and the great period was nearly over.

"We know little," he says, "that the author can say for himself to excuse these sophistications, and, therefore, may charitably suggest that he was writing a romance, and not a history."

In the former case, they will readily make allowance for the imperfection of modern language; in the latter, they will hardly pardon the sophistication of ancient manners.

Then he recollected his sophistication to say: "Unless its being of that particular shade between brown and red was wrong.