In 1535 he removed to Rome, where he spent the rest of his life; dying there in 1564 at the ripe age of eighty-nine. During this period he executed the 'Last Judgment,' and built the Farnese Palace.

Although Symonds considers his literary work merely "a scholastic exercise upon the emotions," and says that "his stock in trade consists of a few Platonic notions and a few Petrarchian antitheses," the Italian critics place Michel Angelo's sonnets immediately after those of Dante and Petrarch. It may be mentioned here that the sculptor was a devoted student of Dante, as his sonnets to the great poet show. Not only did he translate into painting much symbolical imagery of the 'Inferno,' but he illustrated the 'Divina Commedia' in a magnificent series of drawings, which unfortunately perished at The popular interest in so universal a genius lies not in descriptions of his personality and traits of character, but in his theories of art and life, and in those psychological moods which explain the source of the intellectual and spiritual power expressed in his mystical conceptions. These moods have free utterance in his poems, written at all periods of his life.

sea.

The name most frequently associated with his poetry is that of Vittoria Colonna, Marchesa di Pescara, whom he met in Rome after he had passed the meridian of life. She had been for two years a widow; and refusing to reward Michel Angelo's devotion by the gift of her hand, finally entered a convent. Their friendship lasted from 1527 to her death in 1547. Whether she was the Egeria of his spiritual life, or a romantic love, has long been the subject of critical speculation. The first editor of Michel Angelo's poems attributed most of his sonnets and madrigals to her inspiration; but only a few may be thus credited with certainty. His extravagant admiration for Tommaso dei Cavalieri, a young Roman gentleman of extraordinary physical beauty and grace of manner, the only person of whom Michel Angelo ever drew a cartoon portrait,-is expressed with as much devotion. Symonds speaks thus of Michel Angelo's ambiguous beauty-worship: "Whether a man or a woman is in the case (for both were probably the objects of his æsthetical admiration), the tone of feeling, the language, and the philosophy do not vary. He uses the same imagery, the same conceits, the same abstract ideas, for both sexes; and adapts the leading motive which he had invented for a person of one sex to a person of the other when it suits his purpose." In his art too is found no imaginative feeling for what is specifically feminine. With few exceptions, his women, as compared with those of Raphael, Correggio, Titian, and Tintoretto, are really colossal companions for primeval gods; such as, for example, his Sibyls and Fates, which are Titanic in their majesty. Although tranquil women of maturity exist by means of his marvelous brush and chisel, to woman in the magic of youthful beauty his art seems insensible.

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The inference is, that emotionally he never feels the feminine spirit, and reverences alone that of eternal and abstract beauty.

enormous.

The literature that clusters around the name of Michel Angelo is The chief storehouse of material is preserved in the Casa Buonarotti in Florence. This consists of letters, poems, and memoranda in Michel Angelo's autograph; copies of his sonnets made by his grandnephew and Michel Angelo the younger; and his correspondence with famous contemporaries. In 1859 the British Museum purchased a large manuscript collection of memoranda, used first by Hermann Grimm in his 'Leben Michelangelos' (1860), the fifth edition of which was published in Hanover in 1875. Public and private libraries possess valuable data and manuscripts, more or less employed by the latest biographers. To celebrate Michel Angelo's fourth centenary, a volume of his 'Letters' was edited by Gaetano Milanesi and published in Florence in 1875. The first edition of the artist's poems was published in 1623 by Michel Angelo the younger, as 'Le Rime di Michelangelo Buonarotti'; and they were known only to the world in this distorted form until 1863, when a new edition was brought out in Florence by Cesare Guasti. This is considered the first classical and valuable presentation of his poetry. The earliest lives of Michel Angelo are by Vasari, in his first edition of the Lives of Italian Artists,' published in 1550, enlarged and republished in 1579; and by Condovi, who published his biography in 1553, while his master was still living. Other important biographies are by Aurelio Gotti in two volumes (Florence, 1875); by Charles Heath Wilson (London, 1876); and by John Addington Symonds (two volumes, London, 1892), which contains a bibliography, a portrait, and valuable guidance for research upon Michel Angelo's genius, works, and character. The same author translated his sonnets, and published them with those of Campanella (London, 1878). His translations are used in the following selections.

B

A PRAYER FOR STRENGTH

URDENED with years and full of sinfulness,

With evil custom grown inveterate,

Both deaths I dread that close before me wait,
Yet feed my heart on poisonous thoughts no less.
No strength I find in my own feebleness

To change or life, or love, or use, or fate,
Unless Thy heavenly guidance come, though late,
Which only helps and stays our nothingness.

'Tis not enough, dear Lord, to make me yearn
For that celestial home where yet my soul

May be new-made, and not, as erst, of naught:
Nay, ere thou strip her mortal vestment, turn
My steps toward the steep ascent, that whole
And pure before thy face she may be brought.

WH

THE IMPEACHMENT OF NIGHT

HAT time bright Phoebus doth not stretch and bend His shining arms around this terrene sphere, The people call that season dark and drear, Night, for the cause they do not comprehend. So weak is Night that if our hand extend

A glimmering torch, her shadows disappear,
Leaving her dead; like frailest gossamere,
Tinder and steel her mantle rive and rend.
Nay, if this Night be anything at all,

Sure she is daughter of the sun and earth;
This holds, the other spreads that shadowy pall.
Howbeit, they err who praise this gloomy birth,
So frail and desolate and void of mirth
That one poor firefly can her might appall.

LOVE, THE LIFE-GIVER

TO TOMMASO DE' CAVALIERI

ITH your fair eyes a charming light I see,

WITH

For which my own blind eyes would peer in vain; Stayed by your feet, the burden I sustain Which my lame feet find all too strong for me; Wingless, upon your pinions forth I fly;

Heavenward your spirit stirreth me to strain,
E'en as you will, I blush and blanch again,
Freeze in the sun, burn 'neath a frosty sky.
Your will includes and is the lord of mine;

Life to my thoughts within your heart is given;
My words begin to breathe upon your breath:

Like to the moon am I, that cannot shine
Alone; for lo! our eyes see naught in heaven
Save what the living sun illumineth.

IRREPARABLE LOSS

AFTER THE DEATH OF VITTORIA COLONNA

HEN my rude hammer to the stubborn stone

WHE

Gives human shape, now that, now this, at will, Following his hand who wields and guides it still, It moves upon another's feet alone:

But that which dwells in heaven, the world doth fill With beauty by pure motions of its own;

And since tools fashion tools which else were none,
Its life makes all that lives with living skill.

Now, for that every stroke excels the more

The higher at the forge it doth ascend,

Her soul that fashioned mine hath sought the skies: Wherefore unfinished I must meet my end,

If God, the great Artificer, denies

That aid which was unique on earth before.

M

JULES MICHELET

(1798-1874)

BY GRACE KING

ICHELET said of himself: "My book created me; it was I that was its work." The book he referred to was his 'Histoire de France, in sixteen volumes, the laborious task of forty years; the work of his life, the work that was his life. His other books were accessory to it; the sprouts, as it were, from its roots in the over-rich soil of his mind. "I have been much favored by destiny," he continued. "I have possessed two rare gifts which have made this work: First, liberty, which was the soul of it; then, useful duties, which, by dragging it out and retarding its execution, made it more reflective and stronger, -gave it the solidity, the robust foundation of time. . I was free, by my solitude, by my poverty, and by my teaching. I had but one master, Vico. His principle of vital force - Humanity, which created itself made my book and made my education."

JULES MICHELET

Michelet's life confirms this personal testimony. He was born in 1798, of humble parentage; and his childhood was a hard, sad, poverty-stricken one. His father and uncle were printers; and he himself, as soon as he was old enough, was apprenticed to the same trade. But at the same time he began his other apprenticeship to the spiritual head of printing,- Literature; and while learning to set type he made his first efforts at study under an old librarian, an ex-schoolmaster. It was proposed to his family to enter him in the "Imprimerie Royale." This his father not only refused, but on the contrary employed his last meagre resources to enter the youth in the Lycée Charlemagne. Here Michelet began his career at once by hard study, and received his degree in 1821 after passing a brilliant examination. This obtained for him a professorship of history in the Collège Rollin, where he remained until 1826. His first writings date from this period, and were sketches and chronological tables of modern history. Although elementary in