He ate that he might live, not lived that he might eat.  For seventeen years after he was seventy-two he worked on St. Peter’s church; worked without pay, that he might render to God his last earthly tribute without alloy,—­as religious as those unknown artists who erected Rheims and Westminster.  He was modest and patient, yet could not submit to the insolence of little men in power.  He even left the papal palace in disdain when he found his labors unappreciated.  Julius II. was forced to bend to the stern artist, not the artist to the Pope.  Yet when Leo X. sent him to quarry marbles for nine years, he submitted without complaint.  He had no craving for riches like Rubens, no love of luxury like Raphael, no envy like Da Vinci.  He never over-tasked his brain, or suffered himself, like Raphael,—­who died exhausted at thirty-seven,—­to crowd three days into one, knowing that over-work exhausts the nervous energies and shortens life.  He never attempted to open the doors which Providence had plainly shut against him, but waited patiently for his day, knowing it would come; yet whether it came or not, it was all the same to him,—­a man with all the holy rapture of a Kepler, and all the glorious self-reliance of a Newton.  He was indeed jealous of his fame, but he was not greedy of admiration.  He worked without the stimulus of praise,—­one of the rarest things,—­urged on purely by love of art.  He loved art for its own sake, as good men love virtue, as Palestrina loved music, as Bacon loved truth, as Kant loved philosophy,—­satisfied with itself as its own reward.  He disliked to be patronized, but always remembered benefits, and loved the tribute of respect and admiration, even as he scorned the empty flatterer of fashion.  He was the soul of sincerity as well as of magnanimity; and hence had great capacity for friendship, as well as great power of self-sacrifice His friendship with Vittoria Colonna is as memorable as that of Jerome and Paula, or that of Hildebrand and the Countess Matilda.  He was a great patriot, and clung to his native Florence with peculiar affection.  Living in habits of intimacy with princes and cardinals, he never addressed them in adulatory language, but talked and acted like a nobleman of nature, whose inborn and superior greatness could be tested only by the ages.  He placed art on the highest pinnacle of the temple of humanity, but dedicated that temple to the God of heaven in whom he believed.  His person was not commanding, but intelligence radiated from his features, and his earnest nature commanded respect.  In childhood he was feeble, but temperance made him strong.  He believed that no bodily decay was incompatible with intellectual improvement.  He continued his studies until he died, and felt that he had mastered nothing.  He was always dissatisfied with his own productions. Excelsior was his motto, as Alp on Alp arose upon his view.  His studies were diversified and vast.  He wrote poetry as well as carved stone, his sonnets especially holding