the opinion of others.  Francis engaged on equal terms in the discussion.  His veneration for Buonarroti, and the eagerness with which he noted all the great man’s utterances, did not prevent him from delivering lectures at a somewhat superfluous length.  In short, we may fairly accept his account of these famous conferences as a truthful transcript from the refined and witty social gatherings of which Vittoria Colonna formed the centre.

IV

This friendship with Vittoria Colonna forms a very charming episode in the history of Michelangelo’s career, and it was undoubtedly one of the consolations of his declining years.  Yet too great stress has hitherto been laid on it by his biographers.  Not content with exaggerating its importance in his life, they have misinterpreted its nature.  The world seems unable to take interest in a man unless it can contrive to discover a love-affair in his career.  The singular thing about Michelangelo is that, with the exception of Vittoria Colonna, no woman is known to have influenced his heart or head in any way.  In his correspondence he never mentions women, unless they be aunts, cousins, grand-nieces, or servants.  About his mother he is silent.  We have no tradition regarding amours in youth or middle age; and only two words dropped by Condivi lead us to conjecture that he was not wholly insensible to the physical attractions of the female.  Romancers and legend-makers have, therefore, forced Vittoria Colonna to play the role of Juliet in Michelangelo’s life-drama.  It has not occurred to these critics that there is something essentially disagreeable in the thought of an aged couple entertaining an amorous correspondence.  I use these words deliberately, because poems which breathe obvious passion of no merely spiritual character have been assigned to the number he composed for Vittoria Colonna.  This, as we shall see, is chiefly the fault of his first editor, who printed all the sonnets and madrigals as though they were addressed to one woman or another.  It is also in part due to the impossibility of determining their exact date in the majority of instances.  Verses, then, which were designed for several objects of his affection, male or female, have been indiscriminately referred to Vittoria Colonna, whereas we can only attribute a few poems with certainty to her series.

This mythus of Michelangelo’s passion for the Marchioness of Pescara has blossomed and brought forth fruit abundantly from a single and pathetic passage in Condivi.  “In particular, he greatly loved the Marchioness of Pescara, of whose divine spirit he was enamoured, being in return dearly beloved by her.  He still preserves many of her letters, breathing honourable and most tender affection, and such as were wont to issue from a heart like hers.  He also wrote to her a great number of sonnets, full of wit and sweet longing.  She frequently removed from Viterbo and other places, whither she had gone