for solace or to pass the summer, and came to Rome with the sole object of seeing Michelangelo.  He for his part, loved her so, that I remember to have heard him say that he regretted nothing except that when he went to visit her upon the moment of her passage from this life, he did not kiss her forehead or her face, as he did kiss her hand.  Her death was the cause that oftentimes he dwelt astonied, thinking of it, even as a man bereft of sense.”

Michelangelo himself, writing immediately after Vittoria’s death, speaks of her thus:  “She felt the warmest affection for me, and I not less for her.  Death has robbed me of a great friend.”  It is curious that he here uses the masculine gender:  “un grande amico.”  He also composed two sonnets, which were in all probability inspired by the keen pain of this bereavement.  To omit them here would be unjust to the memory of their friendship:—­

  When my rude hammer to the stubborn stone
     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:

The third illustrates in a singular manner that custom of sixteenth-century literature which Shakespeare followed in his sonnets, of weaving poetical images out of thoughts borrowed from law and business.  It is also remarkable in this respect, that Michelangelo has here employed precisely the same conceit for Vittoria Colonna which he found serviceable when at an earlier date he wished to deplore the death of the Florentine, Cecchino dei Bracci.  For both of them he says that Heaven bestowed upon the beloved object all its beauties, instead of scattering these broad-cast over the human race, which, had it done so, would have entailed the bankruptcy and death of all:—­

So that high heaven should have not to distrain From several that vast beauty ne’er yet shown, To one exalted dame alone The total sum was lent in her pure self:—­ Heaven had made sorry gain, Recovering from the crowd its scattered pelf.  Now in a puff of breath, Nay, in one second, God Hath ta’en her back through death, Back from the senseless folk and from our eyes.  Yet earth’s oblivious sod, Albeit her body dies, Will bury not her live words fair and holy.  Ah, cruel mercy!  Here thou showest solely How, had heaven lent us ugly what she took, And death the debt reclaimed, all men were broke.

Without disputing the fact that a very sincere emotion underlay these verses, it must be submitted that, in the words of Samuel Johnson about “Lycidas,” “he who thus grieves will excite no sympathy; he who thus praises will confer no honour.”  This conviction will be enforced when we reflect that the thought upon which the madrigal above translated has been woven (1547) had been already used for Cecchino dei Bracci in 1544.  It is clear that, in dealing with Michelangelo’s poetical compositions, we have to accept a mass of conventional utterances, penetrated with a few firmly grasped Platonical ideas.  It is only after long familiarity with his work that a man may venture to distinguish between the accents of the heart and the head-notes in the case of so great a master using an art he practised mainly as an amateur.  I shall have to return to these considerations when I discuss the value of his poetry taken as a whole.