One of the great difficulties under which a critic labours in discussing these personal poems is that their chronology cannot be ascertained in the majority of instances.  Another is that we are continually hampered by the false traditions invented by Michelangelo the younger.  Books like Lannan Rolland’s “Michel-Ange et Vittoria Colonna” have no value whatsoever, because they are based upon that unlucky grand-nephew’s deliberately corrupted text.  Even Wadsworth’s translations, fine as they are, have lost a large portion of their interest since the publication of the autographs by Cesare Guasti in 1863.  It is certain that the younger Michelangelo meant well to his illustrious ancestor.  He was anxious to give his rugged compositions the elegance and suavity of academical versification.  He wished also to defend his character from the imputation of immorality.  Therefore he rearranged the order of stanzas in the longer poems, pieced fragments together, changed whole lines, ideas, images, amplified and mutilated, altered phrases which seemed to him suspicious.  Only one who has examined the manuscripts of the Buonarroti Archives knows what pains he bestowed upon this ungrateful and disastrous task.  But the net result of his meddlesome benevolence is that now for nearly three centuries the greatest genius of the Italian Renaissance has worn a mask concealing the real nature of his emotion, and that a false legend concerning his relations to Vittoria Colonna has become inextricably interwoven with the story of his life.

The extraordinary importance attached by Michelangelo in old age to the passions of his youth is almost sufficient to justify those psychological investigators who regard him as the subject of a nervous disorder.  It does not seem to be accounted for by anything known to us regarding his stern and solitary life, his aloofness from the vulgar, and his self-dedication to study.  In addition to the splendid devotional sonnets addressed to Vasari, which will appear in their proper place, I may corroborate these remarks by the translation of a set of three madrigals bearing on the topic.

Ah me, ah me! how have I been betrayed By my swift-flitting years, and by the glass, Which yet tells truth to those who firmly gaze!  Thus happens it when one too long delays, As I have done, nor feels time fleet and, fade:—­ One morn he finds himself grown old, alas!  To gird my loins, repent, my path repass, Sound counsel take, I cannot, now death’s near; Foe to myself, each tear, Each sigh, is idly to the light wind sent, For there’s no loss to equal time ill-spent.

  Ah me, ah me!  I wander telling o’er
  Past years, and yet in all I cannot view
  One day that might be rightly reckoned mine. 
  Delusive hopes and vain desires entwine
  My soul that loves, weeps, burns, and sighs full sore. 
  Too well I know and prove that this is true,
  Since of man’s passions none to me are new. 
  Far from the truth my steps have gone astray,
  In peril now I stay,
  For, lo! the brief span of my life is o’er. 
  Yet, were it lengthened, I should love once more.