sole heir after Gismondo’s life-tenancy of a moiety.  It does not, however, seem to have been executed, for Michelangelo died intestate.  Probably, he judged it simplest to allow Lionardo to become his heir-general by the mere course of events.  At the same time, he now displayed more than his usual munificence in charity.  Lionardo was frequently instructed to seek out a poor and gentle family, who were living in decent distress, poveri vergognosi, as the Italians called such persons.  Money was to be bestowed upon them with the utmost secrecy; and the way which Michelangelo proposed, was to dower a daughter or to pay for her entrance into a convent.  It has been suggested that this method of seeking to benefit the deserving poor denoted a morbid tendency in Michelangelo’s nature; but any one who is acquainted with Italian customs in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance must be aware that nothing was commoner than to dower poor girls or to establish them in nunneries by way of charity.  Urbino, for example, by his will bound his executors to provide for the marriage of two honest girls with a dowry of twenty florins apiece within the space of four years from his death.

The religious sonnets, which are certainly among the finest of Michelangelo’s compositions, belong to this period.  Writing to Vasari on the 10th of September 1554, he begins:  “You will probably say that I am old and mad to think of writing sonnets; yet since many persons pretend that I am in my second childhood, I have thought it well to act accordingly.”  Then follows this magnificent piece of verse, in which the sincerest feelings of the pious heart are expressed with a sublime dignity:—­

  Now hath my life across a stormy sea,
      Like a frail bark, reached that wide fort where all
      Are bidden, ere the final reckoning fall
      Of good and evil for eternity. 
  Now know I well how that fond phantasy
      Which made my soul the worshipper and thrall
      Of earthly art is vain; how criminal
      Is that which all men seek unwillingly. 
  Those amorous thoughts which were so lightly dressed,
      What are they when the double death is nigh? 
      The one I know for sure, the other dread. 
  Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest
      My soul, that turns to His great love on high,
      Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread.

A second sonnet, enclosed in a letter to Vasari, runs as follows:—­

  The fables of the world have filched away
      The time I had for thinking upon God;
      His grace lies buried ’neath oblivion’s sod,
      Whence springs an evil crop of sins alway.

  What makes another wise, leads me astray,
    Slow to discern the bad path I have trod: 
    Hope fades, but still desire ascends that God
    May free me from self-love, my sure decay. 
  Shorten half-way my road to heaven from