incongruities, have preserved uninjured the evidence of his deficiencies, Nothing, however, in his architectural career is more melancholy than the results of the banishment to Carrara and Pietra Santa. It is true there is not much probably to regret in the non-execution of that façade, on the preparation of which Leo X. wasted the best years of the greatest man of his pontificate; at the same time a deeper moral is added to the injustice by the fact that, of the five columns which appear to have been the chief fruits of this profanation of his energies, one only reached Florence. This lay for years, broken in two, before the church it had been destined to ornament, and there still lies, we are assured, immersed in the deposit of centuries. The four others, after traversing the road he had constructed, never advanced beyond the place of embarkation.

We must be brief in our comments on the fourth element of Michael Angelo's mental constitution. To measure his poetry by the standard of his plastic and pictorial powers, as some commentators have attempted, is as mistaken as it is uncomplimentary. 'Subjective' is a term which cannot be said to distinguish an art depending, by its very nature, on the predominance of individual thought and character. The peculiar qualities also of his artistic genius, to the great advantage of his muse, are not visible in his verse. There are no ebullitions of Barsark energy in his poetic sentiments, no redundant thunder of sound in his verse. The relation of means to end, as in his engineering science, is clearly perceived: he never displays strength merely for strength's sake. Had he only written as he wrought, the world would have added no fourth garland to his brow. It must be admitted that his poetry is occasionally rugged in form-that it is in parts obscure even to an Italian (though for this the lapse of time, which affects the mutable forms of thought, may account), and that the leading signs of his art are in this particular traceable. But no one would pronounce these to be the predominant characteristics of his poetry. On the contrary, his lyric muse is compact in form, while his graphic muse was diffuse: his verse is pregnant with clear meaning, uttering things,' as Berni said of him, while others only spoke 'words'-his most lauded art is singularly unintelligible: the language of his hand spurned precedent even of the highest order; the language of his poetry is modelled on the purest types of his native tongue his poetry, considered as the general worship of the Beautiful, justifies the quotation Mr. Harford has given from Condivi-That he not only admired human beauty, but universally everything beautiful—a beautiful horse or dog, a beautiful landscape and plant, a beautiful mountain and forest, a beautiful

beautiful situation, and, in short, every beautiful thing that can be imagined-surveying it with the most animated delight, and extracting pleasure from the beauties of nature as bees do the honey from flowers.' No words, on the other hand, could be more out of place, applied to his art.

Here, therefore, that connexion which Mr. Harford has sought to establish between the mind of Michael Angelo and the mind of his time, and which we have repudiated in his art, comes legitimately into view, and is pointed out by his biographer with singular success. All that was real in the sentiments and phraseology of modern Platonism found ready reception in a heart and life alike earnest and virtuous. In his homage to a pagan philosophy there was no self-flattering pride conveniently screening vague principles-no profane and vain babblings,' which disfigure more or less almost every work on letters and art of that time. At the same time we are not inclined to assume that the contrition expressed in those beautiful sonnets, beginning, 'Carico d'anni, e di peccati pieno;' and again, 'Vivo al peccato, ed a me morto vivo,' refer really to any substitution of the code of a Medicean Platonism for the doctrines of Christianity. Though he was carried along in phraseology, and partially in thought, in that orbit of habit wherein each generation moves, it is difficult to believe that it affected the equilibrium of his inmost heart. He who had known the heart-sickness of hope deferred, and never realised, is here heard acknowledging, not that he had bowed down to any particular form of falsehood, but simply that, having set his affections on earthly things, he had found them wanting.

We must confess a preference for Mr. Harford's faithful translations of Michael Angelo's poetry over the versions of Wordsworth and Southey, who have rather exchanged one beauty for another than kept close to the original. In the renderings of Mr. Harford we have far more of the unalloyed spirit of the great Italian.

The same desire to know only what his theme teaches attends Mr. Harford's interpretation of the bond which united the illustrious names of Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna-a bond so far unlike others over which poetry has shed her beams, as to shine with the purer lustre the closer it is seen. If it be insulting to attach the idea of love in its common sense to two such joint names, it is equally as absurd to apply the term 'Platonic' to one of the loftiest instances of friendship that ever existed between elderly man and woman. These were the days when no man spoke of his lady as a woman, or of his devotion as a passion; when Cardinal Bembo created a furore in Venice

and

what was then considered the highest homage Genius could receive, he gives an anecdote of Julius III. in the next page, which must be translated literally to be believed. 'Having access,' Condivi says, 'to his Holiness, I have heard with my own ears from his own mouth, that, if he should survive Michael Angelo, which the natural course of life renders probable, he would have him embalmed, and kept close to his own person, so that his body should be as perpetual as his works. Which thing, at the beginning of his pontificate, he told Michael Angelo himself, many being present. Nor do I know of anything more honourable to Michael Angelo than these words, nor a greater sign of the esteem in which his Holiness holds him.'-p. 48.

We turn from such a story as this as by a natural consequence to that air of melancholy which characterises every portrait of this great man. Men sung his praises and sought his counsel; a younger generation came upon the scene, who knew, in a dim way, that a great Presence still lingered among them; and the nephews of those who had filled his cup with bitterness stood uncovered before him. But the iron had entered his soul. His later letters are full of a stern sadness, for which no infirmity of age, in a mind so vigorous to the last, can account. He is displeased at his nephew's rejoicings at the birth of a son, because 'l'uomo non deve ridere quando il mondo tutto piange." The death of his servant Urbino, for whose long services he thanks God, leaves him nothing, he says, but una infinita miseria.' Writing to Cosimo I. of Florence, he regrets not to be able to comply with his wishes regarding the church of S. Giovanni, because he is old and 'mal d'accordo con la vita.' And if asked to trace a motto under the noble and pathetic head from the bronze bust by John of Bologna, in Mr. Harford's accompanying folio, we should banish all thoughts of his art, his works, and his virtues, and, remembering only those sorrows which have impressed our heart as deeply as his genius, inscribe his own words written at the foot of some plans for a chapel in St. Peter's: Could one die of grief and shame, I should ere this have ceased to exist.'

Our task must stop here. The analysis of Michael Angelo's art and works, however inadequately performed, was all we proposed to ourselves. The marvellous eye and hand which battled with so many forms of difficulty have given us some insight into his character, and more still is derived from the study of his verse. Both combined, however, are far from supplying a full picture of his mind. As regards cotemporary biography, we have had reason to see that in this case it is singularly unworthy of trust. The world is therefore thrown on such evidence

as

as his unpublished letters supply. Count Cosimo Buonarroti, their possessor, has recently died, bequeathing, we understand, the Casa Buonarroti and its inestimable contents to the government of his native Tuscany. It is impossible that Michael Angelo's letters should have been better preserved and more honoured than by his collateral descendant, and it is to be hoped that they will at last be made available to the public. Then, we have no doubt, from our own limited knowledge of these documents, that a better glory than any that even art can bestow will encompass the name of Michael Angelo, and that even Mr. Harford will find the object of his generous devotion still more worthy of the monument he has raised to him. We understand that a second edition of his work is already called for. If it appears before he can profit by the treasury of new material which is now open to him, it is to be hoped that the correspondence of the great painter, architect, sculptor, and poet, will be published later in a supplement.

ART. VI.-1. The Speeches of Lord Chatham, Sheridan, Erskine, and Fox; with Biographical Memoirs, and Introductions and Explanatory Notes. Edited by a Barrister. 4th edition.

2 vols. imp. 8vo. London, 1855.

2. Speeches on Social and Political Subjects, with Historical Introductions. By Henry Lord Brougham, F.R.S., Member of the National Institute of France, and of the Royal Academy of Naples. 2 vols. post 8vo. London, 1857.

3. An Inaugural Address delivered by Earl Stanhope at his Installation as Lord Rector of Marischal University, Aberdeen. 8vo. London, 1858.

N an admirable address to the University of Aberdeen, Lord Stanhope has recently proved to the students, by numerous happy illustrations drawn from the lives of eminent men in the various departments of literature and science, that success is only to be obtained by industry. He repudiated the notion of heaven-born genius, if by that term is meant genius which spontaneously pours forth its stores without labour or study. The greatest talents, like the richest soil, only yields its choicest fruits to persevering tillage. If there is one branch of excellence which more than another has been supposed to be the gift of untutored nature, it is the faculty of verse; if there is one poet more than another who derived his inspiration from the innate passions of his heated mind, and who appeared to possess the power of embodying fervid feelings in glowing rhymes without

the

the smallest effort, it was unquestionably Lord Byron. Yet in a conversation, quoted by Lord Stanhope, he asserted that it was nonsense to talk of extemporising verse. The prodigious quantity which he wrote during his short life is no less a proof of his diligence than of his fertility. Mr. Trelawny represents him as spending the larger part of his waking hours in meditating his works; and no physician or lawyer in extensive practice ever followed their professions with more dogged perseverance. His friend Moore, whose songs and tales have a far-fetched prettiness which indicates greater elaboration, confesses of himself that he had been at all times a slower and more painstaking workman than would ever be guessed from the result.' Pope tells us that in his boyhood he lisped in numbers, for the numbers came; but if they came unsought, it was a felicity which for sook him as his understanding matured. Though by no means a voluminous writer, considering the many years he worked at his craft, Swift complained that he was never at leisure for conversation, because he had always some poetical scheme in his head,' He was in the habit of jotting down in the night, as he lay in bed, any striking thought or lucky expression which passed through his mind, lest it should be forgotten before morning. He recorded lines or fragments of lines, which he hoped to turn to account at a future period, and allowed not a crumb to fall to the ground. What he composed with care, he corrected with patience. He kept his pieces by him long before consigning them to the press; he read them to his friends, and invited their criticism; and his condensed couplets, which seem 'finished more through happiness than pains,' really owe their first quality to the last. As we ascend higher the same truth is equally apparent. Milton's studies are revealed in every page of the Paradise Lost.' One of the most original of poets in his conceptions and style, his particular phrases and allusions may be tracked in all the best literature both ancient and modern which existed before his day. He who invoked his muse to raise him to the height of his great argument' did by that very expression intimate how vast an effort he considered to be necessary to treat worthily so sublime a theme, as in his Lycidas he had declared, that to scorn delights and live laborious days' was the indispensable condition of fame. Of the habits of Shakespeare we know nothing, except that the players boasted that he never blotted a line, which only proves that he must have matured his conceptions before committing them o paper. The knowledge of human nature is a matter of experience and not of intuition; and at least he must have been a diligent reader of men if he had been a careless reader of books. He

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