Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/102

80 d'angelica forma, for a thousand lovers, is appropriated by one alone, some Piero or Alessandro de' Medici. Once and again he introduces Love and Death, who dispute concerning him; for, like Dante and all the nobler souls of Italy, he is much occupied with thoughts of the grave, and his true mistress is Death; death at first as the worst of all sorrows and disgraces, with a clod of the field for its brain; afterwards death in its high distinction, its detachment from vulgar needs, the angry stains of life and action escaping fast.

Some of those whom the gods love die young. This man, because the gods loved him, lingered on to be of immense patriarchal age, till the sweetness it had taken so long to secrete in him was found at last. Out of the strong came forth sweetness, ex forti dulcedo. The world had changed around him. Neo-catholicism had taken the place of the Renaissance. The spirit of the Roman Church had changed; in the vast world's cathedral which his skill had helped to raise for it, it looked stronger than ever. Some of the first members of the Oratory were among his intimate associates. They were of a spirit as unlike as possible from that of Lorenzo, or Savonarola even. The opposition of the reform to art has been often enlarged upon; far greater was that of the catholic revival. But in thus fixing itself in a frozen