Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/99

Rh figured work inlaid with lovely incidents. In Michelangelo's poems frost and fire are almost the only images—the refining fire of the goldsmith; once or twice the phœnix; ice melting at the fire; fire struck from the rock which it afterwards consumes. Except one doubtful allusion to a journey, there are almost no incidents. But there is much of the bright sharp unerring skill with which in boyhood he gave the look of age to the head of a faun by chipping a tooth from its jaw with a single stroke of the hammer. For Dante, the amiable and devout materialism of the Middle Age sanctifies all that is presented by hand and eye. Michelangelo is always pressing forward from the outward beauty—il bel del fuor che agli occhi piace—to apprehend the unseen beauty; trascenda nella forma universale—that abstract form of beauty about which the Platonists reason. And this gives the impression in him of something flitting and unfixed, of the houseless and complaining spirit, almost clairvoyant through the frail and yielding flesh. He accounts for love at first sight by a previous state of existence—la dove io t'amai prima The 'Contemporary Review' for September, 1872, contains translations of 'Twenty-three Sonnets from Michael Angelo,' executed with great taste and skill, from the original text as published by Guasti. I venture to quote the following:—

.