Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/132

124 shall read it too, for yer kindness,' said she. I unfolded the paper, and read as follows:—

This certifies that Kitty Quadd is a good domestic, capable of doing all kinds of work; but she will get drunk when opportunity offers.

(Signed). S.

it is impossible, in the short space usually allotted to book-notices, to criticize such an important work as M. Grimm's Life of Michael Angelo, a concise description of its contents may still be desirable. The work may be taken as an example of the great advance made in the art of writing biography since the commencement of the present century. Old biographies, like old histories, are little else than gossiping chronicles of events, interspersed with vague moral reflections, which usually have as much to do with every other subject in the realm of thought as with the subject especially under consideration. The present generation, however, has produced histories, like those of Buckle and Draper, which, whether successfully or not, have endeavored to exhibit the causal relation of events to one another. In them, historic occurrences are viewed as the evidence, confirmatory or illustrative, of certain laws of progress, the elucidation of which is the main object of the work. A similar change has occurred in the manner of writing biography. The Life of Robespierre, and the still more elaborate and finished Life of Goethe, by Mr. Lewes, have aimed at presenting the circumstances which influenced the development of their heroes,—at showing us the steps by which they have obtained, the one an infamous and horrible notoriety, the other the love and veneration of mankind, both now and as long as mankind shall endure. The work of M. Grimm is in some respects similar to these. The author is not content with telling us when the great Michael Angelo was born, when he died, who his parents were, what he painted, wrote, sculptured, and builded, where he lived, and how many feet and inches he measured in his stockings. He aims at more than this. He presents us with a vivid picture of the life and manners, the opinions and feelings of Italian men at the time when this great creative genius lived. He sets before us the circumstances which guided his career, the occurrences upon which his intellect was brought to bear, and the objects with which his imagination was nurtured. In short, he shows us Michael Angelo in his environment. The life of Michael Angelo is, indeed, peculiarly susceptible of such a treatment. To a far greater extent in him than in most creators can be traced the influence of external circumstances. His long life, extending over nearly a century, was affected for good or ill by very many of the great political events contemporaneously occurring,—and few other ages have been more fruitful in great events. Born in 1475, in the good old days of Florentine freedom under the earlier Medici, when the Arabs still ruled from the Alhambra the fairest portion of Spain, when America was yet undiscovered, and before England had recovered from the civil wars of the Roses, his life extended to 1564, to the times of Elizabeth, of Philip II., and of William the Silent. He saw the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times. He beheld the rise and fall of Savonarola; the invasions of Naples by Charles VIII. and Louis XII., and its conquest by Gonsalvo; the struggle for supremacy between Charles V. and Francis I.; the rise of Protestantism and the establishment of the Inquisition; the horrible sack of Rome by the troops of De Bourbon; and the extinction of liberty in his native city,—the robbing of the Florentine Peter in 1530 to reimburse the Roman Paul for damages sustained in 1527. In the last fearful struggle of the Florentines for their liberty Michael Angelo took an important part. The city-walls were fortified under his direction, and not a day of the dreadful siege saw him absent from his post on San Miniato. Before that, he had been connected with the proceedings of Savonarola; and his marvellous group of the Mourning Madonna and the Dead Christ is supposed by Grimm to have been called forth by the sad occurrences of 1498. He was connected with Lorenzo de' Medici, Piero his son, Julius II., Leo X., Clement VII, Paul III., Paul IV., and Pius IV.; and the complicated affairs of each of these rulers affected at every turn his life, and not unfrequently gave to his labors an entirely new direction.

It is M. Grimm's great merit to have described all these events so that they appear