Page:The Life of Michael Angelo.djvu/218

 of his promises, adding that if Francis I. came and re-established liberty in Florence he would undertake to raise a bronze equestrian statue to him on the Piazza della Signoria at his own expense. In 1546 he gave to Strozzi, in recognition of the hospitality he had received, the two "Slaves," which Strozzi presented to Francis I.

But this was merely an outburst of political fever—the last one. In some passages of his Dialogues with Giannotti, in 1545, he expresses almost Tolstoy's thoughts on the uselessness of struggling and of non-resistance to evil. "It is a piece of great presumption to dare to kill any one, for we cannot know with certainty whether his death will lead to any good or whether any good will come from his death. Consequently I cannot bear those men who believe that it is impossible to produce good unless they begin with evil—that is, with murder. Times change, new events arise, desires are transformed and men grow tired. . . . And, after all, the unforeseen always happens."

The same Michael Angelo who had spoken in favour of tyrannicide now grew irritated against revolutionaries who imagined they could change the world at a stroke. He well knew that he had been one of them, and it was himself whom he condemned bitterly. Like Hamlet, he had doubts about everything now—his thoughts, his hatreds, and everything he had believed. He turned his back on action.

"That honest man," he wrote, "who replied to some one: 'I am not a statesman, I am an honest man and a man of common sense,' spoke the truth. If only my