fluous conceits by the
over-scrupulous but not too conscientious editor of 1623.[412]

Michael Angelo's poems, even after his grand-nephew had tried to reduce
them to lucidity and order, have always been considered obscure and
crabbed. Nor can it be pretended that they gain in smoothness and
clearness by the restoration of the true readings. On the contrary,
instances of defective grammar, harsh elisions, strained metaphors, and
incomplete expressions are multiplied. The difficulty of comprehending the
sense is rather increased than diminished, and the obstacles to a
translator become still more insurmountable than Wordsworth found
them.[413] This being undoubtedly the case, the value of Guasti's edition
for students of Michael Angelo is nevertheless inestimable. We read now
for the first time what the greatest man of the sixteenth century actually
wrote, and are able to enter, without the interference of a fictitious
veil, into the shrine of his own thought and feeling. His sonnets form the
best commentary on Michael Angelo's solitary life and on his sublime ideal
of art. This reflection has guided me in the choice of those now offered
in English, as an illustration of the chapter in this volume devoted to
their author's biography.

Though the dates of Michael Angelo's compositions are conjectural, it may
be assumed that the two sonnets on Dante were written when he was himself
in exile. We know that, while sojourning in the house of Gian Francesco
Aldovrandini at Bologna, he used to spend a portion of his time in reading
Dante aloud to his protector;[414] and the indignation expressed against
Florence, then as ever fickle and ungrateful, the _gente avara, invidiosa,
e superba_, to use Dante's own words, seems proper to a period of just
resentment. Still there is no certainty that they belong to 1495; for
throughout his long life Michael Angelo was occupied with Dante. A story
told of him in 1506, together with the dialogues reported by Donato
Giannotti, prove that he was regarded by his fellow-citizens as an
authority upon the meaning of the "Divine Comedy."[415] In 1518, when the
Florentine Academy petitioned Leo X. to transport the bones of Dante from
Ravenna to Florence, Michael Angelo subscribed the document and offered to
erect a statue worthy of the poet.[416] How deeply the study of Dante
influenced his art, appears not only in the lower part of the "Last
Judgment:" we feel that source of stern and lofty inspir