. It is open to critics of the school of Lessing
to object that here is the suicide of sculpture. It is easy to remark
that those strained postures and writhen limbs may have perverted the
taste of lesser craftsmen. Yet if Michelangelo was called to carve
Medicean statues after the sack of Rome and the fall of Florence--if
he was obliged in sober sadness to make sculpture a fit language for
his sorrow-laden heart--how could he have wrought more truthfully than
this? To imitate him without sharing his emotion or comprehending his
thoughts, as the soulless artists of the decadence attempted, was
without all doubt a grievous error. Surely also we may regret, not
without reason, that in the evil days upon which he had fallen, the
fair antique _Heiterkeit_ and _Allgemeinheit_ were beyond his reach."

That this regret is not wholly sentimental may be proved, I think, by
an exchange of verses, which we owe to Vasari's literary sagacity. He
tells us that when the statue of the Night was opened to the public
view, it drew forth the following quatrain from an author unknown to
himself by name:--

_The Night thou seest here, posed gracefully
In act of slumber, was by an Angel wrought
Out of this stone; sleeping, with life she's fraught:
Wake her, incredulous wight; she'll speak to thee._

Michelangelo would have none of these academical conceits and
compliments. He replied in four verses, which show well enough what
thoughts were in his brain when he composed the nightmare-burdened,
heavy-sleeping women:

_Dear is my sleep, but more to be mere stone,
So long as ruin and dishonour reign:
To hear naught, to feel naught, is my great gain;
Then wake me not; speak in an undertone._

CHAPTER XI

I

After the death of Clement VII., Michelangelo never returned to reside
for any length of time at Florence. The rest of his life was spent in
Rome, and he fell almost immediately under the kind but somewhat
arbitrary patronage of Alessandro Farnese, who succeeded to the Papal
chair in October 1534, with the title of Paul III.

One of the last acts of Clement's life had been to superintend the
second contract with the heirs of Julius, by which Michelangelo
undertook to finish the tomb upon a reduced scale within the space of
three years. He was allowed to come to Rome and work there during four
months annually. Paul, however, asserted his authority by upsetting
these arrangements and virtually cancelling the co