will allow, seeing I am now too old. I have
no more to say. Read the heart, and not the letter, because 'the pen
toils after man's good-will in vain.'

"I have to make excuses for expressing in my first letter a marvellous
astonishment at your rare genius; and thus I do so, having recognised
the error I was in; for it is much the same to wonder at God's working
miracles as to wonder at Rome producing divine men. Of this the
universe confirms us in our faith."

It is clear that Michelangelo alludes in this letter to the designs
which he is known to have made for Cavalieri, and the last paragraph
has no point except as an elaborate compliment addressed to a Roman
gentleman. It would be quite out of place if applied to Vittoria
Colonna. Gotti finds the language strained and unnatural. We cannot
deny that it differs greatly from the simple diction of the writer's
ordinary correspondence. But Michelangelo did sometimes seek to
heighten his style, when he felt that the occasion demanded a special
effort; and then he had recourse to the laboured images in vogue at
that period, employing them with something of the ceremonious
cumbrousness displayed in his poetry. The letters to Pietro Aretino,
Niccolo Martelli, Vittoria Colonna, Francis I., Luca Martini, and
Giorgio Vasari might be quoted as examples.

As a postscript to this letter, in the two drafts which were finally
rejected, the following enigmatical sentence is added:--"It would be
permissible to give the name of the things a man presents, to him who
receives them; but proper sense of what is fitting prevents it being
done in this letter."

Probably Michelangelo meant that he should have liked to call
Cavalieri his friend, since he had already given him friendship. The
next letter, July 28, 1533, begins thus:--"My dear Lord,--Had I not
believed that I had made you certain of the very great, nay,
measureless love I bear you, it would not have seemed strange to me
nor have roused astonishment to observe the great uneasiness you show
in your last letter, lest, through my not having written, I should
have forgotten you. Still it is nothing new or marvellous when so many
other things go counter, that this also should be topsy-turvy. For
what your lordship says to me, I could say to yourself: nevertheless,
you do this perhaps to try me, or to light a new and stronger flame,
if that indeed were possible: but be it as it wills: I know well that,
at this hour, I could as eas