ling
in these poetical effusions, the deep interest taken in a mere lad
like Cecchino by so many eminent personages, and the frank publicity
given to a friendship based apparently upon the beauty of its object,
strike us now as almost unintelligible. Yet we have the history of
Shakespeare's Sonnets, and the letters addressed by Languet to young
Sidney, in evidence that fashion at the end of the sixteenth century
differed widely from that which prevails at the close of the
nineteenth.

IX

Some further light may here be thrown upon Michelangelo's intimacy
with young men by two fragments extracted independently from the
Buonarroti Archives by Milanesi and Guasti. In the collection of the
letters we find the following sorrowful epistle, written in December
1533, upon the eve of Michelangelo's departure from Florence. It is
addressed to a certain Febo:--

"Febo,--Albeit you bear the greatest hatred toward my person--I know
not why--I scarcely believe, because of the love I cherish for you,
but probably through the words of others, to which you ought to give
no credence, having proved me--yet I cannot do otherwise than write to
you this letter. I am leaving Florence to-morrow, and am going to
Pescia to meet the Cardinal di Cesis and Messer Baldassare. I shall
journey with them to Pisa, and thence to Rome, and I shall never
return again to Florence. I wish you to understand that, so long as I
live, wherever I may be, I shall always remain at your service with
loyalty and love, in a measure unequalled by any other friend whom you
may have upon this world.

"I pray God to open your eyes from some other quarter, in order that
you may come to comprehend that he who desires your good more than his
own welfare, is able to love, not to hate like an enemy."

Milanesi prints no more of the manuscript in his edition of the
Letters. But Guasti, conscientiously collecting fragments of
Michelangelo's verses, gives six lines, which he found at the foot of
the epistle:--

_Vo' sol del mie morir contento veggio:
La terra piange, e'l ciel per me si muove;
E vo' men pieta stringe ov' io sto peggio._
_O sol che scaldi il mondo in ogni dove,
O Febo, o luce eterna de' mortali,
Perche a me sol ti scuri e non altrove?

* * * * *

Naught comforts you, I see, unless I die:
Earth weeps, the heavens for me are moved to woe;
You feel of grief the less, the more grieve I.
O sun