ade, and his habit of returning
to them at intervals long after their composition. A good fourth of
the Codex Vaticanus consists of repetitions and _rifacimenti_. He was
also wont to submit what he wrote to the judgment of his friends,
requesting them to alter and improve. He often had recourse to Luigi
del Riccio's assistance in such matters. I may here adduce an inedited
letter from two friends in Rome, Giovanni Francesco Bini and Giovanni
Francesco Stella, who returned a poem they had handled in this manner:
"We have done our best to alter some things in your sonnet, but not to
set it all to rights, since there was not much wanting. Now that it is
changed or put in order, according as the kindness of your nature
wished, the result will be more due to your own judgment than to ours,
since you have the true conception of the subject in your mind. We
shall be greatly pleased if you find yourself as well served as we
earnestly desire that you should command us." It was the custom of
amateur poets to have recourse to literary craftsmen before they
ventured to circulate their compositions. An amusing instance of this
will be found in Professor Biagi's monograph upon Tullia d'Aragona,
all of whose verses passed through the crucible of Benedetto Varchi's
revision.

The thoughts and images out of which Michelangelo's poetry is woven
are characteristically abstract and arid. He borrows no illustrations
from external nature. The beauty of the world and all that lives in it
might have been non-existent so far as he was concerned. Nor do his
octave stanzas in praise of rural life form an exception to this
statement; for these are imitated from Poliziano, so far as they
attempt pictures of the country, and their chief poetical feature is
the masque of vices belonging to human nature in the city. His
stock-in-trade consists of a few Platonic notions and a few Petrarchan
antitheses. In the very large number of compositions which are devoted
to love, this one idea predominates: that physical beauty is a direct
beam sent from the eternal source of all reality, in order to elevate
the lover's soul and lead him on the upward path toward heaven. Carnal
passion he regards with the aversion of an ascetic. It is impossible
to say for certain to whom these mystical love-poems were addressed.
Whether a man or a woman is in the case (for both were probably the
objects of his aesthetical admiration), the tone of feeling, the
language, and the