ike the two just quoted, and those we can refer with
certainty to the Cavalieri series, together with occasional
compositions upon the deaths of Cecchino and Urbino, seem to come
straight from the heart, and their manuscripts offer few variants to
the editor. Others, of a different quality, where he is dealing with
Platonic subtleties or Petrarchan conceits, have been twisted into so
many forms, and tortured by such frequent re-handlings, that it is
difficult now to settle a final text. The Codex Vaticanus is
peculiarly rich in examples of these compositions. Madrigal lvii. and
Sonnet lx., for example, recur with wearisome reiteration. These
laboured and scholastic exercises, unlike the more spontaneous
utterances of his feelings, are worked up into different forms, and
the same conceits are not seldom used for various persons and on
divers occasions.

One of the great difficulties under which a critic labours in
discussing these personal poems is that their chronology cannot be
ascertained in the majority of instances. Another is that we are
continually hampered by the false traditions invented by Michelangelo
the younger. Books like Lannan Rolland's "Michel-Ange et Vittoria
Colonna" have no value whatsoever, because they are based upon that
unlucky grand-nephew's deliberately corrupted text. Even Wadsworth's
translations, fine as they are, have lost a large portion of their
interest since the publication of the autographs by Cesare Guasti in
1863. It is certain that the younger Michelangelo meant well to his
illustrious ancestor. He was anxious to give his rugged compositions
the elegance and suavity of academical versification. He wished also
to defend his character from the imputation of immorality. Therefore
he rearranged the order of stanzas in the longer poems, pieced
fragments together, changed whole lines, ideas, images, amplified and
mutilated, altered phrases which seemed to him suspicious. Only one
who has examined the manuscripts of the Buonarroti Archives knows what
pains he bestowed upon this ungrateful and disastrous task. But the
net result of his meddlesome benevolence is that now for nearly three
centuries the greatest genius of the Italian Renaissance has worn a
mask concealing the real nature of his emotion, and that a false
legend concerning his relations to Vittoria Colonna has become
inextricably interwoven with the story of his life.

The extraordinary importance attached by Michelangelo in ol