onnet-writers
in our language.

The short titles attached to each sonnet are intended to help the eye,
rather than to guide the understanding of the reader. Michael Angelo
and his editors supply no arguments or mottoes for his poems; while
those printed by Adami in his edition of Campanella are, like mine,
meant obviously to serve as signposts to the student. It may savour of
impudence to ticket and to label little masterpieces, each one of
which, like all good poems, is a microcosm of very varied meanings. Yet
I have some authority in modern times for this impertinence; and, when
it is acknowledged that the titles merely profess to guide the reader
through a labyrinth of abstract and reflective compositions, without
attempting to supply him with a comprehensive argument or to dogmatise
concerning the main drift of each poem, I trust that enough will have
been said by way of self-defence against the charge of arrogance.

The sonnet prefixed as a proem to the whole book is generally
attributed to Giordano Bruno, in whose Dialogue on the _Eroici Furori_
it occurs. There seems, however, good reason to suppose that it was
really written by Tansillo, who recites it in that Dialogue. Whoever
may have been its author, it expresses in noble and impassioned verse
the sense of danger, the audacity, and the exultation of those pioneers
of modern thought, for whom philosophy was a voyage of discovery into
untravelled regions. Its spirit is rather that of Campanella than of
Michael Angelo. Yet the elevation at which Michael Angelo habitually
lived in thought and feeling was so far above the plains of common
life, that from the summit of his solitary watch-tower he might have
followed even such high-fliers as Bruno or as Campanella in their
Icarian excursions with the eyes of speculative interest.

DAVOS PLATZ. _Nov. 1877._

FOOTNOTES

[1] 'Le Rime di Michelangelo Buonarroti, Pittore, Scultore e
Architetto, cavate dagli Autografi e pubblicate da Cesare Guasti,
Accademico della Crusca. In Firenze, per Felice le Monmer. MDCCCLXIII.'

[2] See, however, page xlvii of Signor Guasti's _Discorso._

[3] I have so fully expressed my admiration for Signor Guasti's edition
in the text that I may allow myself to point out in a note what seems
to me its chief defect, and why I think there is still, perhaps, room
for another and more critical edition. The materials are amply and
conscientiously supplied by Signor Guasti, indeed, I su