ti archives; but a
large quantity preserved by Luigi del Riccio, and from him transferred
to Fulvio Orsini, had passed into the Vatican Library, when
Michelangelo the younger conceived the plan of publishing his
granduncle's poetry. Michelangelo obtained leave to transcribe the
Vatican MSS. with his own hand; and after taking pains to collate all
the autographs and copies in existence, he set himself to compare their
readings, and to form a final text for publication. Here, however,
began what we may call the Tragedy of his Rifacimento. The more he
studied his great ancestor's verses, the less he liked or dared to edit
them unaltered. Some of them expressed thoughts and sentiments
offensive to the Church. In some the Florentine patriot spoke over-boldly.
Others exposed their author to misconstruction on the score of
personal morality.[6] All were ungrammatical, rude in versification,
crabbed and obscure in thought--the rough-hewn blockings-out of poems
rather than finished works of art, as it appeared to the scrupulous,
decorous, elegant, and timorous Academician of a feebler age. While
pondering these difficulties, and comparing the readings of his many
manuscripts, the thought occurred to Michelangelo that, between leaving
the poems unpublished and printing them in all their rugged boldness,
lay the middle course of reducing them to smoothness of diction,
lucidity of meaning, and propriety of sentiment.[7] In other words, he
began, as Signer Guasti pithily describes his method, 'to change halves
of lines, whole verses, ideas: if he found a fragment, he completed it:
if brevity involved the thought in obscurity, he amplified: if the
obscurity seemed incurable, he amputated: for superabundant wealth of
conception he substituted vacuity; smoothed asperities; softened
salient lights.' The result was that a medley of garbled phrases,
additions, alterations, and sophistications was foisted on the world as
the veritable product of the mighty sculptor's genius. That
Michelangelo meant well to his illustrious ancestor is certain. That he
took the greatest pains in executing his ungrateful and disastrous task
is no less clear.[8] But the net result of his meddlesome benevolence
has been that now for two centuries and a half the greatest genius of
the Italian Renaissance has worn the ill-fitting disguise prepared for
him by a literary 'breeches-maker.' In fact, Michael Angelo the poet
suffered no less from his grandnephew than Mi