ave thought of these servile disciples, he who
said proudly that "whoever follows others will never go forward, and
whoever does not know how to create by his own abilities can gain no
profit from the works of other men."

But they had lost even the consciousness of their servility and took
more pride in living on Michelangelo's crumbs than he had in creating
the work which was to be the nourishment of two centuries. Some drew
tranquilly on their memory and their notes, others mimicked the
master's grandiose manner, and they were all entirely satisfied with
themselves, not one of them realising what their master and model had
suffered in giving birth to these works which were so easy for them to
imitate.

Michelangelo's idealism had a powerful corrective in "the sense of the
beauty of struggle, and the holiness of suffering." "Nothing approaches
nearer to God," he wrote, "than the effort to produce a perfect work,
because God is perfection."

No one ever struggled more fiercely than this man, who ceaselessly
tormented himself and wept at "losing his time uselessly" while he was
working at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, who wrought with his blood
the beings whom he created and was dissatisfied with his sublime
creations at the moment of finishing them and left them incomplete, who
to his last day in agony and tears

Piangendo, amando, ardendo, e sospirando,--
Ch'affetto alcun mortal non mi e piu nuovo,--[154]

"Weeping, loving, burning and sighing--for there was no human emotion
which he had not felt."

He was vainly seeking the visioned ideal, and in dying he regretted not
the joy of living, but his interrupted labours.[155]

Beside that virile modesty what can we think of the absurd vanity of all
those little masters who declared that they derived from the great
master and believed themselves to be Michelangelos?

Vasari dares to write:

"To-day art has been brought to such perfection that while our
predecessors produced a picture in six years we produce six in one year.
I can bear witness since I have seen this done and have done it myself,
and nevertheless our works are much more finished and more perfect than
those of the renowned painters who preceded us."[156]

Even the weakest ones had the same feeling. Perino del Vaga considered
himself very much superior to Masaccio, and in Cellini vanity ended by
touching madness. He felt that antiquity was only valuable as a
background to his works, a