g so foreign to
the English idea of what poetry should be, that no cultivation can ever
domesticate it into the tongue. The seeds of flowers from the Alps may
be planted in our gardens, but a new kind of flower will come up; and
this is what has happened over and over again to the skilled gardeners
of English literature in their struggles with the Italian sonnet. In
Italy, for six hundred years, the sonnet has been the authorized form
for a disconnected remark of any kind. Its chief aim is not so much to
express a feeling as an idea--a witticism--a conceit--a shrewd saying--a
clever analogy--a graceful simile--a beautiful thought. Moreover, it is
not primarily intended for the public; it has a social rather than a
literary function.

The English with their lyrical genius have impressed the form, as they
have impressed every other form, into lyrical service, and with some
success, it must be admitted. But the Italian sonnet is not lyrical. It
is conversational and intellectual, and many things which English
instinct declares poetry ought not to be. We feel throughout the poetry
of the Latin races a certain domination of the intelligence which is
foreign to our own poetry. But in the sonnet form at least we may
sympathize with this domination. Let us read the Italian sonnets, then,
as if they were prose; let us seek first the thought and hold to that,
and leave the eloquence to take care of itself. It is the thought, after
all, which Michael Angelo himself cared about. He is willing to
sacrifice elegance, to truncate words, to wreck rhyme, prosody, and
grammar, if he can only hurl through the verse these thoughts which were
his convictions.

The platonic ideas about life and love and art, which lie at the bottom
of most of these sonnets, are familiar to us all. They have been the
reigning commonplace ideas of educated people for the last two thousand
years. But in these sonnets they are touched with new power; they become
exalted into mystical importance. We feel almost as if it were Plato
himself that is talking, and the interest is not lessened when we
remember that it is Michael Angelo. It is necessary to touch on this
element in the sonnets, for it exists in them; and because while some
will feel chiefly the fiery soul of the man, others will be most struck
by his great speculative intellect.

It is certain that the sonnets date from various times in Michael
Angelo's life; and, except in a few cases, it must be lef