elligent rebuilding at a dismal epoch of barren art,
are fragments of one of the rarest monuments of Tuscan sculpture. This
is the tomb of Bartolommeo Aragazzi. He was a native of Montepulciano,
and secretary to Pope Martin V., that _Papa Martino non vale un
quattrino_, on whom, during his long residence in Florence, the
street-boys made their rhymes. Twelve years before his death he
commissioned Donatello and Michelozzo Michelozzi, who about that period
were working together upon the monuments of Pope John XXIII. and
Cardinal Brancacci, to erect his own tomb at the enormous cost of
twenty-four thousand scudi. That thirst for immortality of fame, which
inspired the humanists of the Renaissance, prompted Aragazzi to this
princely expenditure. Yet, having somehow won the hatred of his
fellow-students, he was immediately censured for excessive vanity.
Lionardo Bruni makes his monument the theme of a ferocious onslaught.
Writing to Poggio Bracciolini, Bruni tells a story how, while travelling
through the country of Arezzo, he met a train of oxen dragging heavy
waggons piled with marble columns, statues, and all the necessary
details of a sumptuous sepulchre. He stopped, and asked what it all
meant. Then one of the contractors for this transport, wiping the sweat
from his forehead, in utter weariness of the vexatious labour, at the
last end of his temper, answered: "May the gods destroy all poets, past,
present, and future." I inquired what he had to do with poets, and how
they had annoyed him. "Just this," he replied, "that this poet, lately
deceased, a fool and windy-pated fellow, has ordered a monument for
himself; and with a view to erecting it, these marbles are being dragged
to Montepulciano; but I doubt whether we shall contrive to get them up
there. The roads are too bad." "But," cried I, "do you believe _that_
man was a poet--that dunce who had no science, nay, nor knowledge
either? who only rose above the heads of men by vanity and doltishness?"
"I don't know," he answered, "nor did I ever hear tell, while he was
alive, about his being called a poet; but his fellow-townsmen now decide
he was one; nay, if he had but left a few more moneybags, they'd swear
he was a god. Anyhow, but for his having been a poet, I would not have
cursed poets in general." Whereupon, the malevolent Bruni withdrew, and
composed a scorpion-tailed oration, addressed to his friend Poggio, on
the suggested theme of "diuturnity in monuments," and