translation serve the purpose also of a commentary, and has to exercise caution and self-control lest he impose a sense too narrow or too definite upon the original.

So far as this was possible, I have adhered to the rhyming structure of my originals, feeling that this is a point of no small moment in translation. Yet when the choice lay between a sacrifice of metrical exactitude and a sacrifice of sense, I have not hesitated to prefer the former, especially in dealing with Campanella's quatrains.

Michael Angelo and Campanella follow different rules in their treatment of the triplets. Michael Angelo allows himself three rhymes, while Campanella usually confines himself to two. My practice has been to study in each sonnet the cadence both of thought and diction, so as to satisfy an English ear, accustomed to the various forms of termination exemplified by Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth, and Rossetti—the sweetest, the most sublime, the least artificial, and the most artful sonnet-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 suppose we are justified in believing that his single volume reproduces all the extant manuscript authorities, with the exception, perhaps, of the British Museum Codex. But, while it is so comprehensive, we are still left in some doubt as to the preference of one reading rather than another in the large type text presented to us as the final version of each composition. It is true that when this was possible, Signor Guasti invariably selected one of the autographs, that is, a copy in the poet's own handwriting. But when we consider that very frequently Michael Angelo's own autographs give twice as many various readings as there are lines in a sonnet, when we reflect that we do not always possess the copies which he finally addressed to his friends, and when, moreover, we find that their readings (e.g. those of the Riccio MS and those cited by Varchi) differ considerably from Michael Angelo's rough copies, we must conclude that even the autographs do not invariably represent these poems in the final form which he adopted. There is therefore much room left for critical comparison and selection. We are, in fact, still somewhat in the same position as Michelangelo the younger. Whether any application of the critical method will enable us to do again successfully what he so clumsily attempted—that is, to reproduce a correct text from the debris offered to our selective faculty—I do not feel sure. Meanwhile I am quite certain that his principle was a wrong one, and that he dealt most unjustifiably with his material. For this reason I cordially accept Signor Guasti's labours, with the reservation I have attempted to express in this note. They have indeed brought us far closer to Michael Angelo's real text, but we must be careful to remember that we have not even now arrived with certainty at what he would himself have printed if he had prepared his own edition for the press.

[4] As far as I am aware, no complete translation of Michael Angelo's sonnets has hitherto been made in English. The specimens produced by Southey, Wordsworth, Harford, Longfellow, and Mr. Taylor, moreover, render Michelangelo's rifacimento.

[5] 'Lezione di Benedetto Varchi sopra il sottoscritto Sonetto di Michelagnolo Buonarroti, fatta da lui pubblicamente nella Accademia Fiorentina la Seconda Domenica di Quaresima l'anno MDXLVI.' The sonnet commented by Varchi is Guasti's No xv.

[6] I have elsewhere recorded my disagreement with Signer Guasti and Signer Gotti, and my reasons for thinking that Vaichi and Michelangelo the younger were right in assuming that the sonnets addressed to Tommaso de' Cavalieri (especially xxx, xxxi, lii) expressed the poet's admiration for masculine beauty. See 'Renaissance in Italy, Fine Arts,' pp. 521, 522. At the same time, though I agree with Buonarroti's first editor in believing that a few of the sonnets 'risguardano, come si conosce chiaramente, amor platonico virile,' I quite admit—as what student of early Italian poetry will not admit?—that a woman is generally intended under the title of 'Signore' and 'amico.'

[7] Ridurle is his own phrase. He also speaks of trasmutare and risoluzione to explain the changes he effected.

[8] See Guasti's 'Discorso,' p. xliv.

[9] See in particular 'Orazioni Tie in Salmodia Metafisicale … Canzone Prima … Madrigale iii;' and 'A Berillo, Canzone di Pentimento, Madrigale ii.'

[10] 'De Libras Proprus,' I 3, quoted by Orelli and Alessandro d'Ancona. 'Opere di Tommaso Campanella,' vol. I. p 3.

[11] 'Opere di Tommaso Campanella,' vol. I p. ccci.

[12] Campanella's own poetry justified this curious nom de plume adopted for him by his editor. See in particular 'Salmodia Metafisicale,' canzone terza, madrigale ix.

    'Tre canzon, nate a un parto
    Da questa mia settimontana testa,
    Al suon dolente di pensosa squilla.'

[13] These are the sonnets entitled by Adami 'La detta Congiunzione cade nella revoluzione della Natività di Cristo,' and 'Sonetto cavato dall' Apocalisse e Santa Brigida,' D'Ancona, vol. 1. pp. 97, 98.

[14] In this respect rifacimento of 1623 has greater literary merits— the merits of mere smoothness, clearness, grammatical coherence, and