pangs.
Marvellous darkness shadow'd o'er the place.
In the Venetians' arsenal as boils
Through wintry months tenacious pitch, to smear
Their unsound vessels in the wintry clime.
* * *
So, not by force of fire but art divine,
Boil'd here a glutinous thick mass, that round
Limed all the shore beneath. I that beheld,
But therein not distinguish'd, save the bubbles
Raised by the boiling, and one mighty swell
Heave, and by turns subsiding fall.
* * *
Behind me I beheld a devil black,
That running up, advanced along the rock.
Ah! what fierce cruelty his look bespake.
In act how bitter did he seem, with wings
Buoyant outstretch'd, and feet of nimblest tread.
His shoulder, proudly eminent and sharp,
Was with a sinner charged; by either haunch
He held him, the foot's sinew griping fast.
* * *
Him dashing down, o'er the rough rock he turn'd;
Nor ever after thief a mastiff loosed
Sped with like eager haste. That other sank,
And forthwith writhing to the surface rose.
But those dark demons, shrouded by the bridge,
Cried—Here the hallow'd visage saves not: here
Is other swimming than in Serchio's wave,
Wherefore, if thou desire we rend thee not,
Take heed thou mount not o'er the pitch. This said,
They grappled him with more than hundred hooks,
And shouted—Cover'd thou must sport thee here;
So, if thou canst, in secret mayst thou filch."
Cary's Dante, c. xxi.

Fraught as his imagination was with gloomy ideas, with images of horror, it is the fidelity of his descriptions, the minute reality of his pictures, which gives them their terrible power. He knew well what it is that penetrates the soul. His images of horror in the infernal regions were all founded on those familiar to every one in the upper world; it was from the caldron of boiling pitch in the arsenal of Venice that he took his idea of one of the pits of Malebolge. But what a picture does he there exhibit! The writhing sinner plunged headlong into the boiling waves, rising to the surface, and a hundred demons, mocking his sufferings, and with outstretched hooks tearing his flesh till he dived again beneath the liquid fire! It is the reality of the scene, the images familiar yet magnified in horror, which constitutes its power: we stand by; our flesh creeps as it would at witnessing an auto-da-fè of Castile, or on beholding a victim perishing under the knout in Russia.

Michael Angelo was, in one sense, the painter of the Old Testament, as his bold and aspiring genius arrived rather at delineating the events of warfare, passion, or suffering, chronicled in the records of the Jews, than the scenes of love, affection, and benevolence, depicted in the gospels. But his mind was not formed merely on the events recorded in antiquity: it is no world doubtful of the immortality of the soul which he depicts. He is rather the personification in painting of the soul of Dante. His imagination was evidently fraught with the conceptions of the Inferno. The expression of mind beams forth in all his works. Vehement passion, stern resolve, undaunted valour, sainted devotion, infant innocence, alternately occupied his pencil. It is hard to say in which he was greatest. In all his works we see marks of the genius of antiquity meeting the might of modern times: the imagery of mythology blended with the aspirations of Christianity. We see it in the dome of St Peter's, we see it in the statue of Moses. Grecian sculpture was the realization in form of the conceptions of Homer; Italian painting the representation on canvass of the revelations of the gospel, which Dante clothed in the garb of poetry. Future ages should ever strive to equal, but can never hope to excel them.

Never did artist work with more persevering vigour than Michael Angelo. He himself said that he laboured harder for fame, than ever poor artist did for bread. Born of a noble family, the heir to considerable possessions, he took to the arts from his earliest years from enthusiastic passion and conscious power. During a long life of ninety years, he prosecuted them with the ardent zeal of youth. He was consumed by the thirst for fame, the desire of great achievements, the invariable mark of heroic minds; and which, as it is altogether beyond the reach of the great bulk of mankind, so is the feeling of all others which to them is most incomprehensible. Nor was that noble enthusiasm without its reward. It was his extraordinary good fortune to be called to form, at the same time, the Last Judgment on the wall of the Sistine Chapel, the glorious dome of St Peter's, and the group of Notre Dame de Pitié, which now adorns the chapel of the Crucifix, under the roof of that august edifice. The "Holy Family" in the Palazzo Pitti at Florence, and the "Three Fates" in the same collection, give an idea of his powers in oil-painting: thus he carried to the highest perfection, at the same time, the rival arts of architecture, sculpture, fresco and oil painting.[3] He may truly be called the founder of Italian painting, as Homer was of the ancient epic, and Dante of the great style in modern poetry. None but a colossal mind could have done such things. Raphael took lessons from him in painting, and professed through life the most unbounded respect for his great preceptor. None have attempted to approach him in architecture; the cupola of St Peter's stands alone in the world.

But notwithstanding all this, Michael Angelo had some defects. He created the great style in painting, a style which has made modern Italy as immortal as the arms of the legions did the ancient. But the very grandeur of his conceptions, the vigour of his drawing, his incomparable command of bone and muscle, his lofty expression and impassioned mind, made him neglect, and perhaps despise, the lesser details of his art. Ardent in the pursuit of expression, he often overlooked execution. When he painted the Last Judgment or the Fall of the Titans in fresco, on the ceiling and walls of the Sistine Chapel, he was incomparable; but that gigantic style was unsuitable for lesser pictures or rooms of ordinary proportions. By the study of his masterpieces, subsequent painters have often been led astray; they have aimed at force of expression to the neglect of delicacy in execution. This defect is, in an especial manner, conspicuous in Sir Joshua Reynolds, who worshipped Michael Angelo with the most devoted fervour; and through him it has descended to Lawrence, and nearly the whole modern school of England. When we see Sir Joshua's noble glass window in Magdalen College, Oxford, we behold the work of a worthy pupil of Michael Angelo; we see the great style of painting in its proper place, and