med KNIGHT'S captive and slave confessed.

"The other shall be what follows, written perhaps for the same person,
and worthy, in my opinion, not only of the ripest sage, but also of a
poet not unexercised in writing verse:--

With your fair eyes a charming light I see,
For which my own blind eyes would peer in vain;
Stayed by your feet, the burden I sustain
Which my lame feet find all too strong for me;

Wingless upon your pinions forth I fly;
Heavenward your sprit stirreth me to strain;
E'en as you will, I blush and blanch again,
Freeze in the sun, burn 'neath a frosty sky.

Your will includes and is the lord of mine;
Life to my thoughts within your heart is given;
My words begin to breathe upon your breath:
Like to the-moon am I, that cannot shine
Alone; for, lo! our eyes see naught in heaven
Save what the living sun illumineth."

The frank and hearty feeling for a youth of singular distinction which
is expressed in these sonnets, gave no offence to society during the
period of the earlier Renaissance; but after the Tridentine Council
social feeling altered upon this and similar topics. While morals
remained what they had been, language and manners grew more nice and
hypocritical. It happened thus that grievous wrong was done to the
text of Michelangelo's poems, with the best intentions, by their first
editor. Grotesque misconceptions, fostered by the same mistaken zeal,
are still widely prevalent.

When Michelangelo the younger arranged his grand-uncle's poems for the
press, he was perplexed by the first of the sonnets quoted by Varchi.
The last line, which runs in the Italian thus--

Resto prigion d'un Cavalier armato,

has an obvious play of words upon Cavalieri's surname. This he altered
into

Resto prigion d'un cor di virtu armato.

The reason was that, if it stood unaltered, "the ignorance of men
would have occasion to murmur." "Varchi," he adds, "did wrong in
printing it according to the text." "Remember well," he observes,
"that this sonnet, as well as the preceding number and some others,
are concerned, as is manifest, with a masculine love of the Platonic
species." Michelangelo the younger's anxiety for his granduncle's
memory induced him thus to corrupt the text of his poems. The same
anxiety has led their latest editor to explain away the obvious sense
of certain words. Signor Guasti approves of the first editor's pious
fraud, on the ground that morality has