which ought to
be reserved for the decease of one who has lived well." There is what
may be called an Elizabethan note--something like the lyrical
interbreathings of our dramatists--in this blending of jubilation and
sorrow, discontent and satisfaction, birth and death thoughts.

We have seen that Vasari worked for a short time as pupil under
Michelangelo, and that during the pontificate of Paul III. they were
brought into frequent contact at Rome. With years their friendship
deepened into intimacy, and after the date 1550 their correspondence
forms one of our most important sources of information. Michelangelo's
letters begin upon the 1st of August in that year. Vasari was then
living and working for the Duke at Florence; but he had designed a
chapel for S. Pietro a Montorio in Rome, where Julius III. wished to
erect tombs to the memory of his ancestors; and the work had been
allotted to Bartolommeo Ammanati under Michelangelo's direction.

This business, otherwise of no importance in his biography,
necessitated the writing of despatches, one of which is interesting,
since it acknowledges the receipt of Vasari's celebrated book:--

"Referring to your three letters which I have received, my pen refuses
to reply to such high compliments. I should indeed be happy if I were
in some degree what you make me out to be, but I should not care for
this except that then you would have a servant worth something.
However, I am not surprised that you, who resuscitate the dead, should
prolong the life of the living, or that you should steal the half-dead
from death for an endless period."

It seems that on this occasion he also sent Vasari the sonnet composed
upon his Lives of the Painters. Though it cannot be called one of his
poetical masterpieces, the personal interest attaching to the verses
justifies their introduction here:--

_With pencil and with palette hitherto
You made your art high Nature's paragon;
Nay more, from Nature her own prize you won,
Making what she made fair more fair to view_.

_Now that your learned hand with labour new
Of pen and ink a worthier work hath done,
What erst you lacked, what still remained her own,
The power of giving life, is gained for you_.

_If men in any age with Nature vied
In beauteous workmanship, they had to yield
When to the fated end years brought their name_.

_You, re-illuming memories that died,
In spite of Time and Nature have revealed
For