stery has often been shared by
genius in other fields. His own peculiar greatness sprang from
expressing in art the apparent contradiction of attaining the world of
mystery through force of reality. Like Hamlet, it was the union of the
real with the unreal which appealed to him, of the world as he saw it
and the world as he imagined it to be. It was but another expression
of the eternal ideal of truth and beauty.

L. E.

American Embassy
London, 1906

{3}

I

THOUGHTS ON LIFE

* *
*

[Sidenote: Of the Works of Leonardo]

Begun at Florence in the house of Piero di Braccio Martelli, on the 22d
day of March, 1508; and this is to be a collection without order, taken
from many papers which I have copied here, hoping to arrange them
later, each in its place, according to the various subjects treated.
And I think that before I shall have finished this work, it will be
necessary for me to repeat the same thing many times over; so, O
reader, blame me not, because the subjects are many, and memory cannot
retain them and say: This I will not write because I have already
written it; and if I did not wish to fall into this error it would be
necessary, every time that I wished to copy something, in order not to
repeat myself, to read over all the preceding matter, all the more so
since the intervals are long between one time of writing and another.

[Sidenote: His Thirst after Knowledge]

2.

Not louder does the tempestuous sea bellow when the north wind strikes
its foaming waves between Scylla and Charybdis; nor Stromboli nor Mount
Etna when the sulphurous flames, {4} shattering and bursting open the
great mountain with violence, hurl stones and earth through the air
with the flame it vomits; nor when the fiery caverns of Mount Etna,
spitting forth the element which it cannot restrain, hurl it back to
the place whence it issued, driving furiously before it any obstacle in
the way of its vehement fury ... so I, urged by my great desire and
longing to see the blending of strange and various shapes made by
creating nature, wandered for some time among the dark rocks, and came
to the entrance of a great cave, in front of which I long stood in
astonishment and ignorance of such a thing. I bent my back into an
arch and rested my left hand on my knee, and with my right hand shaded
my downcast eyes and contracted eyebrows. I bent down first on one
side and then on the other to see whether I coul