no cosa sciocca, il fo perche veggiate dove io tengo i mie'
pensieri: e quando arete ottantuno anni, come o io, mi crederete.
Pregovi gli diate a messer Giovan Francesco Fattucci, che me ne a
chiesti. Vostro Michelagniolo Buonarroti in Roma_. The first was also
sent to Monsignor Beccadelli, Archbishop of Ragusa, who replied to it.
For his sonnet, see Signor Guasti's edition, p. 233.

LXVIII. Date 1556. Written in reply to his friend's invitation that he
should pay him a visit at Ragusa. Line 10: this Urbino was M.A.'s old
and faithful servant, Francesco d'Amadore di Casteldurante, who lived
with him twenty-six years, and died at Rome in 1556.

LXIX.-LXXVII. The dates of this series of penitential sonnets are not
known. It is clear that they were written in old age. It will be
remembered that the latest piece of marble on which Michael Angelo
worked, was the unfinished Pieta now standing behind the choir of the
Duomo at Florence. Many of his latest drawings are designs for a
Crucifixion.

NOTES ON CAMPANELLA'S SONNETS.

I. Line 1: the Italian words which I have translated _God's Wisdom_ and
_Philosophy_ are _Senno_ and _Sofia_. Campanella held that the divine
_Senno_ penetrated the whole universe, and, meeting with created
_Sofia_, gave birth to Science. This sonnet is therefore a sort of
Mythopoem, figuring the process whereby true knowledge, as
distinguished from sophistry, is derived by the human reason
interrogating God in Nature and within the soul. Line 5: Sofia has for
her husband Senno; the human intellect is married to the divine. Line
9: it was the doctrine of Campanella and the school to which he
belonged, that no advance in knowledge could be made except by the
direct exploration of the universe, and that the authority of
schoolmen, Aristotelians, and the like, must be broken down before a
step could be made in the right direction. This germ of modern science
is sufficiently familiar to us in the exposition of Bacon. Line 12:
repeats the same idea. Facts presented by Nature are of more value than
any _Ipse dixit_. Line 14: he compares himself not without reason to
Prometheus; for twenty-five years spent in prison were his reward for
the revelation which has added a new sphere to human thought.

II. The bitter words of this sonnet will not seem unmerited to those
who have studied Italian poetry in the Cinque Cento--the refined
playthings of verse, the romances, and the burlesque nonsense, which