rson, he made a comment on a
part of Dante, and drew the Inferno, and put it in engraving, in which
he consumed much time; and not working for this reason, brought infinite
disorder into his affairs."

194. Unpaid work, this engraving of Dante, you perceive,--consuming much
time also, and not appearing to Vasari to be work at all. It is but a
short sentence, gentlemen,--this, in the old edition of Vasari, and
obscurely worded,--a very foolish person's contemptuous report of a
thing to him totally incomprehensible. But the thing itself is
out-and-out the most important fact in the history of the religious art
of Italy. I can show you its significance in not many more words than
have served to record it.

Botticelli had been painting in Rome; and had expressly chosen to
represent there,--being Master of Works, in the presence of the Defender
of the Faith,--the foundation of the Mosaic law; to his mind the Eternal
Law of God,--that law of which modern Evangelicals sing perpetually
their own original psalm, "Oh, how hate I Thy law! it is my abomination
all the day." Returning to Florence, he reads Dante's vision of the Hell
created by its violation. He knows that the pictures he has painted in
Rome cannot be understood by the people; they are exclusively for the
best trained scholars in the Church. Dante, on the other hand, can only
be read in manuscript; but the people could and would understand _his_
lessons, if they were pictured in accessible and enduring form. He
throws all his own lauded work aside,--all for which he is most honored,
and in which his now matured and magnificent skill is as easy to him as
singing to a perfect musician. And he sets himself to a servile and
despised labor,--his friends mocking him, his resources failing him,
infinite 'disorder' getting into his affairs--of this world.

195. Never such another thing happened in Italy any more. Botticelli
engraved her Pilgrim's Progress for her, putting himself in prison to
do it. She would not read it when done. Raphael and Marc Antonio were
the theologians for her money. Pretty Madonnas, and satyrs with
abundance of tail,--let our pilgrim's progress be in _these_ directions,
if you please.

Botticelli's own pilgrimage, however, was now to be accomplished
triumphantly, with such crowning blessings as Heaven might grant to him.
In spite of his friends and his disordered affairs, he went his own
obstinate way; and found another man's words worth engravi