In the midst of a life so full and already fruitful, which the approach of a glory almost unequalled illuminated by a few precursive rays, Michel Angelo appears to have opened his heart to the sentiment of a love as true and elevated as the other emotions which swayed his soul, and directed his faculties: Luigia de' Medici seems to have been its object. It is, as already remarked, in the poetical compositions, forming the first part of Angelo's collection, that we must endeavour to find the imperishable memorials of this tenderness, to which the illusions even of early youth appear to have never lent, for a single moment, any hope of the union with which it might have been crowned. Michel Angelo's timid pride combined with his respect and gratitude to interdict to him all designation, even indirect, of the woman to whom his affections were bound by a chain whose embrace death alone could have relaxed. We shall see in the poetry of Buonarotti none of the artifice made use of by Petrarch to render the name of _Laura_ intelligible, which Camoëns afterwards employed to celebrate Donna _Caterina_, and from which, still later, the unhappy Torquato regretted, with much bitterness, to have wandered, when, in the intoxication of his illusions, he traced the fatal name of _Eleonora_. "Quando sara che d'_Eleonora mia_ Potro goder in libertade amore." (_Verse stolen from Tasso and given to the Duke of Ferrara._) It is but rarely, and with a light touch, that Angelo makes allusion to the extreme youth of her whom he loves,-- ----"il corpo umano Mal segue poi ... d'un _angelletta_ il volo."--(_Sonnetto_ 15.) Once only he speaks of light hair:-- "Sovra quel _biondo crin_" ... (_Sonnetto ultimo._) Never does he write a word that can be referred to the difference of rank existing between them, to the splendour which had surrounded the cradle even of the daughter of the great citizen whom all Italy seems to have made the arbiter of her political combinations. Michel Angelo speaks only of the touching beauty of her who has subjugated him by "that serene grace, certain mark of the nobility and purity of a soul in perfect harmony with its Creator;" (_Sonnetto 3, et passim_ in the first part.) Never does he give us to understand that his love received the least encouragement. It has been thought, however, that Luigia had detected the attachment of the youth whose genius had as yet been attested by no great work, and that she rewarded it by the tenderest friendship. It is certain that, in a transport of gratitude, Angelo wrote the beautiful verse-- "Unico spirto, e da me solo inteso!" (_Sonnetto_ 16.) and that, in another _morceau_, he thanks "those beautiful eyes which lend him their sweet light, the genius that raises his own to heaven, the support that steadies his tottering steps," "Veggio co'bei vostri occhi un dolce lume." ... --(_Sonnetto_ 12.)