It may be appropriate here to introduce two or three sonnets from Michel Angelo (b. 1475). Michel Angelo, one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest, artist of the Italian Renaissance, was deeply imbued with the Greek spirit. His conception of Love was close along the line of Plato’s. For him the body was the symbol, the expression, the dwelling place of some divine beauty. The body may be loved, but it should only be loved _as_ a symbol, not for itself. Diotima in the _Symposium_ had said that in our mortal loves we first come to recognise (dimly) the divine form of beauty which is Eternal. Maximus Tyrius (Dissert. xxvi. 8) commenting on this, confirms it, saying that nowhere else but in the human form, “the loveliest and most intelligent of bodily creatures,” does the light of divine beauty shine so clear. Michel Angelo carried on the conception, gave it noble expression, and held to it firmly in the midst of a society which was certainly willing enough to love the body (or try to love it) merely for its own sake. And Giordano Bruno (b. 1550) at a later date wrote as follows:— “All the loves—if they be heroic and not purely animal, or what is called natural, and slaves to generation as instruments in some way of nature—have for object the divinity, and tend towards divine beauty, which first is communicated to, and shines in, souls, and from them or rather through them is communicated to bodies; whence it is that well-ordered affection loves the body or corporeal beauty, insomuch as it is an indication of beauty of spirit.” _Gli Eroici Furori_ (dial. iii. 13), _trans. L. Williams_. [Sidenote: _Michel Angelo’s Sonnets_] The labours of Von Scheffler and others have now pretty conclusively established that the love-poems of Michel Angelo were for the most part written to male friends—though this fact was disguised by the pious frauds of his nephew, who edited them in the first instance. Following are three of his sonnets, translated by J. A. Symonds. It will be seen that the last line of the first contains a play on the name of his friend:— _To Tommaso de’ Cavalieri:_ A CHE PIU DEBB’IO. “Why should I seek to ease intense desire With still more tears and windy words of grief, When heaven, or late or soon, sends no relief To souls whom love hath robed around with fire. Why need my aching heart to death aspire, When all must die? Nay death beyond belief Unto these eyes would be both sweet and brief, Since in my sum of woes all joys expire! Therefore because I cannot shun the blow I rather seek, say who must rule my breast, Gliding between her gladness and her woe? If only chains and bands can make me blest, No marvel if alone and bare I go An armèd Knight’s captive and slave confessed.” NON VIDER GLI OCCHI MIEI.