The poet and the painter have other points of resemblance; a display of knowledge, from which Dante appears sometimes to critics, a declaimer rather than a poet, Bonarruoti, an anatomist rather than a painter; a neglect of elegance, from which the first often, and, if we subscribe to the opinions of the Caracci and of Mengs, the second sometimes, degenerated into harshness.[140] On points like these, which depend wholly on taste, I shall not decide, but content myself with warning the reader that such comparisons should not be pushed too far: for this poet, from his desire of surmounting difficulties in conception and versification, has sometimes so deviated from the usual path, that he cannot always be proposed as a model for imitation: but every design of Michelangiolo, every sketch, as well as his more finished works, may be regarded as a model in art; if in Dante we trace marks of labour, in Michelangiolo every thing exhibits nature and facility.[141] It was one of his observations, that the compasses ought to lie in the eyes; a principle apparently drawn from Diodorus Siculus, where he asserts that the Egyptians had the rules of measurement in their hands; the Greeks in their eyes.[142] Nor is such eulogy inapplicable to our artist; who, whether he handled his pen, his chisel, or a piece of charcoal, even in sport, still displayed infallible skill in every part of his design. Bonarruoti was extolled to the skies by Ariosto for his painting, as well as for his sculpture;[143] but Condivi and others prefer his chisel to his pencil; and he undoubtedly exercised it more professedly and with greater reputation. His Moses on the tomb of Julius II. in the church of S. Pietro in Vincoli, his Christ in the Minerva, his Piety in S. Pietro Vaticano, and the statues in the church of S. Lorenzo at Florence, and in the ducal palaces, must be acknowledged to be the finest specimens of sculpture, in themselves forming schools of the revived art. I will not extol them so highly as Vasari does the colossal David, placed near the Palazzo Vecchio, when he says "that it bore away the palm from every statue, modern or ancient, either Grecian or Roman;" nor shall I follow his annotator, Bottari, in whose judgment Bonarruoti has greatly surpassed the Greeks, who are not so successful in statues larger than the life. I have heard competent judges remark, that we do an injury to the Grecian masters, not only by preferring any modern to them, but even by comparing them; but my pen ought not to wander too far from the canvass and from colouring.