Let us endeavour to find more precise proofs of this little-suspected influence. Dante wrote his first sonnet on the 15th of June, 1282; in the spring of 1300 he wrote the _Vita Nuova_; on the 3rd of April he began his great poem.[196] Darwin had the earliest ideas of his great work first in March, then in June.[197] Petrarch conceived the _Africa_ in March, 1338. Michelangelo’s great cartoon, the work which so competent a judge as Cellini considered his most wonderful masterpiece, was imagined and executed between April and July, 1506. Manzoni wrote his _5 Maggio_ in summer. Milton’s great poem was conceived in the spring. Galileo discovered Saturn’s ring in April, 1611. Balzac wrote _La Cousine Bette_ in August and September, _Père Goriot_ in September, _La Recherche de l’Absolu_ in June to September. Sterne began _Tristram Shandy_ in January, the first of his sermons in April, the famous one on errors of conscience in May.[198] Giordano Bruno composed his _Candelajo_ in July; and in his witty dedication he attributed it to the heat of the dog-days. Voltaire wrote _Tancred_ in August. Byron wrote the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_ in September, his _Prophecy of Dante_ in June, his _Prisoner of Chillon_ during the summer in Switzerland. Giusti wrote of _Gingillino_ and _Pero_: “Here are the only leaves that April has drawn out of my head after fourteen months of idleness.” Schiller, it appears from his letters to Goethe, conceived _Don Carlos_ and _Wallenstein_ in the autumn, as well as _Fiesco_ and _Wilhelm Tell_; _Wallensteins Lager_ and _Letters on Æsthetics_ in September; _Kabale und Liebe_ in winter; the _Magician_, the _Glove_, the _Ring of Polycrates_, the _Cranes of Ibycus_, and _Nadowessir’s Song_ in June; the _Jungfrau von Orleans_ in July. Goethe wrote _Werther_ in autumn; _Mignon_ and other lyric poems in May; _Cellini_, _Alexis_, _Euphrosyne_, _Metamorphosis of Plants_, and _Parnass_ in June and July; the _Xenien_, _Hermann und Dorothea_, _Westöstlichen Divan_, and _Natürliche Tochter_ in winter. In the first days of March, 1788, which, he wrote, were worth more to him than a whole month, he dictated, besides other poems, the beginning of _Faust_.[199] Salorno’s hymn to Liberty was written in May. Rossini composed the _Semiramide_ almost entirely in February, and in November the last part of the _Stabat Mater_.[200] Mozart composed the _Mitridate_ in October; Beethoven his ninth symphony in February.[201] Donizetti composed _Lucia di Lammermoor_, perhaps entirely, in September; in any case, the famous _Tu che a Dio spiegasti l’ale_ belongs to that date; the _Figlia del Reggimento_ was also composed in autumn; _Linda de Chamounix_ in spring; _Rita_ in summer; _Don Pasquale_ and the _Miserere_ in winter.[202] Wagner composed _Der Fliegende Holländer_ in the spring of 1841. Canova modelled his first work, Orpheus and Eurydice, in October.[203] Michelangelo conceived his _Pietà_ between September and October,