[316] {269}[So too Wordsworth, in his Preface to the _Lyrical Ballads_ (1800); "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings."] [317] [Compare-- "Thy Godlike crime was to be kind, To render with thy precepts less The sum of human wretchedness ... But baffled as thou wert from high ... Thou art a symbol and a sign To Mortals." _Prometheus_, iii. lines 35, _seq_.; _vide ante_, p. 50. Compare, too, the _Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte_, stanza xvi. _var_ ii.-- "He suffered for kind acts to men." _Poetical Works_, 1900, iii. 312.] [318] {270}["Transfigurate," whence "transfiguration," is derived from the Latin _transfiguro,_ found in Suetonius and Quintilian. Byron may have thought to anglicize the Italian _trasfigurarsi._] [319] The Cupola of St. Peter's. [Michel Angelo, then in his seventy-second year, received the appointment of architect of St. Peter's from Pope Paul III. He began the dome on a different plan from that of the first architect, Bramante, "declaring that he would raise the Pantheon in the air." The drum of the dome was constructed in his life-time, but for more than twenty-four years after his death (1563), the cupola remained untouched, and it was not till 1590, in the pontificate of Sixtus V., that the dome itself was completed. The ball and cross were placed on the summit in November, 1593.--_Handbook of Rome_, p. 239. Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza cliii. line i, _Poetical Works_, 1892, ii. 440, 441, note 2.] [320] {271}["Yet, however unequal I feel myself to that attempt, were I now to begin the world again, I would tread in the steps of that great master [Michel Angelo]. To kiss the hem of his garment, to catch the slightest of his perfections, would be glory and distinction enough for an ambitious man."--_Discourses_ of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1884, p. 289.] [321] The statue of Moses on the monument of Julius II. [Michel Angelo's Moses is near the end of the right aisle of the Church of S. Pietro-in-Vincoli.] "SONETTO "_Di Giovanni Battista Zappi_. "Chi é costui, che in si gran pietra scolto, Siede gigante, e le più illustri, e conte Opre dell' arte avanza, e ha vive, e pronte Le labbra si, che le parole ascolto? Quest' è Mosè; ben me 'l diceva il folto Onor del mento, e 'l doppio raggio in fronte; Quest' è Mosè, quando scendea dal monte, E gran parte del Nume avea nel volto. Tal' era allor, che le sonanti, e vaste Acque ei sospese, a se d' intorno; e tale Quando il Mar chiuse, e ne fè tomba altrui. E voi, sue turbe, un rio vitello alzaste? Alzata aveste immago a questa eguale! Ch' era men fallo i' adorar costui." [_Scelta di Sonetti ... del Gobbi_, 1709, iii. 216.]