Sonnets of Michael Angelo Buonarroti and Tommaso Campanella-Michelangelo Buonarroti, Tommaso Campanella

2.

S. F.

A.

After some deliberation, and at the risk of offending the sensibility of scholars, I have adopted the old English spelling of Michelangelo's name, feeling that no orthographical accuracy can outweigh the associations implied in that familiar title.

Michelangelo has a place among the highest with Homer and Titian, with Virgil and Petrarch, with Raphael and Paul.

Nor do I imagine that any alteration for the better would be effected by substituting for these time-honored names Homeros and Titiano, Virgilius and Petrarca, Raffaello and Paulus.

I wish here to express my heartiest thanks to Signore Pasquale Villari for valuable assistance kindly rendered in the interpretation of some difficult passages of Campanella, and to Signore V.

De Tivoli for calling my attention to the sonnet of Michelangelo deciphered by him on the back of a drawing in the Taylor Gallery at Oxford.

Portions both of the introduction and the translations forming this volume have already appeared in the Contemporary Review and the Cornhill Magazine.