MICHEL ANGELO.•

M. ROMAIN ROLLAND'S book is neither a biography nor a study of the works of Michel Angelo. It is rather a series of essays dealing with the personality of the master. Owing to the existence of a voluminous correspondence and a consider-

able collection of sonnets and poems, such a study is possible, and can be executed without the uncertainty which must always ensue when the personality of an artist is reconstructed from his handiwork alone. M. Rolland takes a somewhat unusual view of the relations of the artist to the outside world and to his Papal employers. Historians have generally lamented the unsuitable tasks which he was forced to undertake, and have explained both these and the resulting incompleteness of so many of his projects as the results of the compulsion brought to bear by patrons in high places. M. Rolland attributes the failures largely to the temperament of Michel Angelo ; his solitude and misery of soul were not th. result but the cause of his misfortunes.

"The ill consisted not in being alone, but in being alone with himself, in being unable to live with himself, in not being master of himself, in disowning, combating, and destroying himself. His genius was coupled with a soul which betrayed it. People sometimes speak of the fatality which relentlessly followed in his footsteps and prevented him carrying out any of his great projects. This fatality was himself. The secret of his misfortunes, that which explains the whole tragedy of his life (and this is what people have least seen or least dared to see), was his lack of will- power and weakness of character. He was irresolute in art, in politics, in all his actions, and in all his thoughts. . . . He was weak through conscience.. . . Through an exaggerated sense of responsibility he felt himself obliged to undertake mediocre tasks which any foreman could have done better."

This perpetual war which existed in the mind of Michel Angelo is the key to many things otherwise inexplicable in his life.

It produced that violent alternation from one course to another, as in the case of his action during the siege of

Florence. After having helped to fortify the city he suddenly fled to Venice in terror of his life, and as suddenly returned to face danger. He defied the Medici in action, but took service under them. In his family relations it was the same ; he devoted himself to his brothers and nephews in succession during his long life. He gave them large sums of money, and was constantly and minutely careful of their affairs ; at the same time he was endlessly suspicious of their actions and for ever railed at them in his

letters. With other people he was either at high war, proudly conscious of his genius and his probity, or else in the depth of self-abasement. He lived a life of unending toil, denying himself not only luxuries but necessaries ; he perpetually

complained of his poverty, but really he was a rich man,

benevolently giving away large sums of money in secret. Jr. all his thoughts and actions there was an element of frenzy ;

this appears in his letters, and has given a wrong impression as to his relations with his friends. From this cause many misconceptions have arisen, for the letters have not been taken as a whole. We must be careful not to separate and consider

apart the words written to the youthful friends, especially those to Tommaso Cavalieri, the young Roman noble who

became his pupil and friend. If these letters and some of the poems, with their frantic self-abasement, are considered by themselves there is a danger of our falling into the trap so maliciously set by Aretino from base personal motives. But there is no more reason to accept these letters literally as

pictures of Michel Angelo's true feelings than his furious denunciations of his family, whom he constantly oared for and supported, and as frequently abused. We can gauge the real value of Michel Angelo's frantic language by the letter to his boy-nephew about nothing worse than bad handwriting.

He says :—

" I never receive a letter from you without being thrown into a fever before Lean read it. Jam at a loss to know where you learnt how to write ! Little love here! . . . I believe if you had to write to the biggest ass in the world you would take greater care. . . . I threw your last letter into the fire, because I could not read it. I cannot therefore reply. I have already told you, and con- stantly repeated, that every time I get a letter from you fever attacks ma before I succeed in reading it."

• The Life of Michel Angelo. By Remain Rolland. Translated from the French by F. Lees. London; W. Heinemann. [6s. net.1

Such words enable us to estimate truly the famous letter to Cavalieri, in which the writer bowed himself in the dust, and implored his friend, whom he calls "a powerful genius, ... the light of our century,. . . not to despise him, because he could not compare himself to him—he who was without an equal !"

M. Rolland treats very well the one peaceful episode of the great man's life, the friendship with Vittoria Colonna, as he also does Michel Angelo's deeply religions feeling, pointing out his tendency towards mystic exaltation. Altogether the book makes a most interesting study of an extraordinary man. The translation has been well done on the whole, though occasionally a word seems to suggest an imperfect apprecia- tion of the original. More care should have been taken in one respect, for there is no point in giving the French form of Italian names such as Pie de la Mirandole, or, worse still, such a mixture as Marcile Mein°.