MICHEL ANGELO.
[To TAN EDITOR or THE "SPECTATOR.") SIR,—I do not think that your critic has quite understood Michel Angelo's indignation with the bad writing of his nephew. That great man, like all the great artists—Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Vandyck, Velasquez, and Canova are examples that occur to my mind—who have shown a fine sense of form, wrote a singularly beautiful script (even in extreme old age), as anyone can see at a glance in the noble specimen on view at the British Museum. This letter, quite equal to any medieval manuscript in its splendid harmony of aspect, can only have been written slowly and deliberately : it would be impossible for a man in a hurry, even the Buonarroti himself, to write like that ! I think that what was in Michel Angelo's mind was something like this : "Here am I, an old man courted by Popes and Kings, writing letters to a boy like you, as beautia fully formed as it is in my power to do it, and yet you have not the patience and the courtesy to write me a letter that is even legible !" That is what his phrase "little love here1"
obviously means. Charles Blanc's remarks on Michel Angelo's writing seem to me worth quoting :—
"Enfin le genie graphique de Michel-Ange se recommit jusque dans son ecriture, dent quelques lignes ott quelques mots se rencontrent souvent a 01.6 de sea figures sur In marge du papier. Solt qu'il ecrive los premiers vers d'un sonnet, soit qu'il aligne des chiffres pour en faire l'addition, il donne A sea chiffres et is sea lettres un air de resolution et de forte tout li fait semblable I mini de son execution commo sculpteur, de son invention femme peintre. Tons sea caracteres ont une elegance male . . . et l'ensemble a quelque chose de volontaire et d'imperienx qui saisit, an point qu'au premier coup d'ceil jete sur une page ecrite par Michel-Ange, on donnerait pleinement raison ceux qui veulent deviner la physionomie morale d'une personne d'apres In physionomie de son denture."
In Fulcher's "Life of Gainsborough," p. 137, we read that " the sight of a letter written by an elegant penman pleased Gainsborough beyond expression. . . . Constable was a great admirer of good penmanship ; it was the only thing he was said to have excelled in at school."—I am, Sir, &c., Hammrom MINCHIN.
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