G.
21st July 1840.
My very dear Sir,
... I could send you a hundred things of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which I have amassed in my extracts. I will limit myself to two sonnets of the famous Raphael of Urbino; and judge you whether he was not of the sect—like his contemporary, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and very many others who were in the environment of the Pope.
“Un pensier dolce è rimembrare, e godo.”[88]
Raphael’s second sonnet. He, having descended from the third heaven (like St Paul), writes thus:
“Come non potè dir d’arcana Dei
Paolo come disceso fù dal cielo,
Così il mio cor d’un amoroso velo
Ha ricoperto tutt’i pensier miei.
Però che quanto io vidi e quanto fei (in the third heaven)
Per gaudio taccio che nel petto celo;
E prima cangerò nel fronte il pelo
Che mai l’obbligo volger pensier rei.”[89]
... Pico della Mirandola, Molza, and other contemporaries, speak of this third heaven in the same mysterious manner, and agree with what St Bernard, Swedenborg, Cecco d’Ascoli, Dante, etc., say of it....
Oh how much can be gathered from the Latin writings of Poliziano! Far more than even from those of Tasso....
Your greatly obliged and obedient
G. Rossetti.