Fails of the life, but draws the death and ill.
In this rendering the fourth line is open to criticism; it is not want of manual skill that is the cause of failure, but the inability to form an adequate idea. Harford modernizes the introductory lines:—
Whate’er conception a great artist fires,
Its answering semblance latent lies within
A block of marble.
The metaphor is thus reduced to the scholastic platitude, that in all matter lies the potentiality of form. So Varchi understood[66] the lines, and cites Aristotle as authority that the action of an agent is nothing but the extraction of a thing from potency to act; with changes on such intolerable jargon he occupies two pages. The lecture, intended to be flattering, only serves to show with what contemporary crassness the delicate conceptions of Michelangelo were obliged to struggle.
4 [XVII] The contrast between the permanence of the artistic product and the transitoriness of the mortal subject suggests reflections which may take different turns. (See madrigal No. 9 [XIII].) One is reminded of certain sonnets of Shakespeare.
5 [XIX] The lover feels himself enriched by the impression of the beloved, which, like the divine name on the seal of Solomon, confers the power of working miracles. The pretty composition is among the few which may be said to be inspired by a really cheerful and joyous sentiment, and, like the preceding, may be held to belong to the earlier manner of the poet.
6 [XX] This most beautiful sonnet, somewhat immature in its music, is a precious relic of Michelangelo’s early love verse. The poem was written below a letter from his father, received in Bologna, and dated 24 December, 1507. Subscribed is the line: La m’arde e lega et emmi e parmi un zucchero.[67] “She burns me and binds me and eats me, and I think her a sugarplum.” The lines, therefore, have a biographic inspiration, and may be presumed to have been in honor of some young beauty of Bologna. A fragment of a madrigal seems akin.