Only to compare the value of Michael Angelo's sonnets with that of the doggerel rhymes which Dürer produced, may give us some idea of the portentous inferiority in Dürer's surroundings to those of the great Italian. Both borrow the general idea of the subject, treatment, and form of their poems from the fashion around them. But that fashion in Michael Angelo's case called for elevated subject, intimate and imaginative treatment, and adequacy of form, whereas none of these were called for from Albrecht Dürer; and if his friends laughed at the rudeness of his verses, it was not that they themselves conceived of anything more adequate in these respects, only something more scholarly, more pedantic. Michael Angelo's verse was often crabbed and rude, but the scholarship and pedantry of Italy forbore to laugh at that rudeness, because a more adequate standard made them recognise its vital power and noble passion as of higher importance to true success. Still, in the following rhymes, Dürer shows himself a true child of the Renascence, at least in intention; and was proud of a desire for universal excellence.
When I received this from Lazarus Spengler, I made him the following poem in reply (Mrs. Heaton's translation):
In Nürnberg it is known full well
A man of letters now doth dwell,
One of our Lord's most useful men,
He is so clever with his pen,
And others knows so well to hit,
And make ridiculous with wit;
And he has made a jest of me,
Because I made some poetry,