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Natural history of intellect and other papers
Natural history of intellect and other papers Author:Ralph Waldo Emerson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MICHAEL ANGELO. Never did sculptor's dream unfold A form which marble doth not hold In its white block; yet it therein shall find Only the hand secur... more »e and bold Which still obeys the mind. Michael Anoelo's Sonnets. Non 1ml ottimo artista alcun concetto, Ch'un marmo solo in s6 non circoscriva Col suo soverchio, e solo a quello arriva La man che obbedisce all' intelletto. M. Anqelo, Sonnetto primo. MICHAEL ANGELO.1 Few lives of eminent men are harmonious ; few that furnish, in all the facts, an image corresponding with their fame. But all things recorded of Michael An- gelo Buonarotti agree together. He lived one life ; he pursued one career. He accomplished extraordinary works ; he uttered extraordinary words ; and in this greatness was so little eccentricity, so true was he to the laws of the human mind, that his character and his works, like Sir Isaac Newton's, seem rather a part of nature than arbitrary productions of the human will. Especially we venerate his moral fame. Whilst his name belongs to the highest class of genius, his life contains in it no injurious influence. Every line in his biography might be read to the human race with wholesome effect. The means, the materials of his activity, were coarse enough to be appreciated, being addressed for the most part to the eye ; the results, sublime and all innocent. A purity severe and even terrible goes out from the lofty productions of his pencil and his chisel, and again from the more perfect sculpture of his own life, which heals and exalts. " He nothingcommon did, or mean," and dying at the end of near ninety years, had not yet hecome old, but was engaged in executing his grand conceptions in the ineffaceable architecture of St. Peter's. 1 Reprinted from the North American Review, June, 18...« less