27 January–2 February 1834

Michel Angelo's life, in the Library of Use- ful Knowledge ; and his poverty, by Signor Radici in the Retrospective Review, volume xiii. These elevate my respect for the artist. His life, they say, too, was a poem. Beautiful is his Platonic passion, before that word had been perverted by affectation and hypocrisy.* . . .

How bften our nature is conscious of and la- bours with its own limits ! In the very act of pre- tension it is oppressed with secret humiliation.