It is open to critics of the school of Lessing to object that here is the suicide of sculpture.

It is easy to remark that those strained postures and writhen limbs may have perverted the taste of lesser craftsmen.

Yet if Michelangelo was called to carve Medicean statues after the sack of Rome and the fall of Florence--if he was obliged in sober sadness to make sculpture a fit language for his sorrow-laden heart--how could he have wrought more truthfully than this?
To imitate him without sharing his emotion or comprehending his thoughts, as the soulless artists of the decadence attempted, was without all doubt a grievous error.

Surely also we may regret, not without reason, that in the evil days upon which he had fallen, the fair antique _Heiterkeit_ and _Allgemeinheit_ were beyond his reach." That this regret is not wholly sentimental may be proved, I think, by an exchange of verses, which we owe to Vasari's literary sagacity.

He tells us that when the statue of the Night was opened to the public view, it drew forth the following quatrain from an author unknown to himself by name:-- _The Night thou seest here, posed gracefully In act of slumber, was by an Angel wrought Out of this stone; sleeping, with life she's fraught: Wake her, incredulous wight; she'll speak to thee._ Michelangelo would have none of these academical conceits and compliments.