Yet we have the history of Shakespeare's Sonnets, and the letters addressed by Languet to young Sidney, in evidence that fashion at the end of the sixteenth century differed widely from that which prevails at the close of the nineteenth.
IX Some further light may here be thrown upon Michelangelo's intimacy with young men by two fragments extracted independently from the Buonarroti Archives by Milanesi and Guasti.

In the collection of the letters we find the following sorrowful epistle, written in December 1533, upon the eve of Michelangelo's departure from Florence.

It is addressed to a certain Febo:-- "Febo,--Albeit you bear the greatest hatred toward my person--I know not why--I scarcely believe, because of the love I cherish for you, but probably through the words of others, to which you ought to give no credence, having proved me--yet I cannot do otherwise than write to you this letter.

I am leaving Florence to-morrow, and am going to Pescia to meet the Cardinal di Cesis and Messer Baldassare.

I shall journey with them to Pisa, and thence to Rome, and I shall never return again to Florence.