We have even one sonnet in which he distinctly states the Greek opinion that the love of women is unworthy of a soul bent upon high thoughts and virile actions.

It reads like a verse transcript from the main argument of the _Symposium_:-- _Love is not always harsh and deadly sin, When love for boundless beauty makes us pine; The heart, by love left soft and infantine, Will let the shafts of God's grace enter in.
Love wings and wakes the soul, stirs her to win Her flight aloft, nor e'er to earth decline; 'Tis the first step that leads her to the shrine Of Him who slakes the thirst that burns within._ _The love of that whereof I speak ascends: Woman is different far; the love of her But ill befits a heart manly and wise.
The one love soars, the other earthward tends; The soul lights this, while that the senses stir; And still lust's arrow at base quarry flies._ The same exalted Platonism finds obscure but impassioned expression in this fragment of a sonnet (No.

lxxix.):---- _For Love's fierce wound, and for the shafts that harm, True medicine 'twould have been to pierce my heart; But my soul's Lord owns only one strong charm, Which makes life grow where grows life's mortal smart.
My Lord dealt death, when with his-powerful arm He bent Love's bow.

Winged with that shaft, from Love An angel flew, cried, "Love, nay Burn! Who dies, Hath but Love's plumes whereby to soar above! Lo, I am He who from thine earliest years Toward, heaven-born Beauty raised thy faltering eyes.
Beauty alone lifts live man to heaven's spheres."_ Feeling like this, Michelangelo would have been justly indignant with officious relatives and critics, who turned his _amici_ into _animi_, redirected his Cavalieri letters to the address of Vittoria Colonna, discovered Florence in Febo di Poggio, and ascribed all his emotional poems to some woman.
There is no doubt that both the actions and the writings of contemporaries justified a considerable amount of scepticism regarding the purity of Platonic affections.

The words and lives of many illustrious persons gave colour to what Segni stated in his History of Florence, and what Savonarola found it necessary to urge upon the people from his pulpit.
But we have every reason to feel certain that, in a malicious age, surrounded by jealous rivals, with the fierce light of his transcendent glory beating round his throne, Buonarroti suffered from no scandalous reports, and maintained an untarnished character for sobriety of conduct and purity of morals.
The general opinion regarding him may be gathered from Scipione Ammirati's History (under the year 1564).