be found expressed in the third volume of my 'Renaissance in Italy';
and where I think it necessary, I shall take occasion to repeat them in
the notes appended to my translation.


III.

Michael Angelo's madrigals and sonnets were eagerly sought for during
his lifetime. They formed the themes of learned academical discourses,
and won for him the poet's crown in death. Upon his tomb the Muse of
Song was carved in company with Sculpture, Architecture, and Painting.
Since the publication of the _rifacimento_ in 1623, his verses have
been used among the _testi di lingua_ by Italians, and have been
studied in the three great languages of Europe. The fate of
Campanella's philosophical poems has been very different. It was owing
to a fortunate chance that they survived their author; and until the
year 1834 they were wholly and entirely unknown in Italy. The history
of their preservation is so curious that I cannot refrain from giving
some account of it, before proceeding to sketch so much of Campanella's
life and doctrine as may be necessary for the understanding of his
sonnets.

The poems were composed during Campanella's imprisonment at Naples; and
from internal evidence there is good reason to suppose that the greater
part of them were written at intervals in the first fourteen years of
the twenty-five he passed in confinement.[9] In the descriptive
catalogue of his own works, the philosopher mentions seven books of
sonnets and canzoni, which he called 'Le Cantiche.'[10] Whether any of
these would have been printed but for a mere accident is doubtful. A
German gentleman, named Tobia Adami, who is supposed to have been a