[1273]
I have said she was never weary of studying Michel Angelo and Raphael; and here are some manuscript ‘notes,’ which she sent me one day, containing a clear expression of her feeling toward each of these masters, after she had become tolerably familiar with their designs, as far as prints could carry her:—
On seeing such works as these of Michel Angelo, we feel the need of a genius scarcely inferior to his own, which should invent some word, or some music, adequate to express our feelings, and relieve us from the Titanic oppression.‘Greatness,’ ‘majesty,’ ‘strength,’—to these words we had before thought we attached their proper meaning. But now we repent that they ever passed our lips. Created anew by the genius of this man, we would create language anew, and give him a word of response worthy his sublime profession of faith. Could we not at least have reserved ‘godlike’ for him? For never till now did we appreciate the primeval vigor of creation, the instant swiftness with which thought can pass to deed; never till now appreciate the passage, ‘Let there be light, and there was light,’ which, be grateful, Michel! was clothed in human word before thee.
One feels so repelled and humbled, on turning from Raphael to his contemporary, that I could have hated him as a Gentile Choragus might hate the prophet Samuel. Raphael took us to his very bosom, as if we had been fit for disciples,—
Parting with smiles the hair upon the brow,
And telling me none ever was preferred
