terror, as perhaps the man in truth did.  He bears, according to the customary wont of artists while portraying Moses, two horns upon the head, not far removed from the summit of the brows.  He is robed and girt about the legs with hosen, the arms bare, and all the rest after the antique fashion.  It is a marvellous work, and full of art:  mostly in this, that underneath those subtleties of raiment one can perceive the naked form, the garments detracting nothing from the beauty of the body; as was the universal way of working with this master in all his clothed figures, whether painted or sculptured.”

Except that Condivi dwelt too much upon the repose of this extraordinary statue, too little upon its vivacity and agitating unrest, his description serves our purpose as well as any other.  He does not seem to have felt the turbulence and carnal insolence which break our sense of dignity and beauty now.

Michelangelo left the Moses incomplete in many details, after bringing the rest of the figure to a high state of polish.  Tooth-marks of the chisel are observable upon the drapery, the back, both hands, part of the neck, the hair, and the salient horns.  It seems to have been his habit, as Condivi and Cellini report, to send a finished statue forth with some sign-manual of roughness in the final touches.  That gave his work the signature of the sharp tools he had employed upon it.  And perhaps he loved the marble so well that he did not like to quit the good white stone without sparing a portion of its clinging strength and stubbornness, as symbol of the effort of his brain and hand to educe live thought from inert matter.

In the century after Michelangelo’s death a sonnet was written by Giovanni Battista Felice Zappi upon this Moses.  It is famous in Italian literature, and expresses adequately the ideas which occur to ordinary minds when they approach the Moses.  For this reason I think that it is worthy of being introduced in a translation here:—­

 Who is the man who, carved in this huge stone,
    Sits giant, all renowned things of art
    Transcending? he whose living lips, that start,
    Speak eager words?  I hear, and take their tone.

  He sure is Moses.  That the chin hath shown
    By its dense honour, the brows’ beam bipart: 
    ’Tis Moses, when he left the Mount, with part,
    A great-part, of God’s glory round him thrown.

  Such was the prophet when those sounding vast
    Waters he held suspense about him; such
    When he the sea barred, made it gulph his foe.

  And you, his tribes, a vile calf did you cast? 
    Why not an idol worth like this so much? 
    To worship that had wrought you lesser woe._

VII