Volume 1

The every-day book, or, The guide to the year : relating the popular amusements, sports, ceremonies, manner, customs, and events, incident to the three hundred and sixty-five days, in past and present times : being a series of five thousand anecdotes and facts : forming a perpetual key to the almanac... / by William Hone.

  • Hone, William, 1780-1842.
Date:
[1857?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The every-day book, or, The guide to the year : relating the popular amusements, sports, ceremonies, manner, customs, and events, incident to the three hundred and sixty-five days, in past and present times : being a series of five thousand anecdotes and facts : forming a perpetual key to the almanac... / by William Hone. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Michael Angelo was remarkable for nothing but his genius. lie slept little, and was abstemious; he was accustomed to say, “ However rich I may have been, I have always lived as a poor man.” He obtained the reputation of being proud and odd ; for he found little pleasure in the society of men from whom he could not learn, or whom he could not teach. He was pleased by originality of charac- ter in whatever rank he met with it; and cultivated in mature life the society of persons respected for their talents and learning. When young he endeavoured to acquaint himself with every branch ot knowledge that vouid contribute to his improvement. In common with all who have obtained a deserved eminence, he was never satisfied with his performances ; if he perceived an imperfection that might have been avoided, he either threw aside the work in disgust, or commenced it anew. He continued to study to the end of his life. In his old age the cardinal Farnese found him walking in solitude amidst the ruins of the Coliseum and ex- pressed his surprise. Michael answered, “I go yet to school that I may continue to learn.” He lived much alone. His great excess seems to have been indulg- ence in reflection, and the labours of his profession. The power of generalizing facts, and realizing what he conceived, he drew from this habit: without it some men have become popular for a time, but no man ever became great. Grandeur nael Angelo’s pre- vailing sentimen-. in his architecture of St. Peter’s, lie seems to have been limited by the impossibility of arriving to excel- lence without adopting the ancient styles, and the necessity of attempting something great without them; and to speak with the severity of uncompromising truth he failed. Of what else he did in that science, and he did much, for which he obtained deserved renown, there is nei- ther room nor occasion to speak. In painting and sculpture, if he did not always succeed in embodying his feel- ings, yet he succeeded more frequently than any other artist since the revival of arts; and, as his power was greater than theirs, so he accomplished greater works. His aim was elevated as that of the giants who warred against the fabled gods; in one respect he was unlike them— be conquered. Majestic and wild as na- ture m her undescribable sublimity, he achieved with corresponding greatness and beauty. His forms and their intellec- tual expression are of the highest order. He never did any thing little. All was in harmony with a mind which he created of himself by adding fact to fact, by se- vere reading, by close observation, by study, by seclusion. He was the quar- rier, and architect, and builder-up of his own greatness. Sir Joshua Reynolds speaks with be- coming deference of Michael Angelo’s powers.—“It will not be thought presump- tuous in me to appear in the train, I can- not say of his imitators, but of his ad- mirers. I have taken another course, one more suited to my abilities, and to the taste of the times in which I live. Yet however unequal I feel myself to that at- tempt, were I now to begin the world again, I would tread in the steps of that great master: to kiss the hem of his gar- ment, to catch the slightest of his perfec- tions, would be glory and distinction enough for an ambitious man. He was the bright luminary from whom painting has borrowed a new lustre, under whose hands it assumed a new appearance, and became another and superior art, and from whom all his contemporaries and successors have derived whatever they have possessed of the dignified and majestic.” There are excellent casts from three of Michael Angelo’s statues exhibited by Mr. West at Mr. Bullock’s museum, in Piccadilly; they are, Christ, from the church of Sta. Maria at Florence, Lorenzo de Medici from his monument, and the celebrated Moses, from the church of St. Pietro, in Vincoli, at Rome. The editor of the Every-day Book has conversed with persons who think themselves pupils and students in sculpture and painting with- out having seen these ! Michael Angelo had studied anatomy profoundly. Condivi, who was his pupil and one of his biographers, says that his knowledge of human anatomy and oi other animals was so correct, that those who had studied it as a profession all their lives, scarcely understood it so well. When he began to dissect he conceived disgust from the offensiveness of the operation and desisted; but reflecting that it was disgraceful to abandon what others