prophetic group I have omitted, partly because they have no bearing on
the world as it exists for us at present, and partly because they are
too studiously obscure for profitable reproduction.[13] As in the case
of Michael Angelo, so also in that of Campanella, I have left the
Canzoni untouched, except by way of illustration in the notes appended
to my volume. They are important and voluminous enough to form a
separate book; nor do they seem to me so well adapted as the sonnets
for translation into English.

To give reasons for my choice of certain readings in the case of either
Michael Angelo's or Campanella's text; to explain why I have sometimes
preferred a strictly literal and sometimes a more paraphrastic
rendering; or to set forth my views in detail regarding the compromises
which are necessary in translation, and which must vary according to
the exigencies of each successive problem offered by the original,
would occupy too much space. Where I have thought it absolutely
necessary, I have referred to such points in my notes. It is enough
here to remark that the difficulties presented to the translator by
Michael Angelo and by Campanella are of different kinds. Both, indeed,
pack their thoughts so closely that it is not easy to reproduce them
without either awkwardness or sacrifice of matter. But while Campanella
is difficult from the abruptness of his transitions and the violence of
his phrases, Michael Angelo has the obscurity of a writer whose
thoughts exceed his power of expression, and who complicates the verbal
form by his endeavour to project what cannot easily be said in
verse.[14] A little patience will generally make it clear what
Campanella meant, except in cases where the text itself is corrupt. But
it may sometimes be doubted whether Michael Angelo could himself have
done more than indicate the general drift of his thought, or have
disengaged his own conception from the tangled skein of elliptical and