But they were first collected in a volume in 1623 by the great-nephew of
Michelangelo, Michelangelo Buonarroti the younger. He omitted much,
re-wrote the sonnets in part, and sometimes compressed two or more
compositions into one, always losing something of the force and
incisiveness of the original. So the book remained, neglected even by
Italians themselves in the last century, through the influence of that
French taste which despised all compositions of the kind, as it despised
and neglected Dante. "His reputation will ever be on the increase,
because he is so little read," says Voltaire of Dante.--But in 1858 the
last of the Buonarroti bequeathed to the municipality of Florence the
curiosities of his family. Among them was a precious volume containing
the autograph of the sonnets. A learned Italian, Signor Cesare Guasti,
undertook to collate this autograph with other manuscripts at the
Vatican and elsewhere, and in 1863 published a true version of
Michelangelo's poems, with dissertations and a paraphrase.
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