Harford, John Scandrett: The life of Michael Angelo Buonarroti: with translations of many of his poems and letters : also memoirs of Savonarola, Raphael,, and Vittoria Colonna (Vol. 1) (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1858)

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CHAPTER II.
IS PATRONISED BY LORENZO DE' MEDICI, WHO GIVES HIM A
HOME IN HIS PALACE.-CHARACTER, TASTES, AND PURSUITS
OF LORENZO.
1489 TO 1490.
The talents of the future great man have often been
first brought into public notice by circumstances
apparently fortuitous, but which deserve to be
deemed providential ; for the same beneficent Wis-
dom which calls into being superior minds for the
furtherance of human improvement, is prolific of
means the best adapted to their future develop-
ment, and to their efficient instrumentality.
Great as were the talents of the youthful Buonar-
roti, they might have failed of their adequate
culture, or he might have long and vainly toiled at
the foot of the arduous steep,
" The steep where Fame's proud Temple shines afar,"
had he not unexpectedly found, at the time of which
we write, a generous patron, and an enlightened
counsellor, in the most illustrious Italian of his age,
Lorenzo de' Medici, surnamed the Magnificent.
The names of Lorenzo and of his grandfather
Cosmo are honourably and indissolubly associated
with the restoration of learning in the fifteenth