ustworthiness of Holinshed.

A greater contrast, in every respect, than that between _Andrea del
Sarto_ and _Fra Lippo Lippi_ can scarcely be conceived. The story of
Filippo Lippi[29] is taken, like that of Andrea, from Vasari's _Lives_:
it is taken as literally, it is made as authentically living, and, in
its own more difficult way, it is no less genuine a poem. The jolly,
jovial tone of the poem, its hearty humour and high spirits, and the
breathless rush and hurry of the verse, render the scapegrace painter to
the life. Not less in keeping is the situation in which the unsaintly
friar is introduced: caught by the civic guard, past midnight, in an
equivocal neighbourhood, quite able and ready, however, to fraternise
with his captors, and pour forth, rough and ready, his ideas and
adventures. A passage from the poem placed side by side with an extract
from Vasari will show how faithfully the record of Fra Lippo's life is
followed, and it will also show, in some small measure, the essential
newness, the vividness and revelation of the poet's version.

"By the death of his father," writes Vasari,[30] "he was left
a friendless orphan at the age of two years, his mother also
having died shortly after his birth. The child was for some
time under the care of a certain Mona Lapaccia, his aunt, the
sister of his father, who brought him up with great
difficulty until he had attained his eighth year, when, being
no longer able to support the burden of his maintenance, she
placed him in the above-named convent of the Carmelites."

Here is Browning's version:--

"I was a baby when my mother died
And father died and left me in the street.
I starved there, God knows how, a year or two
On fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks,
Refuse and rubbish. One fine frosty day,
My stomach being empty as your hat,
The wind doubled me up and down I went.
Old Aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one hand,
(Its fellow was a stinger as I knew)
And so along the wall, over the bridge,
By the straight cut to the convent. Six words there,
While I stood munching my first bread that month:
'So, boy, you're minded,' quoth the good fat father,
Wiping his own mouth, 'twas refection-time,--
'To quit this very miserable world?'"

But not only has Browning given a wonderfully realistic portrait of the
man; a man to whom life in its fu