lness was the only joy, a true type of
the Renaissance spirit, metamorphosed by ironic fate into a monk; he
has luminously indicated the true end and aim of art and the false
asceticism of so-called "religious" art, in the characteristic comments
and confessions of an innovator in the traditions of religious painting.

_Cleon_ is prefaced by the text "As certain also of your own poets have
said" (_Acts_, xvii. 28), and is supposed to be a letter from one of the
poets to whom St. Paul refers, addressed to Protus, an imaginary
"Tyrant," whose wondering admiration of Cleon's many-sided culture has
drawn him to one who is at once poet, painter, sculptor, musician and
philosopher. Compared with such poems as _Andrea del Sarto_, there is
little realisable detail in the course of the calm argument or
statement, but I scarcely see how the temper of the time, among its
choicest spirits (the time of classic decadence, of barren culture, of
fruitless philosophy) could well have been more finely shadowed forth.
The quality of the versification, unique here as in every one of the
five great poems, is perfectly adapted to the subject. The slow sweep of
the verse, its stately melody, its large, clear, classic harmony, enable
us to receive the right impression as admirably as the other qualities,
already pointed out, enable us to feel the resigned sadness of Andrea
and the jovial gusto of Lippo. In _Cleon_ we have a historical picture,
imaginary indeed, but typical. It reveals or records the religious
feeling of the pagan world at the time of the coming of Christ; its
sadness, dissatisfaction and expectancy, and the failure of its wisdom
to fathom the truths of the new Gospel.

In _An Epistle containing the strange Medical Experience of Karshish,
the Arab Physician_, we have perhaps a yet more subtle delineation of a
character similar by contrast. Cleon is a type of the Western and
sceptical, Karshish of the Eastern and believing, attitude of mind; the
one repellent, the other absorbent, of new things offered for belief.
Karshish, "the picker up of learning's crumbs," writes from Syria to his
master at home, "Abib, all sagacious in our art," concerning a man whose
singular case has fascinated him, one Lazarus of Bethany. There are few
more lifelike and subtly natural narratives in Browning's poetry; few
more absolutely interpenetrated by the finest imaginative sympathy. The
scientific caution and technicality of the Arab physician, his