set-touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
A chorus-ending from Euripides,--
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears
As old and new at once as nature's self,
To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring
Round the ancient idol, on his base again,--
The grand Perhaps!"

At least six of the poems contained in _Men and Women_ deal with
painting and music. But while four of these seem to fall into one group,
the remaining two, _Andrea del Sarto_ and _Fra Lippo Lippi_, properly
belong, though themselves the greatest of the art-poems as art-poems, to
the group of monodramas already noticed. But _Old Pictures in Florence_,
_The Guardian Angel_, _Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha_ and _A Toccata of
Galuppi's_, are chiefly and distinctively notable in their relation to
art, or to some special picture or piece of music.

_The Guardian Angel_ is a "translation into song" of Guercino's picture
of that name (_L'Angelo Custode_). It is addressed to "Waring," and was
written by Browning at Ancona, after visiting with Mrs. Browning the
church of San Agostino at Fano, which contains the picture. This
touching and sympathetic little poem is Browning's only detailed
description of a picture; but it is of more interest as an expression of
personal feeling. Something in its sentiment has made it one of the most
popular of his poems. _Old Pictures in Florence_ is a humorous and
earnest moralising on the meaning and mission of art and the rights and
wrongs of artists, suggested by some of the old pictures in Florence. It
contains perhaps the most complete and particular statement of
Browning's artistic principles that we have anywhere in his work, as
well as a very noble and energetic outburst of indignant enthusiasm on
behalf of the "early masters," the lesser older men whom the world slurs
over or forgets. The principles which Browning imputes to the early
painters may be applied to poetry as well as to art. Very characteristic
and significant is the insistence on the deeper value of life, of soul,
than of mere expression or technique, or even of mere unbreathing
beauty. _Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha_ is the humorous soliloquy of an
imaginary organist over a fugue in F minor by an imaginary composer,
named in the title. It is a mingling of music and moralising. The famous
description of a fugue, and the personification of its five voices, is