ny-sided sadness which has become identified with even the pleasures
of the man's life; and is hopeless, because he is resigned to it.

Andrea del Sarto was called the "faultless painter." His execution was
as easy as it was perfect; and Michael Angelo is reported to have said
to Raphael, of the insignificant little personage Andrea then was: that
he would bring the sweat to his (Raphael's) brow, if urged on in like
manner by popes and kings. But he lacked strength and loftiness of
purpose; and as Mr. Browning depicts him, is painfully conscious of
these deficiencies. He feels that even an ill-drawn picture of
Raphael's--and he has such a one before him--has qualities of strength
and inspiration which he cannot attain. His wife might have incited him
to nobler work; but Lucrezia is not the woman from whom such incentives
proceed; she values her husband's art for what it brings her. Remorse
has added itself in his soul to the sense of artistic failure. He has
not only abandoned the French Court, and, for Lucrezia's sake, broken
his promise to return to it; he has cheated his kind friend and patron,
Francis I., of the money with which he was entrusted by him for the
purchase of works of art. He has allowed his parents to die of want. All
this, and more, reflects itself in the monologue he is addressing to his
wife, but no conscious reproach is conveyed by it. She has consented to
sit by him at their window, with her hand in his, while he drinks in her
beauty, and finds in it rest and inspiration at the same time. She will
leave him presently for one she cares for more; but the spell is
deepening upon him. The Fiesole hills are melting away in the twilight;
the evening stillness is invading his whole soul. He scarcely even
desires to fight against the inevitable. Yet there might be despair in
his concluding words: "another chance may be given to him in heaven,
with Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Raphael. But he will still have
Lucrezia, and therefore they will still conquer him."

The facts adduced are all matter of history; though a later chronicle
than that which Mr. Browning has used, is more favourable in its verdict
on Andrea's wife.

The fiercer emotions also play a part, though seldom an exclusive one,
in Mr. Browning's work. Jealousy forms the subject of

"THE LABORATORY." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Dramatic
Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)[77]

"MY LAST DUCHESS." ("Dramatic Romances." Publishe