blication of _Men and Women_, "with Browning at Paris, both
in the evenings and at the Louvre, where (and throughout conversation) I
found his knowledge of early Italian art beyond that of any one I ever
met--_encyclopedically_ beyond that of Ruskin himself." The poem _Old
Pictures at Florence_, which Rossetti calls "a jolly thing," and which
is that and much more, is full of Browning's learned enthusiasm for the
early Italian painters, and it gives a reason for the strong attraction
which their adventures after new beauty and passion had for him as
compared with the faultless achievements of classical sculpture. Greek
art, according to Browning, by presenting unattainable ideals of
material and mundane perfection, taught men to submit. Early Christian
art, even by faultily presenting spiritual ideals, not to be attained on
earth but to be pursued through an immortal life, taught men to aspire.
The aim of these painters was not to exhibit strength or grace, joy or
grief, rage or love in their complete earthly attainment, but rather to

Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray,
New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters:
To bring the invisible full into play!
Let the visible go to the dogs--what matters?

[Illustration: ANDREA DEL SARTO.

_From a print after the portrait by himself in the Uffizi Gallery,
Florence_.]

The prophecy with which the poem concludes, of a great revival of
Italian art consequent on the advent of political and intellectual
liberty, has not obtained fulfilment in the course of the half century
that has elapsed since it was uttered. Browning's doctrine that
aspiration towards what is higher is more to be valued in art than
the attainment of what is lower is a leading motive in the admirable
dramatic monologue placed in the lips of Andrea del Sarto, the faultless
painter. His craftsmanship is unerring; whatever he imagines he can
achieve; nothing in line or in colour is other than it ought to be; and
yet precisely because he has succeeded, his failure is profound and
irretrievable:

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grey
Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!

He could set right the arm which is wrongly put in Rafael's work that
fronts him; but "all the play, the insight and the stretch" of Rafael
are lacking in his own faultless lines. He looks back regretfully to his
kingly days at Fontainebleau wit