More than I merit, yes, by many times. But had you oh, with the same perfect mouth, And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird The fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind ! Some women do so " But Lucrezia had no such gift to give, and whilst she remained ever the object of his most passionate affections, she made no " lyric love " in his life, nor helped his art by any nobility of character in herself, as did Vittoria Colonna for Michael Angelo, or Eliza- beth Barrett Browning for her husband, or many another nameless woman for the man whose greatness, applauded by the world, was perhaps most largely due to her inspiring influence. Beautiful as is the poem of Browning from which the above lines are taken, one must remember that its subjective utter- ances could never have come from the simple lips of the artist himself, a man whose force did not lie in introspection, but whose easy bourgeois life was amply filled with two absorbing interests devotion to his wife and to his art; who painted what he saw clearly and directly, reproducing again and again the features of the woman he loved, and in his greatest themes blending the admission of a domestic and human love, to which, whether worthily returned or not, he remained faithful throughout his