riptions
in _Romola_.

As to the poem itself, Browning plunges at once into his matter; no long
approaches, no elaborate porches belong to his work. The man and his
character are before us in a moment--

I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!
You need not clap your torches to my face.
Zooks, what's to blame? You think you see a monk!
What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds,
And here you catch me at an alley's end
Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar?

For three weeks he has painted saints, and saints, and saints again, for
Cosimo in the Medici Palace; but now the time of blossoms has come.
Florence is now awake at nights; the secret of the spring moves in his
blood; the man leaps up, the monk retires.

Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air.
There came a hurry of feet and little feet,
A sweep of lute-strings, laughs and whifts of song,--
_Flower o' the broom._
_Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!_
_Flower of the quince,_
_I let Lisa go, and what good in life since?_
_Flower of the thyme_--and so on. Round they went.
Scarce had they turned the corner when a titter,
Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight,--three slim shapes,
And a face that looked up ... zooks, sir, flesh and blood,
That's all I'm made of! Into shreds it went,
Curtain and counterpane and coverlet,
All the bed furniture--a dozen knots,
There was a ladder! Down I let myself,
Hands and feet, scrambling somehow, and so dropped,
And after them. I came up with the fun
Hard by St. Laurence, hail fellow, well met,--
_Flower o' the rose,_
_If I've been merry, what matter who knows?_

It is a picture, not only of the man, but of the time and its temper,
when religion and morality, as well as that simplicity of life which
Dante describes, had lost their ancient power over society in Florence;
when the claim to give to human nature all it desired had stolen into
the Church itself. Even in the monasteries, the long seclusion from
natural human life had produced a reaction, which soon, indulging itself
as Fra Lippo Lippi did, ran into an extremity of licence. Nevertheless,
something of the old religious life lasted at the time of this poem. It
stretched one hand back to the piety of the past, and retained, though
faith and devotion had left them, its observances and conventions; so
that, at first, when Lippo was