those who had influenced him. It was as if he desired to add to the
strength of Michelangelo that sweetness which at first sight seems to
be wanting there. Ex forti dulcedo: and in the study of Michelangelo
certainly it is enjoyable to detect, if we may, sweet savours amid the
wonderful strength, the strangeness and potency of what he pours forth
for us: with Raphael, conversely, something of a relief to find in the
suavity of that so softly moving, tuneful existence, an assertion of
strength. There was the promise of it, as you remember, in his very
look as he saw himself at eighteen; and you know that the lesson, the
prophecy of those holy women and children he has made his own, is that
"the meek shall possess." So, when we see him at Rome at last, in that
atmosphere of greatness, of the strong, he too is found putting forth
strength, adding that element in due proportion to the mere sweetness
and charm of his genius; yet a sort of strength, after all, still
congruous with the line of development that genius has hitherto taken,
the special strength of the scholar and his proper reward, a purely
cerebral strength [53] the strength, the power of an immense
understanding.

Now the life of Raphael at Rome seems as we read of it hasty and
perplexed, full of undertakings, of vast works not always to be
completed, of almost impossible demands on his industry, in a world of
breathless competition, amid a great company of spectators, for great
rewards. You seem to lose him, feel he may have lost himself, in the
multiplicity of his engagements; might fancy that, wealthy, variously
decorated, a courtier, cardinal in petto, he was "serving tables."
But, you know, he was forcing into this brief space of years (he died
at thirty-seven) more than the natural business of the larger part of a
long life; and one way of getting some kind of clearness into it, is to
distinguish the various divergent outlooks or applications, and group
the results of that immense intelligence, that still untroubled,
flawlessly operating, completely informed understanding, that purely
cerebral power, acting through his executive, inventive or creative
gifts, through the eye and the hand with its command of visible colour
and form. In that way you may follow him along many various roads till
brain and eye and hand suddenly fail in the very midst of his
work--along many various roads, but you can follow him along each of
them distinctly.

At the end