nd, and on such occasions it only
remained for me to regret that I was not some sensitive plate, some
uncanny Edisonian Poetophone, to preserve the spontaneous creation of
his mind.

"Do you ever listen to Reciters?" my wife asked him one day; "I mean to
Reciters of Browning's poems?"

"Oh, I do the Reciting myself," he said, "when I am amongst a few
sympathetic friends. I will read to you with pleasure. What have you
got?"

The few sympathetic ones were not wanting that Sunday afternoon; I gave
him the volume of "Selections" from his poems, and turning over the
pages he said, "As we are in an artist's studio, I will read 'Andrea del
Sarto.'"

There was not a shadow of declamation in his reading. For the time being
he was just Andrea talking to his wife, the "Faultless Painter" as they
called him, who knew his own faults but had not the strength to battle
with them. It was Andrea himself we were in touch with, his dreamy
sadness that we shared. His yearnings for requited love, his longings
for the unattainable in art, drew us to him, and we would have helped
him had we been able. That sorry business with the King of France was
disgraceful--there was no denying it. He admitted himself that he had
abused the king's friendship and misused his moneys, but surely for such
a man as was Del Sarto, something could be done to settle matters, and
once more to turn his genius to account.

And that Lucretia, his wife! his "serpentining beauty, rounds on
rounds!" Why _will_ she not answer? The right words from her spoken now
might yet make of him the good man and the great artist that a God may
create, but that a woman must consecrate. One just felt as if one could
give her a good shaking, if only to make her break the aggravating
silence she so imperturbably maintains whilst he so pathetically pleads.
As for the cousin, one would have liked to go out and give him a sound
thrashing to stop his whistling once for all.

We were so impressed at the close of his reading that for a moment we
remained hushed in a silence which none of us cared to break. He looked
round at us, anxious lest he should not have brought home his meaning,
and said, "Have I made it clear?"

* * * * *

It is rather a sudden transition from Del Sarto to myself, and from
"sober pleasant Fiesole" in the background, to the Royal Academy in
Piccadilly; but all artists of all times, the little ones as well as the
great ones, ha