such is the delicate ware which Tuscany, nothing doubting, took for
_lavoro molto utile_. For, believe it or not, of that kind were Delia
Robbia's enrichments, Ghirlandajo's frescos, Raphael's Madonnas, and
Alberti's broad marble churches: of that kind and of no other; on a level
with the painted lady smiling out of a painted window at Airolo, whose
frozen lips assure the traverser of the Saint Gothard that he has passed
the ridge and may soon smell the olives.

[Footnote 1: More than that: the piece is an excellent example of the
skilful use of redundant syllables. It is certain that a study of Italian
poetry would help our, too often, tame blank verse to be (however bad
otherwise) at least not dull. It might bring it nearer to Milton, as Dante
brought Keats. Witness his revision of _Hyperion_. If the Tuscans
overrated the craft in Poetry, we assuredly underrate it.]

Wherein, then, is the use? Why, it is in the art of it. I will convict you
out of Alberti's own mouth, or his biographer's, for he spake it truly.
"For he was wont to say," thus runs the passage, "that whatever might be
accomplished by the wit of man with a certain choiceness, that indeed was
next to the divine." To image the divine, you see, you must accomplish
somewhat, scrupulously weigh, select and refuse; in short adapt
exquisitely your means until they are adequate to your ends. And, keeping
the eye steadily on that, you might grow to discard solemn ends, or
momentous, altogether, until poetry and painting ceased to be arts at all,
and must be classed, at best, with needlework. So indeed it proved in the
case of poetry. After Politian (who really did catch some echo of other
times, and of manners more primal than his own, and did instil something
of it in his _Orfeo_) no poet of Italy had anything serious to say. I
doubt it even of Tasso, though Tasso, I know, has a vogue. I except, of
course, Michael Angelo, as I have already said; and I except Boccace and