study of "The Duchess of Malfi" makes deeper impression on a capable student than this negative quality of noble abstinence, the utter and most admirable absence of any chaotic or spasmodic element, the chastity of a controlling instinct which rejects as impossible all hollow extravagance and inflation, even in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) the whirlwind of passion." For one instance, if the comparison is to be made, we cannot but see that the curse of the Duchess on her brothers is less intemperate in the excess and exaltation of its rage than the curse of Lear on his daughters; which of course is as it should be, but is not what the general verdict of critics on Webster's art and style would have led us to expect. The note of extravagance is far more real and far more patent in the tragic genius of Beaumont and Fletcher. Of their comic power there is here no more question than of Jonson's or Massinger's or any other's; we are concerned merely to examine by comparison the rank among tragic poets of a poet who was nothing if not tragic. In this field, then, we find "those suns of glory, those two lights of men," the Dioscuri of our "heaven of invention," to be swifter and gracefuller runners than Ford, but neither surer of foot nor stronger of hand. Their genius has more of flame and light, less of fire and intensity; more of air and ease, less of force and concentration; more of beautiful and graceful qualities, less of positive and severe capacity; there is more of a charm about it, and less of a spell. With all its great and affluent beauties, "The Maid's Tragedy" leaves a less absolute and inevitable mark upon the mind of a student than "The Broken Heart." No poet is less

forgetable than Ford; none fastens (as it were) the fangs of his genius and his will more deeply in your memory. You cannot shake hands with him and pass by; you cannot fall in with him and out again at pleasure; if he touch you once he takes you, and what he takes he keeps his hold of; his work becomes part of your thought and parcel of your spiritual furniture for ever; he signs himself upon you as with a seal of deliberate and decisive power. His force is never the force of accident; the casual divinity of beauty which falls as though direct from heaven upon stray lines and phrases of some poets falls never by any such heavenly chance on his; his strength of impulse is matched by his strength of will; he never works more by instinct than by resolution; he knows what he would have and what he will do, and gains his end and does his work with full conscience of purpose and insistence of design. By the might of a great will seconded by the force of a great hand he won the place he holds against all odds of rivalry in a race of rival giants. In that gallery of monumental men and mighty memories, among or above the fellows of his godlike craft, the high figure of Ford stands steadily erect; his name is ineffaceable from the scroll of our great writers; it is one of the loftier landmarks of English poetry.

NOTES ON DESIGNS OF THE OLD MASTERS AT FLORENCE.

In the spring of 1864 I had the chance of spending many days in the Uffizj on the study of its several collections. Statues and pictures I found ranged and classed, as all the world knows they are, with full care and excellent sense; but one precious division of the treasury was then, and I believe is still, unregistered in catalogue or manual. The huge mass of original designs, in pencil or ink or chalk, swept together by Vasari and others, had then been but recently unearthed and partially assorted. Under former Tuscan governments this sacred deposit had lain unseen and unclassed in the lower chambers of the palace, heaped and huddled in portfolios by the loose stackful. A change of rule had put the matter at length into the hands of official men gifted with something more of human reason and eyesight. Three rooms were filled with the select flower of the collection acquired and neglected by past Florentine governors. Each design is framed, glazed, labelled legibly outside with the designer's name: the arrangement is not too far from perfect for convenience of study. As there can be no collection of the kind more rich, more various, more singular in interest, I supplied for myself the want of a

register by taking hasty memorial notes of all the important designs as they fell in my way. They are not ranged in any order of time, nor are all a painter's drawings kept together; some have samples scattered about various corners of different rooms, but all accessible and available. Space even there is bounded, and valued accordingly. In the under chambers there still remain piles of precious things but partially set in order. To these the public visitor has not access; but through the courtesy of their guardian I was offered admission and shown by him through the better part. There are many studies of the figure by Andrea del Sarto which deserve and demand a public place; others also of interest which belong to the earlier Florentine school; many nameless but some recognisable by a student of that time of art. In such studies as these the collection is naturally richest; though, as will at once be seen, not poor in samples of Milanese or Venetian work. The fruitful vigour, the joyous and copious effusion of spirit and labour, which makes all early times of awakening art dear to all students and profitable to all, has left noble fragments and relics behind, the golden gleanings of a full harvest. In these desultory notes I desire only to guide the attention to what seems worthiest of notice, without more form of order than has been given by the framers and hangers; taking men and schools as they come to hand, giving precedence and prominence only to the more precious and significant. For guide I have but my own sense of interest and admiration; so that, while making the list of things remarkable as complete and careful as I can, I have aimed at nothing further than to cast into some

legible form my impression of the designs registered in so rough and rapid a fashion; and shall begin my transcript with notices of such as first caught and longest fixed my attention.

Of Leonardo the samples are choice and few; full of that indefinable grace and grave mystery which belong to his slightest and wildest work. Fair strange faces of women full of dim doubt and faint scorn; touched by the shadow of an obscure fate; eager and weary as it seems at once, pale and fervent with patience or passion ; allure and perplex the eyes and thoughts of men. There is a study here of Youth and Age meeting; it may be, of a young man coming suddenly upon the ghostly figure of himself as he will one day be; the brilliant life in his face is struck into sudden pallor and silence, the clear eyes startled, the happy lips confused. A fair straightfeatured face, with full curls fallen or blown against the eyelids; and confronting it, a keen, wan, mournful mask of flesh the wise ironical face of one made subtle and feeble by great age. The vivid and various imagination of Leonardo never fell into a form more poetical than in this design. Grotesques of course are not wanting; and there is a noble sketch of a griffin and lion locked or dashed together in the hardest throes of a final fight, which is full of violent beauty; and again, a study of the painter's chosen type of woman: thin-lipped, with a forehead too high and weighty for perfection or sweetness of form; cheeks exquisitely carved, clear pure chin and neck, and grave eyes full of a cold charm; folded hands, and massive hair gathered into a net; shapely and splendid, as a study for Pallas or Artemis.