And count fair prize what comes into their net?
He's Judas to a tittle, that man is !

Just such a face! Why, sir, you make amends.
Lord, I'm not angry! Bid your hangdogs go
Drink out this quarter-florin to the health
Of the munificent House that harbours me
(And many more beside, lads! more beside !)
And all 's come square again. I'd like his face-
His, elbowing on his comrade in the door

With the pike and lantern,—for the slave that holds
John Baptist's head a-dangle by the hair

With one hand ("Look you, now," as who should say)
And his weapon in the other, yet unwiped !
It's not your chance to have a bit of chalk,
A wood-coal or the like? or you should see !
Yes, I'm the painter, since you style me so.
What, brother Lippo's doings, up and down,
You know them, and they take you? like enough!
I saw the proper twinkle in your eye—

'Tell you, I liked your looks at very first.

Let's sit and set things straight now, hip to haunch. Here's spring come, and the nights one makes up bands

To roam the town and sing out carnival,

And I've been three weeks shut within my mew,
A-painting for the great man, saints and saints
And saints again. I could not paint all night-
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 o' the quince,

I let Lisa go, and what good in life since?

Flower o' 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 Saint Lawrence, hail fellow, well met,—

Flower o' the rose,

If I've been merry, what matter who knows?

And so, as I was stealing back again,

To get to bed and have a bit of sleep
Ere I rise up to-morrow and go work

On Jerome knocking at his poor old breast
With his great round stone to subdue the flesh,

You snap me of the sudden. Ah, I see!

Though your eye twinkles still, you shake your head---
Mine's shaved-a monk, you say-the sting 's in that!
If Master Cosimo announced himself,

Mum 's the word naturally; but a monk!
Come, what am I a beast for? tell us, now!

I was a baby when my mother died

And father died and left me in the street.

I starved there, God knows how, a year or two,
On fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks,
Refuse and rubbish. One fine frosty day,

My stomach being empty as your hat,

The wind doubled me up and down I went. Old Aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one hand, (Its fellow was a stinger, as I knew)

And so along the wall, over the bridge,

By the straight cut to the convent. Six words there,
While I stood munching my first bread that month:

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So, boy, you 're minded," quoth the good fat father Wiping his own mouth, 't was refection-time,

"To quit this very miserable world?

"Will you renounce

thought I;

"the mouthful of bread ?"

By no means! Brief, they made a monk of me;
I did renounce the world, its pride and greed,
Palace, farm, villa, shop and banking-house,
Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici
Have given their hearts to—all at eight years old.
Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure,
'T was not for nothing-the good bellyful,
The warm serge and the rope that goes

And day-long blessed idleness beside!

all round,

"Let's see what the urchin 's fit for "-that came next.

Not overmuch their way, I must confess.

Such a to-do! They tried me with their books:

Lord, they 'd have taught me Latin in pure waste!
Flower o' the clove,

All the Latin I construe is, "Amo" I love!
But, mind you, when a boy starves in the streets
Eight years together as my fortune was,
Watching folk's faces to know who will fling
The bit of half-stripped grape-bunch he desires,
And who will curse or kick him for his pains,
Which gentleman processional and fine,

Holding a candle to the Sacrament,

Will wink and let him lift a plate and catch
The droppings of the wax to sell again,

Or holla for the Eight and have him whipped,-
How say I?-nay, which dog bites, which lets drop
His bone from the heap of offal in the street,—
Why, soul and sense of him grow sharp alike,
He learns the look of things, and none the less
For admonition from the hunger-pinch.

I had a store of such remarks, be sure,
Which, after I found leisure, turned to use:
I drew men's faces on my copy-books,
Scrawled them within the antiphonary's marge,
Joined legs and arms to the long music-notes,
Found eyes and nose and chin for A's and B's
And made a string of pictures of the world
Betwixt the ins and outs of verb and noun,

On the wall, the bench, the door. The monks looked black.

"Nay," quoth the Prior, "turn him out, d' ye say?

"In no wise. Lose a crow and catch a lark.

"What if at last we get our man of parts,

"We Carmelites, like those Camaldolese

"And Preaching Friars, to do our church up fine

"And put the front on it that ought to be !"

And hereupon he bade me daub away.

Thank you! my head being crammed, the walls a blank

Never was such prompt disemburdening.

First every sort of monk, the black and white,

I drew them, fat and lean: then, folks at church,

From good old gossips waiting to confess
Their cribs of barrel-droppings, candle-ends,-

To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot,

Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there
With the little children round him in a row
Of admiration, half for his beard, and half
For that white anger of his victim's son
Shaking a fist at him with one fierce arm,
Signing himself with the other because of Christ
(Whose sad face on the cross sees only this
After the passion of a thousand years)

Till some poor girl, her apron o'er her head,
(Which the intense eyes looked through) came at eve
On tiptoe, said a word, dropped in a loaf,
Her pair of ear-rings and a bunch of flowers
(The brute took growling) prayed, and so was gone.
I painted all, then cried, ""T is ask and have;
"Choose, for more 's ready!"-laid the ladder flat,
And showed my covered bit of cloister-wall.
The monks closed in a circle and praised loud
Till checked, taught what to see and not to see,
Being simple bodies,-"That's the very man!
"Look at the boy who stoops to pat the dog!
"That woman 's like the Prior's niece who comes
"To care about his asthma: it's the life!"

But there my triumph's straw-fire flared and funked ;
Their betters took their turn to see and say:

The Prior and the learned pulled a face

And stopped all that in no time. "How? what's here?

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66

Quite from the mark of painting, bless us all!

Faces, arms, legs and bodies like the true

"As much as pea and pea! it 's devil's game!

"Your business is not to catch men with show, "With homage to the perishable clay,