Art is also connected with Browning’s character portrayal in a secondary sort of way, of which _The Ring and the Book_ furnishes excellent illustrations. In that poem people are characterized by their likeness to some work of art--_e. g._, Pompilia is compared to Raphael’s Madonna; or by their fondness for some particular work of art--_e. g._, the Pope chuckling over the _Merry Tales_. While Browning mentioned the great masters in many different poems, it is noticeable that he never used one of them as the main subject of a poem. There are Andrea, Lippo, and Furini, but there is no Angelo and no Raphael. This is due to the one element of interest on Browning’s part that has already been emphasized in this chapter and previous ones--personality. Browning was interested in the artist he selected, not merely as an artist, not as a distinguished figure, but as a human being, whose attempts, partial failure, or development, the poet wished us to study with him. Very often the characters whom Browning chose to present either in connection with the arts or otherwise, were such as we do not approve of--but neither did Browning approve of them. His theory of art was no mere aesthetic one of art for art’s sake, no mere dogma of didacticism. It was rather, art for the sake of human nature, of personality. Of all the characters he has drawn for us, the one whose expression of art best gives Browning’s own sentiments is Fra Lippo Lippi, the painter and realist, enthusiastic for “The beauty and the wonder and the power, The shapes of things, their colors, lights, and shades, Changes, surprises--and God made it all! * * * * * “But why not do as well as say,--paint these Just as they are, careless what comes of it?” Numerous instances might be cited as a proof of this--Guido, the Duke, the Bishop, and many others. All his human beings, then, Browning chose because their personality appealed to him, as a study, rather than because they compelled his admiration, whether he selected them from the world of art or elsewhere. IV. BROWNING AS THE POET OF HUMANITY.--By consideration of Browning’s general attitude towards the arts, of his fondness for the struggle of the human soul as a poetic theme, and by a discussion of his relative emphasis on each art and the method in which he chose to treat it, the fact has been established that Browning was primarily the poet of the human soul, and a poet of the arts as seen through the medium of personality. When he was once asked if he liked nature, he replied, “Yes but I love men and women better.” The arts--architecture, music, poetry, sculpture, and painting--he loved also; but he loved them most because they recorded human experience, and best when they most fully expressed the struggles of the soul, and thus became the direct embodiment of personality. APPENDIX I. POEMS CONTAINING REFERENCE TO ITALIAN ART.