Of course, when the Renaissance began to die down into senile pride and decay, Browning, who never ceased to choose and claim companionship with vigorous life, who abhorred decay either in Nature or nations, in societies or in cliques of culture, who would have preferred a blood-red pirate to the daintiest of decadents--did not care for it, and in only one poem, touched with contemptuous pity and humour, represented its disease and its disintegrating elements, with so much power, however, with such grasping mastery, that it is like a painting by Velasquez.

Ruskin said justly that the _Bishop orders his Tomb at St.Praxed's Church_ concentrated into a few lines all the evil elements of the Renaissance.

But this want of care for the decaying Renaissance was contrasted by the extreme pleasure with which he treated its early manhood in _Fra Lippo Lippi_.
The Renaissance had a life and seasons, like those of a human being.

It went through its childhood and youth like a boy of genius under the care of parents from whose opinions and mode of life he is sure to sever himself in the end; but who, having made a deep impression on his nature, retain power over, and give direction to, his first efforts at creation.

The first art of the Renaissance, awakened by the discovery of the classic remnants, retained a great deal of the faith and superstition, the philosophy, theology, and childlike _naivete_ of the middle ages.