GERMAN SCHOOLS OF ENORA VING. 333 



Botticelli. You see in a moment that this man knows nothing 

 of Sphinxes, or Muses, or Graces, or Aphrodites ; and, be- 

 sides, that, knowing nothing, he would have no liking for 

 them even if he saw them ; but much prefers the style of a 

 well-to-do English housekeeper with corkscrew curls, and a 

 portly person. 



155. You miss something, I said, in Bewick which you find 

 in Holbein. But do you suppose Holbein himself, or any 

 other Northern painter, could wholly quit himself of the like 

 accusations ? I told you, in the second of these lectures, that 

 the Northern temper, refined from savageness, and the South- 

 ern, redeemed from decay, met, in Florence. Holbein and 

 Botticelli are the purest types of the two races. Holbein is a 

 civilized boor ; Botticelli a reanimate Greek. Holbein was 

 polished by companionship with scholars and kings, but re- 

 mains always a burgher, of Augsburg in essential nature. 

 Bewick and he are alike in temper ; only the one is untaught, 

 the other perfectly taught. But Botticelli needs no teaching. 

 He is, by his birth, scholar and gentleman to the heart's core. 

 Christianity itself can only inspire him, not refine him. He is 

 as tried gold chased by the jeweller, the roughest part of 

 him is the outside. 



Now how differently must the newly recovered scholastic 

 learning tell upon these two men. It is all out of Holbein's 

 way ; foreign to his nature, useless at the best, probably cum- 

 brous. But Botticelli receives it as a child in later years re- 

 covers the forgotten dearness of a nursery tale ; and is more 

 himself, and again and again himself, as he breathes the air 

 of Greece, and hears, in his own Italy, the lost voice of the 

 Sibyl murmur again by the Avernus Lake. 



156. It is not, as we have seen, every one of the Southern 

 race who can thus receive it. But it graces them all ; is at 

 once a part of their being ; destroys them, if it is to destroy, 

 the more utterly because it so enters into their natures. It 

 destroys Raphael ; but it graces him, and is a part of him. 

 It all but destroys Mantegna ; but it graces him. And it 

 does not hurt Holbein, just because it does not grace him 

 never is for an instant a part of him. It is with Raphael as 



