348 ARIADNE FLOEENTINA. 



painted, just because you look at them neither more nor less 

 than you would have looked at the cloak in reality. You 

 don't say, ' How brilliantly they are touched,' as you would 

 with Rembrandt ; nor ' How gracefully they are neglected, 

 as you would with Gainsborough ; nor ' How exquisitely they 

 are shaded,' as you would with Leonardo ; nor 'How grandly 

 they are composed,' as you would with Titian. You say only, 

 * Erasmus is surely there ; and what a pleasant sight 1 ' You 

 don't think of Holbein at all. He has not even put in the 

 minutest letter H, that I can see, to remind you of him. Drops 

 his H's, I regret to say, often enough. ' My hand should be 

 enough for you ; what matters my name ? ' But now, look 

 at Durer s. The very first thing you see, and at any distance, 

 is this great square tablet with 



" The image of Erasmus, drawn from the life by Albert 



Durer, 1526," 



and a great straddling A.D. besides. Then you see a cloak, 

 and a table, and a pot, with flowers in it, and a heap of books 

 with all their leaves and all their clasps, and all the little bits 

 of leather gummed in to mark the places ; and last of all you 

 see Erasmus's face ; and when you do see it, the most of it is 

 wrinkles. 



All egotism and insanity, this, gentlemen. Hard words to 

 use ; but not too hard to define the faults which rendered so 

 much of Durer's great genius abortive, and to this day para- 

 lyze, among the details of a lifeless and ambitious precision, 

 the student, no less than the artist, of German blood. For 

 too many an Erasmus, too many a Durer, among them, the 

 world is all cloak and clasp, instead of face or book ; and the 

 first object of their lives is to engrave their initials. 



For us, in England, not even so much is at present to be 

 hoped ; and yet, singularly enough, it is more our modesty, 

 unwisely submissive, than our vanity, which has destroyed 

 our English school of engraving. 



At the bottom of the pretty line engravings which used to 

 represent, characteristically, our English skill, one saw always 

 two inscriptions. At the left-hand corner, "Drawn by so- 

 and-so ; " at the right-hand corner, " Engraved by so-and- 



