AGNES DURER. 



79 



" In substance, he is to be understood as saying, ' You 

 and I are friends, but let my wife alone.' Curious blun- 

 ders are made by all translators of the queer old Bavarian 

 dialect in which he writes. One serious blunder occurs 

 in the latest English book a very good book, too Mrs. 

 Heaton's where the meaning of a sentence is wholly 

 changed. Pirkheimer had spoken in his coarse way of 

 many persons and things, and, among others, had for once 

 ventured to speak of the artist's wife. His remark was, 

 in effect, that if Durer did not hasten home, ' I will make 

 love to your wife.' The word which I translate ' make 

 love' is capable of several translations, conveying a coarse 

 idea, or a more common signification tease, annoy, tor- 

 ment. Diirer's reply is short, sharp, and distinct, but 

 strangely mistranslated by Mrs. Heaton, by Scott, and by 

 others. He does not say, ' You may keep her till death.' 

 He never wrote such a brutal sentence. But he replies, 

 simply, 'This is wrong; you will bring her to her death.' 

 The only meaning properly to be extracted from this is a 

 reproof as sharp as he could use to his creditor, to whom 

 he was then under heavy obligations, and unable to pay. 

 Neither is Agnes the ' reckon-mistress ' named in these 

 letters. On the contrary, coupled as this ' reckon-mis- 

 tress' is with women of loose character of Pirkheimer's 

 acquaintance, she is clearly one of them, and no one 

 should have dreamed that Durer joined his wife and such 

 persons in one sentence. 



" Her reputation as a saving person is to her credit, 

 since we have abundant evidence that she was not nig- 

 gardly, Pirkheimer to the contrary notwithstanding; for 

 she never seems to have restrained Durer in his free pur- 

 chases of curiosities and objects of taste in art, and the 

 furniture of their home was luxurious and elegant for the 



