pathetic realities of experience. Velasquez surveys his models with the reserve necessary to a courtier and becoming in a cavalier; but the manners of the miller's son have not the repose that stamps that frigid caste. Rembrandt has been more than a spectator in the battle of life, and we feel that if he has come through it like his own image of indomitable courage and patient resignation, it has been so as by fire."

The great landscape in Carlton Gardens has always been attributed to Rembrandt; but of late good judges, both in Holland and in Germany, have placed it to the credit of his pupil Koningk, with an assurance that is by means rare in art critics, but at the same time with a unanimity that is much rarer. It is well known that Koningk made experiments with this very subject; and in view of these, of which more than one exist in England, it seemed to the present writer that here we had the master's archetype, from which Koningk with much smaller means started. But if we are to conform to the decision of Bode and Bredius honoris causa, all we can say is that Koningk must for once have grown to more than his usual self under the immediate inspiration of Rembrandt.

Of the figure-painters, Teniers and de Hoogh are seen at their best on familiar lines; but Cuyp makes a strange appearance in this galère with the portraits of three maidens who twine garlands and fondle sheep by the waterside, with a distant view of Dort in the background. The artist is imperturbably serious, and the execution-careful to timidity-suggests that this is an early work. We might have expected, even from Cuyp, a certain lightness and demure playfulness; but the sheep are too real and the shepherdesses in their heavy finery too still for his Batavian graces, and the result is an agricultural synod of Dort more than even a prose pastoral.

A master who has never received quite the recognition that is due to his remarkable powers is Jan Steen. At the National Gallery he is still poorly represented; here, on the contrary, we find him on the level of his great performances at Apsley House. It was said of William III that, though he commanded large armies, he never achieved anything beyond la petite guerre, whereas Turenne with small armies gave perfect examples of the conduct of la grande guerre. In view of the small scale and low themes that he chose, Jan Steen must rank with the little masters; but, all the

same, for correctness of drawing and skill in grouping he shows like a master of the grand style.

IV

Lancret is no match for Watteau at his best; but he makes the same appeal to those whom the Scribes (of history) and Pharisees cannot prevent from dwelling with fondness upon the memories of the ancien régime. Here he displays the utmost of his technical skill, and the subject is innocent with no lack of point and sprightliness.

Corot's four great landscapes are not only a splendid example of his powers, far above the generality of the work that he turned out with little effort for dealers, but an interesting personal relic of the man. It would be impertinent to add anything to Corot's own description of his method and mood with nature; but we may venture so far as to say that these landscapes are ideal in the true sense of the word—that is, they are no evasion of the real, but an interpretation of the essential truth that underlies individual appearances. In this respect and in this particular case Corot resembles his great contemporary Barye, who rendered animal forms with the air of a man who had mastered the "Origin of Species."

Of the English School, though no single master except Turner stands out pre-eminent, the collection is choice and varied. Reynolds's portrait of Mrs. Montgomery is broad and rich, and in perfect condition. The subject has cost him none of that effort of which we are more conscious with Reynolds than with Gainsborough; but he has probably achieved his effect of simplicity at the expense of the likeness. Romney competes on the same lines; but it must be confessed that he shows cheap and thin by comparison. The landscapes reveal more of Gainsborough than the great full-length portrait in which his talent seems cramped and stiffened. He was at his best when dealing summarily and vivaciously with immediate impressions-the Baccelli or the Ladies walking in the Mall. A complicated theme inspired Reynolds with grandiose memories and ambitions of "the sublime." To Gainsborough, on the contrary, what might have been a stimulus acted too often as a benumbing blow.

If it were not that the pedigree seems above suspicion, we should feel inclined to attribute the touching portrait of Dr. Johnson to

Gainsborough instead of to Opie, whose name it bears. It is unfinished, and in its present state shows nothing of the unmistakable depth and darkness that Opie introduced, and to which he owed his first fame. The Doctor appears at the close of his life, musing and tender; and we are reminded of him in the mood of his letters to Queenie or the sacred lines on the death of Levett, more than of the censorious dictator at the National Gallery who seems to be listening with growing impatience to a dunce or a Whig, and ready with his "Nay, Sir, this is paltry."

Northcote has described his own feeling of dismay when "the Cornish Wonder" burst in all his freshness upon the town, and when Reynolds did not hesitate to compare him to Caravaggio. The Schoolmistress is a work of great power, and may well have arrested the public accustomed to divide its suffrages between the glowing pomp of Reynolds and the silvery coolness of Gainsborough. Opie's method of painting was afterwards exploited by Raeburn, whom it has become the fashion with Scotch writers to push forward into the circle of the great as the discoverer of the secrets of Velasquez.

Crome and Wilson in different keys prelude to Turner, who in Sheerness rises to his full might and majesty. The immense swell and surge of the sea, the great hull of the man-of-war, black and ominous against the setting sun, all combine to a dramatic suggestiveness. This is more than a view on the coast: it is the theatre of the great drama of England's history-" the dower, she won in that great hour-the sea!"

Lastly, of the men of the present day we shall say nothing, except that they are worthy of their place in the artistic succession. It is impossible to harm the dead even with our stupidity; but when controversy and those whom it concerns are still alive, reticence is the better part as we reach the goal suppositos per ignes.

L

FRAGMENTS

I. The Morellian Method.

HE great talent and strong personality of Morelli enabled him to produce an effect out of proportion either to the novelty or to the extent of what he had to bring. But fashion swung round to his extreme, and those who lacked both his training and his gifts were not slow to copy his manner. He made a great show of opposition to Crowe and Cavalcaselle, who have suffered quite as much from their own bulk and weight as from his personal and pointed attacks; but just as those who had never seen a Jesuit took Martinus Scribblerus for one, so those who had never mastered the five big volumes of the "History of Painting" were easy to convince that the authors' method was out of date, and as easily duped into mistaking the echo of things printed for an original and daring departure. Documents for Dryasdust! Henceforth the picture-fancier in a role separate and superior init dux praelia primus. If Morelli had stood his ground longer than any other leader of revolt, the case would have been different; but the Bonifazios, the three that bear witness to the importance of learning as well as looking, are gradually, as Science advances, drawing together into one; while the image of Giorgione, alternately shrinking and swelling under the new treatment, hardly encourages the amateur to join the oracular circle of differing doctors. The conclusion of the whole matter is not that the connoisseur is unnecessary, but that the connoisseur who is nothing else is as limited, and, therefore, outside his limits, as futile a person as the archivist who is nothing else.

1 From an article on Filippo Lippi, "Architectural Review," July, 1902.

II. Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi.

Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo, at two opposite poles of character and life, are brought together into one view by the common chance that so strong was their impact upon their fellows, that not only is it heard in history, but it echoes through the border-land of legend. Vasari's romance of Fra Angelico has proved so convincing and so refreshing to the great majority, who would always rather be edified by what ought to be than shown what is, that, in too literal accordance with the maxim Beati Stulti, they have allowed the saint in Fra Angelico to eclipse both his intellect and his genius. Meanwhile, the sinner has not been allowed benefit of clergy. Attention has been distracted to one side by the influence of Browning, who, snatching as usual at the obvious dramatic theme as it lay ready to hand, fashioned an image of Fra Filippo on his weak side and his lowest terms.

III. Correggio.2

Of all the great masters, Correggio owes least to biographers. So far he has made either a direct appeal, or none at all. Titian— living at Venice, still in the full golden glow of her setting sun, and profusely flattered, if not always punctually paid, by emperors and kings; Michelangelo meditating and moulding in solitary indignation under the bitter sky of enslaved Florence; Raphael, whose semi-divine image has been stamped so sharply and deeply by tradition upon the popular mind, that even the nonconformists of modern criticism have no chance of ever rooting out the idolatrous worship of the patron-saint; all these and more, even if their works faded, would still shine as vividly as ever in their setting of story and commentary. But Correggio, modestly retired in a provincial town, could rely not upon the industry or the loquacity of eminent friends, but solely upon himself, to convince the narrow world he lived in of his own greatness.

Antonio Allegri was born at Correggio in the year 1494, eleven

1 From an article on Filippo Lippi, "Architectural Review," July, 1902. 2 Unpublished fragment.