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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41734 ***
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 41734-h.htm or 41734-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41734/41734-h/41734-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41734/41734-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      http://archive.org/details/drerbyherberte00fursiala
+
+
+
+
+
+Masterpieces in Colour
+
+Edited By
+
+T. Leman Hare
+
+DÜRER
+
+1471-1528
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+"MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR" SERIES
+
+
+  ARTIST.                     AUTHOR.
+
+  VELAZQUEZ.                  S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  REYNOLDS.                   S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  TURNER.                     C. LEWIS HIND.
+  ROMNEY.                     C. LEWIS HIND.
+  GREUZE.                     ALYS EYRE MACKLIN.
+  BOTTICELLI.                 HENRY B. BINNS.
+  ROSSETTI.                   LUCIEN PISSARRO.
+  BELLINI.                    GEORGE HAY.
+  FRA ANGELICO.               JAMES MASON.
+  REMBRANDT.                  JOSEF ISRAELS.
+  LEIGHTON.                   A. LYS BALDRY.
+  RAPHAEL.                    PAUL G. KONODY.
+  HOLMAN HUNT.                MARY E. COLERIDGE.
+  TITIAN.                     S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  MILLAIS.                    A. LYS BALDRY.
+  CARLO DOLCI.                GEORGE HAY.
+  GAINSBOROUGH.               MAX ROTHSCHILD.
+  TINTORETTO.                 S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  LUINI.                      JAMES MASON.
+  FRANZ HALS.                 EDGCUMBE STALEY.
+  VAN DYCK.                   PERCY M. TURNER.
+  LEONARDO DA VINCI.          M. W. BROCKWELL.
+  RUBENS.                     S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  WHISTLER.                   T. MARTIN WOOD.
+  HOLBEIN.                    S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  BURNE-JONES.                A. LYS BALDRY.
+  VIGÉE LE BRUN.              C. HALDANE MACFALL.
+  CHARDIN.                    PAUL G. KONODY.
+  FRAGONARD.                  C. HALDANE MACFALL.
+  MEMLINC.                    W. H. J. & J. C. WEALE.
+  CONSTABLE.                  C. LEWIS HIND.
+  RAEBURN.                    JAMES L. CAW.
+  JOHN S. SARGENT.            T. MARTIN WOOD.
+  LAWRENCE.                   S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  DÜRER.                      H. E. A. FURST.
+  HOGARTH.                    C. LEWIS HIND.
+
+  _Others in Preparation._
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+[Illustration: PLATE I.--PORTRAIT OF HIERONYMUS HOLZSCHUER. Frontispiece
+
+(From the Oil-painting in the Berlin Museum. Painted in 1526)
+
+Holzschuer was one of Dürer's Nuremberg friends--a patrician, and
+Councillor of the City. Dürer's portraits are remarkable for their
+strength in characterisation.]
+
+
+DÜRER
+
+by
+
+HERBERT E. A. FURST
+
+Illustrated with Eight Reproductions in Colour
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: IN SEMPITERNUM.]
+
+London: T. C. & E. C. Jack
+New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+     Plate
+
+       I. Portrait of Hyeronymus Holzschuer
+                                                         Frontispiece
+           From the Oil-painting in the Berlin Museum
+
+                                                                 Page
+      II. Portrait of a Woman                                      14
+             From the Oil-painting in the Berlin Museum
+
+     III. Portrait of the Artist                                   24
+             From the Oil-painting in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich
+
+      IV. Portrait of the Painter's Father                         34
+             From the Oil-painting in the National Gallery
+
+       V. Portrait of Oswalt Krel                                  40
+             From the Oil-painting in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich
+
+      VI. The Madonna with the Siskin                              50
+             From the Oil-painting in the Berlin Museum
+
+     VII. SS. John and Peter                                       60
+             From the Oil-painting in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich
+
+    VIII. SS. Paul and Mark                                        70
+            From the Oil-painting in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+This is a wonderful world! And not the least wonderful thing is our
+ignorance of it.
+
+I would chat with you, reader, for a while; would discuss Dürer, whom I
+have known and loved for many a year, and whom I want to make beloved by
+you also. Here I sit, pen in hand, and would begin.
+
+Begin--where?
+
+With the Beginnings?
+
+The Beginnings? Where do things begin; when and why?
+
+So our ignorance, like a many-headed monster, raises its fearsome heads
+and would bar the way.
+
+By most subtle links are all things connected--cause and effect we call
+them; and if we but raise one or the other, fine ears will hear the
+clinking--and the monster rises.
+
+There are so many things we shall never know, cries the poet of the
+unsaid, Maeterlinck.
+
+Let us venture forth then and grope with clumsy fingers amongst the
+treasures stored; let us be content to pick up a jewel here and there,
+resting our minds in awe and admiration on its beauty, though we may not
+readily understand its use and meaning. Foolish men read books and
+dusty documents, catch a few dull words from the phrasing of long
+thoughts, and will tell you, these are facts!
+
+Wise men read books--the books of Nature and the books of men--and say,
+facts are well enough, but oh for the right understanding!
+
+For between sunrise and sunset, between the dusk of evening and the dusk
+of dawn, things happen that will never happen again; and the world of
+to-day is ever a world of yesterdays and to-morrows.
+
+Reader, I lift my torch, and by its dim light I bid you follow me.
+
+For it is a long journey we have to make through the night of the past.
+Many an encumbrance of four and a half centuries we shall have to lay
+aside ere we reach the treasure-house of Dürer's Art.
+
+From the steps of Kaiser Wilhelm II.'s throne we must hasten through the
+ages to Kaiser Maximilian's city, Nuremberg--to the days when Wilhelm's
+ancestors were but Margraves of Brandenburg, scarcely much more than the
+Burggraves of Nuremberg they had originally been.
+
+From the days of the Maxim gun and the Lee-Metford to the days of the
+howitzer and the blunderbuss. When York was farther away from London
+than New York is to-day.
+
+When the receipt of a written letter was fact but few could boast of;
+and a secret _billet-doux_ might cause the sender to be flung in gaol.
+When the morning's milk was unaccompanied by the morning news; for the
+printer's press was in its infancy.
+
+When the stranding of a whale was an event of European interest, and the
+form of a rhinoceros the subject of wild conjecture and childish
+imagination.
+
+When this patient earth of ours was to our ancestors merely a vast
+pancake toasted daily by a circling sun.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE II.--PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN
+
+(From the Oil-painting in the Berlin Museum)
+
+This beautiful portrait represents, artistically, the zenith of Dürer's
+art. It shows Venetian influence so strongly, and is painted with so
+much serenity of manner, that one is almost inclined to doubt its
+ascription.]
+
+When the woods were full of hobgoblins, and scaly Beelzebubs were busily
+engaged in pitching the souls of the damned down a yawning hell-mouth,
+and the angels of the Lord in crimson and brocade carried the blessed
+heavenward. In those days scholars filled their books with a curious
+jumble of theology, philosophy, and old women's talk. Dr. Faustus
+practised black magic, and the besom-steeds carried witches from the
+Brocken far and wide into all lands.
+
+Then no one ventured far from home unaccompanied, and the merchants were
+bold adventurers, and Kings of Scotland might envy Nuremberg
+burgesses--so Æneas Sylvius said.
+
+And that a touch of humour be not lacking, I bid you remember that my
+lady dipped her dainty fingers into the stew, and, after, threw the bare
+bones to the dogs below the table; and I also bid you remember that
+satins and fine linen oft clothed an unwashed body.
+
+Cruel plagues, smallpox, and all manner of disease and malformations
+inflicted a far greater number than nowadays, and the sad ignorance of
+doctors brewed horrid draughts amongst the skulls, skeletons, stuffed
+birds, and crocodiles of their fearsome-looking "surgeries."
+
+In short, it was a "poetic" age; when all the world was full of
+mysteries and possibilities, and the sanest and most level-headed were
+outrageously fantastic.
+
+There are people who will tell you that the world is very much the same
+to-day as it was yesterday, and that, after all, human nature is human
+nature in all ages all the world over. But, beyond the fact that we all
+are born and we all must die, there is little in common between you and
+me--between us of to-day and those of yesterday--and we resemble each
+other most nearly in things that do not matter.
+
+Frankly, therefore, Albrecht Dürer, who was born on May 21, 1471, is a
+human being from another world, and unless you realise that too, I doubt
+you can understand him, much less admire him.
+
+For his Art is not beautiful.
+
+Germans have never been able to create anything beautiful in Art: their
+sense of beauty soars into Song.
+
+But even whilst I am writing these words it occurs to me that they are
+no longer true, for the German of to-day is no longer the German of
+yesterday, "standing peaceful on his scientific watch-tower; and to the
+raging, struggling multitude here and elsewhere solemnly, from hour to
+hour, with preparatory blast of cow-horn emit his 'Höret ihr Herren und
+lasst's euch sagen' ..." as Carlyle pictures him; he is most certainly
+not like the Lutheran German with a child's heart and a boy's rash
+courage.
+
+Frankly I say you cannot admire Dürer if you be honestly ignorant or
+ignorantly honest.
+
+We of to-day are too level-headed; our brains cannot encompass the world
+that crowded Dürer's dreams.
+
+For the German's brain was always crowded; he had not that nice sense of
+space and emptiness that makes Italian Art so pleasant to look upon, and
+which the Japanese employ with astonishing subtlety. You remember
+Wagner's words in Goethe's "Faust"--
+
+    "Zwar weiss ich viel; doch möcht ich Alles wissen."
+
+    (I know a lot, yet wish that I knew All.)
+
+It is not only his eagerness to show you all he knows, but also his
+ravenous desire to know all that is to be known. Hence we speak of
+German thoroughness, at once his boast and his modesty.
+
+Here again I have to pull up. Generalisations are so easy, appear so
+justified, and are more often than not misleading.
+
+Dürer was not a pure-blooded Teuton; his father came from Eytas in
+Hungary.[1]
+
+      [1] Eytas translated into German is Thür (Door), and a
+          man from Thür a Thürer or Dürer.
+
+That German music owes a debt of gratitude to Hungary is acknowledged.
+Does Dürer owe his greatness to the strain of foreign blood?
+
+Possibly; but it does not matter. He was a man, and a profound man,
+therefore akin to all the world, as Dante and Michelangelo, as
+Shakespeare and Millet. Born into German circumstances he appears in
+German habit--that is all.
+
+His father Albrecht was a goldsmith, and Albrecht the son having shown
+himself worthy of a better education than his numerous brothers, was,
+after finishing school, apprenticed to and would have remained a
+goldsmith, had his artistic nature not drawn him to Art; at least so his
+biographer, _i.e._ the painter himself, tells us. It was not the artist
+alone who longed for freer play, for freer expression of his faculties.
+It was to a great extent, I feel sure, the thinker.
+
+Dürer took himself tremendously seriously; were it not for some letters
+that he has left us, and some episodes in his graphic art, one might be
+led to imagine that Dürer knew not laughter, scarcely even a smile. He
+consequently thought it of importance to acquaint the world with all the
+details of his life and work, recording even the moods which prompted
+him to do this or that. In Dürer the desire to live was entirely
+absorbed in the desire to think. He was not a man of action, and the
+records of his life are filled by accounts of what he saw, what he
+thought, and what others thought of him; coupled with frequent
+complaints of jealousies and lack of appreciation. Dürer was deep but
+narrow, and in that again he reflects the religious spirit of
+Protestantism, not the wider culture of Humanism. His ego looms large in
+his consciousness, and it is the salvation of the soul rather than the
+expansion of the mind which concerns him; but withal he is like
+Luther--a _Man_.
+
+His idea then of Art was, that it "should be employed," as he himself
+explained, "in the service of the Church to set forth the sufferings of
+Christ and such like subjects, and it should also be employed to
+preserve the features of men after their death." A narrow interpretation
+of a world-embracing realm.
+
+The scope of this little volume will not admit of a detailed account of
+Dürer's life.
+
+We may not linger on the years of his apprenticeship with Michael
+Wolgemut, where he suffered much from his fellow-'prentices. We must
+not accompany him on his wanderjahre, these being the three years of
+peregrination which always followed the years of apprenticeship.
+
+Neither may we record details, as of his marriage with Agnes Frey--"mein
+Agnes," upon his return home in 1494. "His Agnes" was apparently a good
+housewife and a shrewd business woman, to whom he afterwards largely
+entrusted the sale of his prints.
+
+He had a great struggle for a living. And here an amusing analogy occurs
+to me. Painting does not pay, he complains at one time, and therefore he
+devotes himself to "black and white."
+
+Was it ever thus? Would that some of our own struggling artists
+remembered Dürer, and even when they find themselves compelled to do
+something to keep the pot aboiling, at any rate do their best.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE III.--PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST
+
+(From the Oil-painting in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich)
+
+This picture bears the date 1500 and a Latin inscription, "I, Albert
+Dürer, of Nuremberg, painted my own portrait here in the proper colours,
+at the age of twenty-eight."
+
+According to Thausing, this picture had a curious fate. The panel on
+which it was painted was sawn in two by an engraver to whom it was lent,
+and who affixed the back to his own poor copy of the picture--thus using
+the seal of the Nuremberg magistrates, which was placed upon it, to
+authenticate his copy as a genuine work of the master.]
+
+We have it on Dürer's own authority that he took up etching and
+wood-engraving because it paid better. And strange--into this
+bread-and-butter work he put his best.
+
+It is not his painting that made his fame and name, though in that
+branch of Art he was admired by a Raphael and a Bellini.
+
+Agnes Frey bore him no children; this fact, I think, is worthy of note.
+Even a cursory glance at Dürer's etchings and woodcuts will reveal the
+fact that he was fond of children--"kinderlieb," as the Germans say. I
+do not doubt that he would have given us even more joy and sunshine in
+his Art had he but called a child his own.
+
+Instead, we have too often the gloomy reflection of death throughout his
+work. The gambols and frolics of angelic cupids are too often obscured
+by the symbols of suffering, sin, and death.
+
+Again, we must not allow a logical conclusion to be accepted as an
+absolute truth.
+
+Dürer was certainly more familiar with death and suffering than we are.
+
+Unless the grey lady and the dark angel visit our own homes, most of
+us--of my readers, at any rate--have to seek deliberately the faces of
+sorrow in the slums and the grimaces of death in the Coroner's Court.
+But in Dürer's days death lurked beyond the city walls; the sight of the
+slain or swinging victims of knightly valour, and peasant's revenge,
+blanched the cheeks of many maidens, and queer plagues and pestilences
+mowed the most upright to the ground. The Dance of Death was a favourite
+subject with the old painters, not because their disposition was morbid,
+but because the times were more out of joint than they are now.
+
+All these points have to be realised before one can hope to understand
+Dürer even faintly. Again, when we examine more closely the apparently
+quaint and fantastic form his mode of visualising takes, we must make
+allowances for the habits and customs and costumes of the times--as
+indeed one has to, in the case of all old masters, and for which reason
+I humbly submit that the study of old masters properly belongs to the
+few, not the many. A great deal of erroneous opinions are held simply
+because it is difficult to disentangle the individual from the typical.
+
+Dürer, whose wanderjahre had taken him to Strasburg and Bâle and Venice,
+returned home again apparently uninfluenced.
+
+Critics from Raphael's age down to the last few years have lamented this
+fact; have thought that "knowledge of classic antiquity" might have made
+a better artist of him.
+
+Now, Dürer was not an artist in its wider sense; he was a craftsman
+certainly, but above all a thinker. Dürer uses his eyes for the
+purposes of thought; he could close them without disturbing the pageants
+of his vision. But whereas we have no hint that his dreams were of
+beauty, we have every indication that they were literal transcriptions
+of literary thoughts. When he came to put these materialisations into
+the form of pictures or prints, the craftsman side, the practical side
+of his nature, resolved them into scientific problems, with the
+remarkable result that these visions are hung on purely materialistic
+facts. From our modern point of view Dürer was decidedly lacking in
+artistic imagination, which even such men as Goya and Blake, or "si
+parva licet comparere magnis" John Martin and Gustave Doré, and the
+delightful Arthur Rackham of our own times possess.
+
+His importance was his craftsmanship, whilst the subject-matter of his
+pictures--the portraits excepted--and particularly of his prints, are
+merely of historic interest--"von kulturhistorischer Bedeutung," the
+German would say.
+
+In 1506 and 1507 he visited Venice, as already stated, gracefully
+received by the nobles and Giovanni Bellini, but disliked by the other
+painters.
+
+He returned home apparently uninfluenced by the great Venetians, Titian,
+remember, amongst them. Gentile Bellini and Vittore Carpaccio were then
+the only painters at Venice who saw the realistic side of Nature; but
+they were prosaic, whilst our Dürer imbued a wooden bench or a tree
+trunk with a personal and human interest. Those of my readers who can
+afford the time to linger on this aspect of Dürer's activity should
+compare Carpaccio's rendering of St. Jerome in his study with Dürer's
+engraving of the same subject.
+
+Dürer the craftsman referred in everything he painted or engraved to
+Nature. But of course it was Nature as he and his times saw it; neither
+Hals, Rembrandt, neither Ribera, Velazquez, neither Chardin nor
+Constable, neither Monet nor Whistler had as yet begun to ascend the
+rungs of progress towards truthful--that is, "optical sight."
+
+Dürer's reference to Nature means an intricate study of theoretical
+considerations, coupled with the desire to record everything he knew
+about the things he wished to reproduce.
+
+His was an analytical mind, and every piece of work he produced is a
+careful dovetailing of isolated facts. Consequently his pictures must
+not be looked _at_, but looked _into_--must be _read_.
+
+Again an obvious truth may here mislead us. The analytical juxtaposition
+of facts was a characteristic of the age. Dürer's Art was a step
+forward; he--like Raphael, like Titian--dovetailed, where earlier men
+scarcely joined. Dürer has as yet not the power that even the next
+generation began to acquire--he never suggests anything; he works
+everything out, down to the minutest details. There are no slight
+sketches of his but such as suggest great travail of sight, encumbranced
+by an over-thoughtful mind.
+
+To understand Dürer you require time; each print of the "Passions," "The
+Life of Mary," the "Apokalypse," should be read like a page printed in
+smallest type, with thought and some eye-strain. That of course goes
+very much against the grain of our own age; we demand large type and
+short stories.
+
+The study of his work entails considerable self-sacrifice. Your own
+likes and dislikes you have to suppress, and try to see with eyes
+that belong to an age long since gone. Do not despise the less
+self-sacrificing, who refuse the study of old Art; and distrust
+profoundly those others who laud it beyond measure. The green tree is
+the tree to water; the dead tree--be its black branches and sere leaves
+never so picturesque--is beyond the need of your attentions.
+
+The Scylla and Charybdis of æsthetic reformers is praise of the old, and
+poor appraising of the new.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE IV.--PORTRAIT OF THE PAINTER'S FATHER
+
+(From the Oil-painting in the National Gallery. Painted in 1497)
+
+An interesting picture, which has unfortunately suffered by retouching.
+It is the only portrait by Dürer the nation possesses. Other works of
+his may be seen at South Kensington and at Hampton Court.]
+
+Now the old Italians thought Dürer a most admirable artist, blamed what
+they called the defects of his Art on the ungainliness of his models,
+and felt convinced that he might have easily been the first among the
+Italians had he lived there, instead of the first among the "Flemings."
+They were of course wrong, for it is the individual reflex-action of
+Dürer's brain which caused his Art to be what it is; in Italy it would
+still have been an individual reflex-action, and Dürer had been in
+Venice without the desired effect. Dürer might, however, himself seem to
+confirm the Italians' opinion: he strayed into the barren fields of
+theoretical speculations--barren because some of his best work was done
+before he had elaborated his system, barren because speculation saps the
+strength of natural perception. Dürer sought a "Canon of Beauty," and
+the history of Art has proved over and over again that beauty canonised
+is damned.
+
+One more remark: his contemporaries and critics praised the
+extraordinary technical skill with which he could draw straight lines
+without the aid of a ruler, or the astounding legerdemain with which he
+reproduced every single hair in a curl--the "Paganini" worship which
+runs through all the ages; which in itself is fruitless; touches the
+fiddle-strings at best or cerebral cords, not heart-strings.
+
+Out of all the foregoing, out of all the mortal and mouldering coverings
+we have now to shell the real, the immortal Dürer--the Dürer whose mind
+was longing for truth, whose soul was longing for harmony, and who out
+of his longings fashioned his Art, as all great men have done and will
+do until the last.
+
+On the title-page of the "Small Passion" is a woodcut--the "Man of
+Sorrows."
+
+There, reader, you have, in my opinion, the greatness of Dürer; he never
+surpassed it. It is the consciousness of man's impotence; it is the
+saddest sight mortal eyes can behold--that of a man who has lost faith
+in himself.
+
+If Dürer were here now I am sure he would lay his hand upon my shoulder,
+and, his deep true eyes searching mine, his soft and human lips would
+say:--
+
+You are right, my friend; this is my best, for it is the spirit of my
+age that spoke in me then.
+
+In front of the Pantheon at Paris is a statue called The Thinker.
+A seated man, unconscious of his bodily strength, for all his
+consciousness is in the iron grip of thought. He looks not up, not
+down--he looks before him; and methinks, reader, I can hear an unborn
+voice proclaim:
+
+This too was once the Spirit of an Age. Two milestones on the path of
+human progress; an idle fancy if you will--no more.
+
+Of the Man of Sorrows then we spoke: It is a small thing, but done
+exceeding well, for in the simplicity of form it embraces a world of
+meaning; and whilst you cannot spare one iota from the words of the
+Passion, on account of this picture, yet all the words of Christ's
+suffering seem alive in this plain print. Could there be a better
+frontispiece?
+
+In judging, not enjoying, a work of art, one should first make sure that
+one understands the methods of the artist; one should next endeavour to
+discover his evident purpose or aim, or "motif," and forming one's
+judgment, ask: Has the artist succeeded in welding aim and result into
+one organic whole?
+
+Neither the "motif" nor its form are in themselves of value, but the
+harmony of both--hence we may place Dürer's "Man of Sorrows" by the side
+of Michelangelo's "Moses," as of equal importance, of equal greatness.
+This "Man of Sorrows" we must praise as immortal Art, and the reason is
+evident; Dürer, who designed it during an illness, had himself suffered
+and knew sorrow--_felt_ what he visualised.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE V.--PORTRAIT OF OSWALT KREL
+
+(From the Oil-painting in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich. Painted in 1499)
+
+A striking portrait; somewhat cramped in expression, but full of
+interest. The trees in the background stamp it at once as a work of
+German origin. Dürer's attempt to portray more than the flesh is
+particularly noticeable here, because not quite successful.]
+
+If we compare another woodcut, viz. the one from "Die heimliche
+Offenbarung Johannis," illustrating Revelations i. 12-17, we will have
+to draw a different conclusion. Let us listen to the passage Dürer set
+himself to illustrate:
+
+    12. And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being
+          turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks;
+
+    13. And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the
+          Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and
+          girt about the paps with a golden girdle.
+
+    14. His head and hairs white like wool, as white as snow; and
+          his eyes as a flame of fire;
+
+    15. And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a
+          furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
+
+    16. And he had in his right hand many stars: and out of his
+          mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance
+          was as the sun shineth in his strength.
+
+    17. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.
+
+Assuming that a passage such as this _can_ be illustrated, and that
+without the use of colour, is his a good illustration? Does it reproduce
+the spirit and meaning of St. John, or only the words? Look at the
+two-edged sword glued to the mouth, look at the eyes "as a flame of
+fire"; can you admit more than that it pretends to be a literal
+translation? But it is not even literal; verse 17 says distinctly, "And
+when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead." But St. John is here
+represented as one praying. Then what is the inference? That Dürer was
+unimaginative in the higher sense of the word; that he, like the Spirit
+of the Reformation, sought salvation in the WORD. Throughout Dürer's Art
+we feel that it was constrained, hampered by his inordinate love of
+literal truthfulness; not one of his works ever rises even to the level
+of Raphael's "Madonna della Seggiola." Like German philosophy, his works
+are so carefully elaborated in detail that the glorious whole is lost in
+more or less warring details. His Art suffers from insubordination--all
+facts are co-ordinated. He himself knew it, and towards the end of this
+life hated its complexity, caused by the desire to represent in one
+picture the successive development of the spoken or written word; a
+desire which even in our days has not completely disappeared.
+
+Dürer therefore appeals to us of to-day more through such conceptions as
+the wings of the Paumgaertner altar-piece, or the four Temperaments (St.
+Peter, St. John, St. Mark, and St. Paul), than through the crowded
+centre panels of his altar-pieces; and the strong appeal of his
+engravings, such as the "Knight of the Reformation" (1513) or the
+"Melancholia" (1514), is mainly owing to the predominant big note of the
+principal figures, whilst in the beautiful St. Jerome ("Hieronymus im
+Gehäus") it is the effect of sunshine and its concomitant feeling of
+well-being--_Gemüthlichkeit_, to use an untranslatable German
+word--which makes us linger and dwell with growing delight on every
+detail of this wonderful print.
+
+In spite of appearances to the contrary, Dürer was, as I have said,
+unimaginative. He needed the written word or another's idea as a
+guide; he never dreamt of an Art that could be beautiful without a
+"mission"--he never "created." Try to realise for a moment that
+throughout his work--in accordance with the conception of his age--he
+mixes purely modern dress with biblical and classical representation, as
+if our Leightons, Tademas, Poynters, were to introduce crinolines,
+bustles, or "empire" gowns amongst Venuses and Apollos. In the pathetic
+"Deposition from the Cross" the Magdalen is just a "modern" Nuremberg
+damsel, and the Virgin's headwrap is slung as the northern housewife
+wore it, and not like an Oriental woman's; Joseph of Arimathea and
+Nicodemus are clad as Nuremberg burghers, and only in the figure of John
+does he make concession to the traditional "classic" garment. Such an
+anachronistic medley could only appear logical so long as the religious
+spirit and the convictions of the majority were at one. I dare scarcely
+hint at, much less describe, the feelings that would be stirred in you
+if a modern painter represented the Crucifixion with Nicodemus and the
+man from Arimathea in frock-coats, Mary and the Magdalen in "walking
+costume," and a company of Horse-guards in attendance. The abyss of over
+four centuries divides us from Dürer; my suggestion sounds blasphemous
+almost, yet it is a thought based on fact and worthy of most careful
+note.
+
+Owing to a convention--then active, now defunct--Dürer grasped the hands
+of all the living, bade them stop and think. Not one of those who beheld
+his work could pass by without feeling a call of sympathy and
+understanding. "Everyman" Dürer!--that is his grandeur. To this the
+artists added their appreciation; what he did was not only _truly_ done,
+but on the testimony of all his brothers in Art _well_ done. So with
+graver, pen, and brush he gave his world the outlines of Belief. In his
+pictures the illiterate saw, as by revelation, that which they could not
+read, and the literate, the literati--Erasmus, Pirkheimer, Melanchthon
+amongst the most prominent--saw the excellence of the manner of his
+revelations.
+
+I cannot think of any better way of explaining the effect of Dürer's Art
+as an illustrator upon his time, than to beg you to imagine the delight
+a short-sighted man experiences when he is given his first pair of
+spectacles. Everything remains where it is; he has not lost his sense of
+orientation, but on a sudden he sees everything more clearly, more
+defined, more in detail: and where he previously had only recognised
+vague effects he begins to see their causes. Such was the effect of
+Dürer's Art: features, arms, hands, bodies, legs, feet, draperies,
+accessories, tree-trunks and foliage, vistas, radiance and light, not
+suggested but present, truly realised. When I say Dürer was not
+imaginative I mean to convey that imagination was characteristic of the
+age, not of him alone, but the materialisation, the realisation of
+fancy, that is his strength.
+
+All these considerations can find, unfortunately, no room for discussion
+in these pages, for it were tedious to refer the reader to examples
+which are not illustrated.
+
+We must perforce accept the limitations of our programme, and devote our
+attention to his paintings--far the least significant part of his
+activity.
+
+Dürer was the great master of line--he thinks in line. This line is
+firstly the outline or contour in its everyday meaning; secondly, it is
+the massed army of lines that go to make shadow; thirdly, it is line in
+its psychical aspect, as denoting direction, aim, tendency, such as we
+have it in the print of the "Melancholia." No one before him had ever
+performed such wonderful feats with "line," not even Mantegna with his
+vigorous but repellent parallels.
+
+This line was the greatest obstacle to his becoming a successful
+painter. For his line was not the great sweep, not the graceful flow,
+not the spontaneous dash, not the slight touch, but the heavy,
+determined, reasoned move, as of a master-hand in a game of chess.
+
+To him, consequently, the world and his Art were problems, not joys.
+
+Consider one of his early works--the portrait of his father, the honest,
+God-fearing, struggling goldsmith. The colour of this work is
+monotonous, a sort of gold-russet. It might almost be a monochrome, for
+the interest is centred in the wrinkles and lines of care and old age
+with which Father Time had furrowed the skin of the old man, and which
+Dürer has imitated with the determination of a ploughshare cleaving the
+glebe.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VI.--THE MADONNA WITH THE SISKIN
+
+(From the Oil-painting in the Berlin Museum. Painted about 1506)
+
+Although this picture shows that it was painted under Venetian
+influence, it betrays the unrest of Dürer's mind, which makes nearly all
+his work pleasanter to look _into_ than to look _at_. Dürer's works
+generally should be _read_].
+
+When we come to his subject pictures, we will have to notice at once
+that they have been constructed, not felt. It has been remarked that
+Dürer did for northern Art, or at least attempted, what Leonardo did for
+Italian Art, viz., converted empirical Art into a theoretical science.
+Whether such conversion was not in reality a perversion, is a question
+that cannot be discussed here. We have, at any rate, in Dürer a curious
+example of an artist referring to Nature in order to discard it; the
+idealist become realist in order to further his idealism. Most of his
+pictures contain statements of pictorial facts which are in themselves
+most true, but taken in conjunction with the whole picture quite untrue.
+Dürer lacked the courage to trust his sense of sight, his optic organ:
+beauty with him is a thing which must be thought out, not seen. Dürer
+had come into direct contact with Italian Art, had felt himself a
+gentleman in Venice, and only a "parasite" in Nuremberg. From Italy he
+imported a conception of beauty which really was quite foreign to him.
+Italy sowed dissension in his mind, for he was ever after bent on
+finding a formula of beauty, which he could have dispensed with had he
+remained the simple painter as we know him in his early self-portrait of
+1493. There can be no doubt that Dürer was principally looking towards
+Italy for approval, as indeed he had little reason to cherish the
+opinions of the painters in his own country, who were so greatly his
+inferiors both in mind as in their Art.
+
+Much has been made of the fact that painting was a "free" Art, not a
+"Guild" in Nuremberg. Now carpentering was also a "free" Art at
+Nuremberg, and painting was not "free" in Italy, so the glory of freedom
+is somewhat discounted; but whatever Art was, Dürer, at any rate, was
+not an artist in Raphael's, Bellini's, or Titian's sense. He was
+pre-eminently a thinker, a moralist, a scientist, a searcher after
+absolute truth, seeking expression in Art. Once this is realised his
+pictures make wonderfully good reading.
+
+The "Deposition," for example, is full of interest. The dead Christ,
+whose still open lips have not long since uttered "Into Thy hands, O
+Lord," is being gently laid on the ground, His poor pierced feet rigid,
+the muscles of His legs stiff as in a cramp. The Magdalen holds the
+right hand of the beloved body, and the stricken mother of Christ is
+represented in a manner almost worthy of the classic Niobe. Wonderfully
+expressive, too, are all the hands in this picture. Dürer found
+never-ending interest in the expressiveness of the hand. But if we were
+to seek in his colour any beauty other than intensity, we should be
+disappointed, as we should for the matter of that in any picture
+painted before the advent of Titian.
+
+Again that monster Ignorance stirs. For as I speak of colour, as I
+dogmatise on Titian, I am aware that colour may mean so many different
+things, and any one who wished to contradict me would be justified in
+doing so, not because I am wrong and he is right, but because of my
+difficulty in explaining colour, and his natural wish to aim at my
+vulnerable spot. Because I am well-nigh daily breaking bread with
+painters who unconsciously reveal the workings of their mind to me, I
+know that all the glibly used technical terms of their Art are as fixed
+as the colour of a chameleon. Different temperaments take on different
+hues. There is colour in Van Eyck and Crivelli, in Bellini and
+Botticelli, but deliberate colour harmonies, though arbitrary in choice,
+belong to Titian.
+
+Dürer is no colourist, because, as we have already said, painting was
+the problem, not the joy of expression--in that he is Mantegna's equal,
+and Beato Angelico's inferior.
+
+Thus looking on the "Madonna mit dem Zeisig" at Berlin, we may realise
+its beauty with difficulty. For whatever it may have been to his
+contemporaries, to us it means little, by the side of the splendid
+Madonnas from Italy, or even compared with his own engraved work.
+
+This "Madonna with the Siskin" is a typical Dürer. In midst of the
+attempted Italian repose and "beauty" of the principal figures, we have
+the vacillating, oscillating profusion of Gothic detail. The fair hair
+of the Madonna drawn tightly round the head reappears in a gothic mass
+of crimped curls spread over her right shoulder. On her left hangs a
+piece of ribbon knotted and twisted. The cushion on which the infant
+Saviour sits is slashed, laced, and tassled. The Infant holds a prosaic
+"schnuller" or baby-soother in His right hand, whilst the siskin is
+perched on the top of His raised forearm. Of the wreath-bearing angels,
+one displays an almost bald head, and the background is full of unrest.
+Even the little label bearing the artist's name, by which old masters
+were wont to mark their pictures, and which in Bellini's case, for
+instance, appears plain and flatly fixed, bends up, like the little
+films of gelatine, which by their movements are thought to betray the
+holder's temperament.
+
+One of the tests of great Art is its appearance of inevitableness: in
+that the artist vies with the creator:
+
+        "The Moving Finger writes, and having writ,
+        Moves on; nor all your piety nor wit
+        Shall lure it back to cancel half a line."
+
+There are a good many "lines" in the "Siskin" Madonna which bear
+cancelling: not one in the Madonna of the title-page of the
+"Marieenleben," which for that reason is a work of greater Art.
+
+The fact is, that whilst his engraved and black and white work reaches
+at times monumental height, great in _saecula saeculorum_, there are too
+few of his painted pictures that have the power to arrest the attention
+of the student of Art, who must not be confounded with the student of
+Art-history.
+
+As a painter he is essentially a primitive; as a graver he overshadows
+all ages.
+
+Thus we see his great pictures one after the other: his Paumgaertner
+altar-piece, his "Deposition"--both in Munich; "The Adoration of the
+Magi" in the Uffizi; the much damaged but probably justly famed
+"Rosenkranz fest" in Prague, with his own portrait and that of his
+friend Pirckheimer in the background, and Emperor Max and Pope Julius
+II. in the foreground; the Dresden altar-piece, or the "Crucifixion,"
+with the soft body of the crucified Christ and the weirdly fluttering
+loin-cloth; the strangely grotesque "Christ as a Boy in the Temple" in
+the Barberini Palace; the "Adam and Eve"; the "Martyrdom of the 10,000
+Christians"--thus, I say, we see them one after the other pass before
+us, and are almost unmoved.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VII.--SS. JOHN AND PETER
+
+(From an Oil-painting in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich. Finished in 1526)
+
+This, with the "SS. Paul and Mark," originally formed one picture, and
+was painted for the Council of his beloved city, Nuremberg, as a gift,
+two years before his death. Dürer had inscribed lengthy quotations from
+the Bible below the picture; these quotations, proving the militant
+fervour of his Protestant faith, were subsequently removed on that
+account. Dürer's works were always more than works of _Art_.]
+
+True, the Paumgaertner altar-piece has stirred us on account of the
+wing-pictures, but there is good reason for that, and we will revert to
+this reason later. The "Adoration of the Magi" seems reminiscent of
+Venetian influence. Not until we reach the year 1511 do we encounter a
+work that must arrest the attention of even the most indolent: it is the
+"Adoration of the Holy Trinity," or the All Saints altar-piece, painted
+for Matthew Landauer, whom we recognise, having seen Dürer's drawing of
+his features, in the man with the long nose on the left of the
+picture. This picture is without a doubt the finest, the greatest altar
+picture ever painted by any German. It is not by any means a large
+picture, measuring only 4 ft. 3 in. × 3 ft. 10-3/4 in., but it is so
+large in conception that it might well have been designed to cover a
+whole wall. Dürer has here surpassed himself; he has for once conceived
+with the exuberance of a Michelangelo, for it is more serious than a
+Raphael, it is less poetic than a Fra Angelico: but personally I state
+my conviction, that if ever all the Saints shall unite in adoration of
+the Trinity, this is the true and only possibility, this is instinct
+with verisimilitude, this might be taken for "documentary evidence."
+This communion of saints was beholden by man. If ever a man was a
+believer irrespective of Church, Creed, or sect--Dürer was he. I confess
+to a sense of awe in beholding this work, akin to Fra Angelico in its
+sincerity, akin to Michelangelo in its grandeur, and German wholly in
+the naturalness of its mystery. With more than photographic sharpness
+and minuteness of detail does Dürer materialise the vision: God-Father,
+an aged King--a Charlemagne; God-Son, the willing sufferer; the Holy
+Ghost, the dove of Sancgrael; the Heavenly Hosts above; the Saints
+beside and below--Saints that have lived and suffered, and are now
+assembled in praise--for the crowd is a living, praying, praising, and
+jubilant crowd.
+
+Well might the creator of this masterpiece portray himself, and proudly
+state on the tablet he is holding:
+
+        Albertus Dürer Noricus faciebat.
+
+This picture is not a vision--it is the statement of a dogmatic truth;
+as such it is painted with all the subtlety of doctrinal reasoning; not
+a romantic vision, nor a human truth, such as we find in Rembrandt's
+religious works. It is a ceremonial picture, only the ceremony is full,
+not empty; full of conviction, reverence, and faith! Such pictures are
+rare amongst Italians--in spite of all their sense of beauty; more
+frequent amongst the trans-alpine peoples, but never built in so much
+harmony. Unfortunately it has suffered, and is no longer in its pristine
+condition; it were fruitless therefore to discuss the merits of its
+colour.
+
+Mindful of my intention only to pick up a jewel here and there, I will
+not weary the reader with the enumeration of his altar-pieces,
+Nativities, Entombments, Piétàs and Madonnas. I can do this with an easy
+mind, because in my opinion (and you, reader, have contracted by
+purchase to accept my guidance) his religious paintings are of
+historical rather than Art interest.
+
+The "Adams and Eves" of the Uffizi and the Prado cannot rouse my
+enthusiasm either. In these pictures Dürer makes an attempt to create
+something akin to Dr. Zamenhof's Esperanto; a universal standard for the
+language of Art in the one case, of Life in the other: and in either
+case this language, laboriously and admirably constructed but lacking in
+vitality, leaves the heart untouched. Dürer's attempts to paint a
+classical subject, such as Hercules slaying the Stymphalian birds, are
+unsatisfying. I cannot see any beauty of conception in a timid and
+illogical mixture of realism and phantasy--it is not whole-hearted
+enough. Even Rembrandt's ridiculous "Rape of Ganymede" has reason and
+Art on his side. Imagination was not Dürer's "forte"; it is therefore
+with all the greater pleasure that we turn to his portraits.
+
+Portraits are always more satisfactory than subject pictures, a fact
+which is particularly noticeable to-day. There are scores of painters
+whose portrait-painting is considerably more impressive than their
+subject-painting--not because portrait-painting is less difficult, but
+because it is more difficult to detect the weaknesses of painting in a
+portrait.
+
+From the early Goethe-praised self portrait of 1493 down to the
+wonderful portraits of 1526 there are but few that are not rare works of
+Art, and of the few quite a goodly proportion may not be genuine at all.
+
+Dürer's ego loomed large in his consciousness, and therefore, unlike
+Rembrandt (who also painted his own likeness time and again, though only
+for practice), Dürer was really proud of his person--as to be sure he
+had reason to be.
+
+The portrait of 1493 shows us the young Dürer, who was in all
+probability betrothed to his "Agnes"; he is holding the emblem of
+Fidelity--Man's Troth as it is called in German--which on Goethe's
+authority I may explain is "Eryngo," or _anglice_ Sea-holly, in his
+hand.
+
+Five years later this same Dürer, having probably returned from Venice,
+appears in splendid array, a true gentleman, gloved, and his naturally
+wavy hair crisply crimped, clad in a most fantastic costume.
+
+As his greatest portrait the Munich one, dated 1500, has always been
+acclaimed. His features here bear a striking resemblance to the
+traditional face of Christ, and no doubt the resemblance was
+intentional. The nose, characterised in other pictures by the strongly
+raised bridge, loses this disfigurement in its frontal aspect. There is
+an almost uncanny expression of life in his eyes; dark ages of Byzantine
+belief and Art spring to the mind, and compel the spectator into an
+attitude of reverence not wholly due to the merits of the painting.
+
+The comparison with Holbein's work naturally obtrudes itself, when
+Dürer's portraits are the subject of discussion.
+
+In the Wallace collection is a most delightful little miniature portrait
+of Holbein, by his own hand. Compare the two heads. What a difference!
+Holbein the craftsman _par excellence_; the man to whom drawing came as
+easily as seeing comes to us. With shrewd, cold, weighing eyes he sizes
+himself up in the mirror. He, too, is a man of knowledge; he does his
+work faithfully and exceedingly well, but leaves it there. He never
+moralises, draws no conclusions, infers nothing, states merely
+facts--and if the truth must be said, is the greater craftsman.
+
+Dürer's mind was deeper; one might say the springs of his talent welling
+upwards had to break through strata of cross-lying thought, reaching his
+hand after much tribulation, and teaching it to set down all he knew.
+
+So the Paumgaertner portraits, at one time supposed to represent Ulrich
+von Hutten and Franz von Sickingen--the Reformation knights--show a
+marvellous grasp of character, wholly astonishing in the unconventional
+attitude, whilst the portrait of his aged master, Michael Wohlgemut,
+overstates in its anxiety not to understate.
+
+His portrait of Kaiser Maximilian, quiet, dignified, is yet somewhat
+small in conception.
+
+Two years later, however, he painted a portrait now in the Prado,
+representing presumably the Nuremberg patrician, Hans Imhof the Elder.
+
+Purely technically considered this picture appears to be immeasurably
+above his own portrait of 1500, and above any other excepting the
+marvellous works of 1526. Whoever this Hans Imhof was, Dürer has laid
+bare his very soul. These later portraits show that Dürer stood on
+the threshold of the modern world.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--SS. PAUL AND MARK
+
+(From an Oil-painting in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich. Finished in 1526)
+
+See Note preceding Plate VII.]
+
+Hieronymus Holzschuer is another of Dürer's strikingly successful
+efforts to portray both form and mind, and although the colour of the
+man's face is of a conventional pink, yet the pale blue background, the
+white hair, the pink flesh, and the glaring eyes stamp themselves
+indelibly on the mind of the beholder, much to the detriment of the
+other picture in the Berlin Gallery, Jacob Muffel. Jacob Muffel,
+contrary to Jerome Holzschuer, looks a miser, a hypocrite, and the more
+unpleasant, as he does not by any means look a fool. But Dürer's
+craftsmanship here exceeds that of the Holzschuer portrait, whom we love
+for the sake of his display of white hair and flaming eyes. The enigma
+to me is how a man who had painted the three last portraits mentioned,
+could have fallen to the level of the "Madonna with the Apple" of the
+same year.
+
+The finest portrait under his name is the "Portrait of a Woman" at
+Berlin. This indeed is a brilliant piece of portraiture, absolutely
+modern in feeling, exceeding Holbein; and unless my eyes, which have not
+rested upon its surface for over ten years, deceive me, it is quite
+unlike any portrait painted by him before--the nearest perhaps being the
+man's portrait at Munich of 1507. The picture is supposed to show
+Venetian influence, and might therefore belong to this epoch; but, to my
+thinking, documentary evidence alone could make this picture in its not
+Dürer-like mode of seeing an undoubted work from his hand.
+
+Space forbids further enumeration, further discussion of his work. As to
+details of his biography the reader will find in almost every library
+some reliable records of his life, and several inexpensive books have
+also appeared of recent years.
+
+Dürer's life was in reality uneventful. He died suddenly on April 6,
+1528, in Nuremberg, having in all probability laid the foundations of
+his illness on his celebrated journey into Flanders in 1520-21, where he
+was fêted everywhere, and right royally received both by the civic
+authorities and his own brothers of the palette.
+
+His stay at Venice as a young man, and this last-mentioned journey, were
+the greatest adventures of his body. His mind was ever adventurous,
+seeking new problems, overcoming new difficulties. It is so tempting to
+liken him to his own "Jerome in his Study," yet St. Jerome's life was
+the very antithesis of our Dürer. In Dürer there was nothing of the
+"Faust-Natur," as the Germans are fond of expressing an ill-balanced,
+all-probing mind. Dürer's moral equilibrium was upheld by his deep and
+sincere religious convictions. He is firmly convinced that God has no
+more to say to humanity than the Bible records. Dürer's difficulties
+end where Faust's began.
+
+The last years of Dürer's life were spent in composing books on the
+theory and practice of Art.
+
+To write an adequate "Life of Dürer" then is impossible in so small a
+compass. And if anything I said were wise, it were surely the fact that
+I wanted you, reader, in the very beginning to expect no more than a dim
+light on the treasure store of Dürer's Thought and Dürer's Art.
+
+But however dim the light, I hope it has been a true light.
+
+And here my conscience smites me! All along I may have appeared
+querulous, seeking to divulge Dürer's limitations rather than his
+excellences.
+
+Perhaps! There are so many misconceptions about Dürer. He was a
+deep-thinking man; he was like the churches of the North--narrow, steep,
+dimly religious within, full of traceries, lacework, gargoyles, and
+grotesques without.
+
+I have read that it used to be said in Italy: All the cities of Germany
+were blind, with the exception of Nuremberg, which was one-eyed. True!
+True also of Dürer and German Art.
+
+In 1526, two years before his death, Dürer presented a panel to his
+native city, now cut in two, robbed of its Protestant inscription, and
+hanging in the Alte Pinakothek at Munich. Dürer's last great work!
+
+It is as though he felt that the divine service of his life was drawing
+to its close. His life and Art I have likened to a Gothic Cathedral; his
+last works were as the closed wings of a gigantic altar-piece, before
+which he leaves posterity gazing overawed.
+
+The life-size figures of this great work represent the four Apostles:
+St. John in flaming red, with St. Peter, St. Mark in white, with St.
+Paul.
+
+Dürer's greatest work: here for once his mind and his hand were at one.
+
+Menacing, colossal in conception these figures rise, simple with the
+simplicity Dürer aimed for, and at last attained; Byzantine in their
+awe-inspiring grandeur. But instead of the splendour of Byzantine gold
+he places his figures upon a jet-black ground, as if he wished to instil
+the knowledge that there is no light except that which the four Apostles
+reflect. He had said as much indeed himself years ago. These four
+figures, "painted with greater care than any other," are his artistic
+last will and testament. In the letter, by which he humbly begs
+acceptance of these pictures from the Council, he quotes the words of
+the four Apostles, which his pictures illustrate, viz:--
+
+St. Peter, in his second epistle in the second chapter.
+
+St. John, in the first epistle in the fourth chapter.
+
+St. Paul, in the second epistle to Timothy in the third chapter.
+
+St. Mark, in his Gospel in the twelfth chapter.
+
+Read them and behold: The Book and the sword! The religion of love in
+Saracenic fierceness. The menacing guardians of the Word.
+
+Dürer with finality excludes the faithless from all hope. It is this
+finality, this absolute faith in the Word, this firm conviction of the
+finiteness of all things, which characterise the whole of his Art. The
+spirit which brooks no uncertainty and suffers no metaphor, glues a
+veritable sword to the lips of the "Son of man."
+
+This finality is the cause of Dürer's isolation. He has no followers in
+the world of creative _Art_. Close the doors of Dürer's cathedral and
+the world rolls on, rolls by unheeding.
+
+After Dürer and Luther had gone--Luther, on whose behalf Dürer uttered
+so touching a prayer--Germany, the holy empire, fell upon evil times.
+After the death of Maximilian the fields of the cloth of gold and the
+fields of golden harvest were turned into rude jousting places of ruder
+rabble. The hand of time was set back for centuries.
+
+We have a shrewd suspicion that Carlyle's German, with his cowhorn
+blasts, did not tell the universe "what o'clock it really is." We have a
+shrewd suspicion that in the beginning of last century the clocks in
+Germany had only just begun ticking after centuries of rest.
+
+I am straying, reader.
+
+What was it that Dürer had inscribed on the Apostle Panels?
+
+    "All worldly rulers in these times of danger should beware that
+    they receive not false Teaching for the Word of God. For God
+    will have nothing added to His Word nor yet taken away. Hear,
+    therefore, these four excellent men, Peter, John, Paul, and
+    Mark, their warning."
+
+The narrow outlook of his time speaks here!
+
+For words which bear addition or suffer subtraction, can never be the
+words of God.
+
+God's words are worlds. Our words are stammerings, scarcely articulate.
+
+Reader! look you, my torch burns dimly; let us back unto the day.
+
+
+    The plates are printed by BEMROSE & SONS, LTD., London and Derby
+    The text at the BALLANTYNE PRESS, Edinburgh
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41734 ***