In the second letter, after telling Pirkheimer that he has no other friend but him on earth, he expresses a wish that he were in Venice to enjoy the pleasant company that he has met with there. The following passage, which occurs in this letter, is, perhaps, the most interesting in the collection: “I have many good friends among the Italians, who warn me not to eat or drink with their painters, of whom several are my enemies, and copy my picture in the church and others of mine, wherever they can find them; and yet they blame them, and say they are not according to ancient art, and therefore not good. Giovanni Bellini[V-20] however has praised me highly to several gentlemen, and wishes to have something of my doing. He called on me himself, and requested that I would paint a picture for him, for which he said he would pay me well. People are all surprised that I should be so much thought of by a person of his reputation. He is very old, but is still the best painter of them all. The things which pleased me eleven years ago, please me no longer. If I had not seen it myself I could not have believed it. You must also know that there are many better painters within this city than Master Jacob is without, although Anthony Kolb swears that there is not on earth a better painter than Jacob.[V-21] The others laugh, and say if he were good for anything he would live in Venice.” [Footnote V-20: In the Venetian dialect of that period Giovanni Bellini was called Zan Belin; and Durer spells the name “Sambellinus.” He was the master of Titian, and died in 1514, at the age of ninety.--Von Murr, Journal, 10er Theil, S. 8.] [Footnote V-21: Von Murr says that he cannot discover what Jacob is here meant. It would not be Jacob Walsch, as he died in 1500. The person alluded to was certainly not an Italian.] The greater part of the other six letters are chiefly occupied with accounts of his success in executing sundry little commissions with which he had been entrusted by his friends, such as the purchase of a finger-ring and two pieces of tapestry; to enquire after such Greek books as had been recently published; and to get him some crane feathers. The sixth and seventh letters are written in a vein of humour which at the present time would be called gross. Von Murr illustrates one passage by a quotation from Swift which is not remarkable for its delicacy; and he also says that Durer’s eighth letter is written in the humorous style of that writer. Those letters show that chastity was not one of Bilibald Pirkheimer’s virtues; and that the learned counsellor of the imperial city of Nuremberg was devoted “tam Veneri quam Mercurio.”[V-22]