becoming an a-thousand-fold-greater-Blake; and illustrating, to the delight of active and short-winded intelligences, and the stupefaction of slow and dull ones, the futility of eccentricity and the frivolity of passion when unseconded by constancy of character and labour. For futile, in the arts, is whatever the sense of beauty must condemn, however well-intentioned; and frivolous is the passion that forgets the end it would attain, and becomes merely a private rhapsody, however astonishing its developments; slowly but surely it will be seen that such fireworks do not vitally concern us. The proportions of many of Michael Angelo's figures are as far removed from any possible normal standard as what Dürer calls "this my swiftness," in the abnormally tall and stout figures among the diagrams illustrating his book. And this is where Dürer's idea comes nearer to Greek practice. For by letting the striking rather than the subtle govern his departures from the mean, Michael Angelo found himself always bound to go beyond himself; as the palate which once has entertained strong stimulants demands that the dose be continually strengthened. Now this is in entire conformity with the impatience which was perhaps his greatest weakness; just as Dürer's too methodical approach is in conformity with that acquiescence in the insufficiency of his conditions which made him in his weak moments swear never again to undertake those better classes of work which were less adequately paid, or made him content to display mere manual dexterity rather than do nothing on his days of darkness, suffering and depression: we may add, which made him choose to live at Nuremberg and refuse a better income and more suitable surroundings at Venice. It is obviously the more hopeful way to create a beautiful figure first and discover a mathematical way of reproducing its most essential proportions afterwards; and no doubt this is what Dürer intended should be done; and in consequence he felt a need, and sought to supply it, for mechanical means to simplify, shorten and render more sure that part of the process which must necessarily partake something of the nature of drudgery, if great finish is to be combined with splendid design. The romantic, impulsive _improvisatore_ does not feel this need, considers it bound to defeat its own aim; and, given his own gifts, he is right. But none the less, there are the Greek statues elaborated with a thoroughness which, if it ever dims or veils the creative intention, does so in a degree so slight as to seem amply compensated by the sense of ease maintained in spite of the innumerable difficulties overcome; there are besides a score or more of Dürer's copper engravings with their imperturbable adequacy of minute painstaking, never for a moment sleepy or mechanical or lifeless. The one aim need not excommunicate the other even in the same individual; far less need this be so in different artists, with diverse temperaments, diverse aptitudes.