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.