It seems difficult to understand this repulsion. For in his etchings, at any rate, Ostade shows no exclusive preference for the coarse and sordid. Mr. Hamerton has accused him of deadness of heart and apathy of intellect, and declares him to be insensitive to all that is best among the poor. But is this quite true? An accomplished lady some time ago wrote an essay in condemnation of the “vulgarity” of John Leech and Charles Keene in certain of their drawings for _Punch_. Such criticism seems to argue an excessive delicacy or a deficiency of humour. Ostade’s range was limited, compared with that of those two great artists, but as a draughtsman he is in the same order with them; and in the writer’s judgment he is equally free from that dulness which has no sense for the fine or rare in men and things, that acceptance of the common price, the common standard, which are the attributes of real vulgarity. Look, for instance, at the etching reproduced (Fig. 9). The subject has been the theme of many painters and engravers. It is a subject easily spoiled; a little too much of sentimental piety, a little too much of satirical mockery, and the theme is made trivial or obvious. But Ostade’s feeling is just right. There is no drawing of a trite moral, as, for instance, in the treatment of the same subject by a later engraver, Nicholas van Haeften. Nor is there a hint of mockery at the discrepancy between the “good things” for which Heaven is thanked and the humble pottage on the table. But is there not, besides the wonderful sensitiveness of drawing in the figures, which makes one feel how the toil-hardened, clumsy hands tremble awkwardly as they are clasped, and how the boy, though his back is turned, is shutting his eyes resolutely tight--is there not also a tenderness, a dignity in the whole? Again, in the little plate, _The Child and Doll_, is there not true feeling, expressed with a fine reticence, in the mother’s face and in the child’s? The careful fondness of the mother is even better expressed in another etching, where she hands a baby down to the eager arms of its elder sister, a child of six or seven, who receives it with joyful pride. The drawing reminds one of some of the exquisitely humorous and exquisitely tender sketches of Leech. V It is when we come to the work of his pupils, Bega and Dusart, that we realise best Ostade’s finer qualities. Cornelis Pietersz Bega was born at Haarlem in 1620, and died there of the plague in 1664, fully twenty years before his master. According to Houbraken’s story, his real name was Begyn, which he changed to Bega after being turned out of his father’s house for his youthful escapades. The story is not incredible of such a youth as he appears in his portrait, gay and somewhat vain-looking, with long curling locks.