Now the skilful Dutch etchers do not come singly, nor at long intervals. They work in a body. It is within a few years, in fact almost simultaneously, that Adrian Brauwer and Adrian van Ostade publish their tavern scenes; Ruysdael and Jan Both their landscapes; Paul Potter and Berghem, Adrian van de Velde, Marc de Bye, Karel du Jardin, such a multitude of charming little subjects, their village scenes and village people, their flocks in the fields, or their single animals. Whilst emulating each other's talent, all are agreed to pursue one and the same object, all are agreed as to the necessity of devotion to the study of surrounding nature and everyday truth. Although the Dutch etchers display in the totality of their achievement the same ideal and the same tendency, each keeps, if only in the matter of workmanship, a certain distinction and character of his own. One, however, stands out from the group with matchless splendour, with all the superiority of genius over talent: that one is Rembrandt. [Illustration: FIG. 62.--REMBRANDT. Portrait of Himself: _Rembrandt Appuye_.] [Illustration: FIG. 63.--REMBRANDT. Faust.] [Illustration: FIG. 64.--REMBRANDT. Joseph's Coat brought to Jacob.] Pains and patience have been wasted on the secret of Rembrandt's method of etching and printing; in trying to discover his tools and his manner of using them, so as to achieve with him those contrasts of soft shadow and radiant light. Vain quest of technical tricks where, really, there is no more than a style born of imagination, and, like it, inspired from above! It may be said that with Rembrandt, as with great musical composers, the harmonic system is so closely allied to the melodic idea, that analysis, if not impossible, is at least superfluous. It sometimes happens--before a Correggio, for instance--that the charm of the painting affects one in a manner abstract enough to produce a sort of musical sensation. Though it does not appear that the art of engraving could be endowed with a similar expansive force, yet Rembrandt's etchings may almost be said to possess it. They give the feeling of undefined aspirations rather than the limited likeness of things; the spectator is touched by the mysterious meaning of these passionate visions, rather than by the form in which they are conveyed. The impression received is so keen that it stifles any trivial wish to criticise, and certain details which would be painful elsewhere are here not even displeasing, inasmuch as no one would dream of requiring a mathematical explanation of the special conditions of the subject, or of the skill of workmanship which the artist has displayed Before the "Sacrifice of Abraham," the "Tobit," the "Lazarus," and all the other soul-speaking masterpieces, who would pause to consider the strangeness or the vulgarity of the personages and their apparel? Only the critic, who, unwitting of the rest, would begin by examining with a magnifying glass the _workmanship_