In 1515 Frobenius and Amerbach the great printers were at Basle, Erasmus had been and gone, and Frobenius must have been attracted by some of the clever sensational work with which Holbein made his artistic debut, for when the third edition of the famous "Breve ad Erasmum" was published by Frobenius, the title-page was designed by Holbein. He was not turning his attention to this class of work to the detriment of others, for we associate with the stay in Basle some half-dozen of the second-rate efforts in paint of a man who is striving to find himself and is at the stage in his life where he is little more than the echo of greater men who have influenced him. Holbein was already a man of all art work; he prepared the title-page of Sir Thomas More's "Utopia," and painted religious pictures or table tops with equal assurance and facility. He was never one of the young men with a mission who shun delights and live laborious days working from dawn to dusk in pursuit of an ideal, and wake one morning to find Fame has arrived overnight. And yet on a sudden he found himself, as his sketches for the portrait of Jacob Meier and Dorothea Kannegiesser testify. Darmstadt and Dresden hold the ripe fruits of his friendship with Jacob Meier, and it would seem that his earliest commission there served to bring him the measure of inspiration that lifts uncertain talent to the height of a great achievement, never to fall back to the ranks of those who struggle year in year out, achieving nothing of permanent value. Certainly he was well served by his sitters, for the man and the woman seem to have been born to be painted. PLATE V.--ANNE OF CLEVES (In the Louvre) This is the portrait that Holbein was said to have made too flattering, at the instance of Thomas Cromwell. If the story be true, this unfortunate consort of Henry VIII. must have been singularly homely in appearance. This oil-painting on vellum reproduced here gives the suggestion of a woman who could not have roused interest in anybody, and the peculiar quality of something akin to inspiration that Holbein brought to nearly all portrait painting is conspicuous by its absence. [Illustration] We do not know what followed when Holbein had found himself. It is stated by some authorities that he left Basle for Lucerne, where he had some trouble with the authorities, and did a certain amount of decorative work. Altdorf is named as a city in which he resided for a time, and it is suggested, not without justification, that he went into Northern Italy and studied some of the master-works of the Renaissance. But by the time he had reached man's estate he had returned to Basle, bringing with him a reputation that he was destined to develop steadily for the rest of his life, and hand down to posterity to be the glory of German art.