Of the three centres of German Humanism, Nuremberg is the greatest and the most fascinating. The home of invention as well as of industry, it made no mere empty boast in the proverb, "Nürnberg Tand geht durch alle Land." Its churches and {92} public buildings were the glory of the age, its craftsmen and designers perhaps then unequalled in the world. Its literary circle contains a larger number of distinguished names than any of its rivals. Meisterlin, the author of the famous Nuremberg chronicle, Cochläus, the bitter satirist of Luther; Osiander, the celebrated Hebrew scholar and Reformed preacher; Jäger the mathematician; above all Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, "the sweet singer of Nuremberg"--all these fill an honourable place in the annals of the city. But the central figures of its life are, beyond any doubt, Wilibald Pirkheimer and Albrecht Dürer; in any case they would monopolise our attention on account of their intimate connexion with Maximilian. When still King of the Romans, he had resided at Nuremberg, and the joyous animation with which he entered into the life of the city won for him wide popularity. "When about to depart, we are told he invited twenty great ladies to dinner; after dinner, when they were all in a good humour, the Markgrave Frederick asked Maximilian in the name of the ladies to stay a little longer and to dance with them. They had taken away his boots and spurs, so that he had no choice. Then the whole company adjourned to the Council House, several other young ladies were invited, and Maximilian stayed dancing all through the afternoon and night, and arrived a day late at Neumarkt, where the Count Palatine had been expecting him all the preceding day."[116] As Emperor, Maximilian paid many visits to Nuremberg, and his first Diet was enlivened by a succession of brilliant masques, dances and tournaments, such as roused the enthusiasm of the local {93} chroniclers. He remained on terms of great intimacy with Pirkheimer, who in many ways is the most typical figure of the German Renaissance. After an excellent education, at Padua and Pavia, in jurisprudence, literature and arts, Pirkheimer became councillor in Nuremberg, and won the special confidence of the Emperor both by his skilful diplomacy and by his patriotic assistance in the Swiss War. His great riches he employed not merely for the adornment of his own house, but also in generous support of less-favoured followers of the Muse. While he resembled Peutinger as diplomat, as historian, and as theologian, he had less of the temperament of a pedagogue, and more of the joyous nature of a true poet. As the representative of a great movement of the intellect, he was open to all its various methods and aspirations, and yet understood the lesson of self-restraint and concentration too well to exhaust his powers in a labyrinth of alternatives. With the true cheerfulness and humour of the man who knows the world, yet