One thing especially it is interesting to notice about the Dutch portraits of the early Republican period, namely, that they are obviously inspired by the pleasure of having a living, speaking likeness rather than by pride and ostentation. Bluff and swaggering as some of Hals's portraits of men appear to be--notably _The Laughing Cavalier_, at Hertford House--that is only because the subjects were bluff and swaggering fellows--swaggering, that is to say, in the consciousness of their ability and their readiness to defend their country and their homes again, if need be, against the tyrant. But these swaggerers are the exception, and the prevailing impression conveyed is that of honest, if determined, bluffness. They are not posing, these jolly Dutchmen, they are sitting or standing, for Hals to paint them just as they would sit or stand to be measured for a suit of clothes. Look at the heads of the man and the woman in the National Gallery. Could anything be more natural and unassuming? Look at the _Laughing Cavalier_, and ask if it is not the man himself, as Hals saw and knew him, not a faked up hero? Hals caught him in his best clothes, that is all. He did not put them on to be painted in--he was out on a jaunt. Look at Hals's women, how pleased they are to be painted, just as they are. Poor Hals, he was a good, honest fellow, though sadly given to drink and low company. But for sheer genius he has never had an equal. The vast number of his paintings--many of which now only exist in copies--shows that with every predilection to ease and comfort, he could not help painting--it simply welled out of him. It was a natural gift which seems to have needed no labour and no study. It is certain that this fecundity was a very potent factor in the development of the Dutch School of painting. Had Hals confined his talent to painting the portraits of the highest in the land, which would never have been seen by the public at large, it is improbable that such a business-like community would have produced many painters. But Hals must have popularised painting much more than we generally suppose. An example occurs to me in the picture of _The Rommelpot Player_, of which no less than thirteen versions are enumerated by De Groot, none of which can claim to be the original. One is at Wilton, another in Sir Frederick Cook's gallery at Richmond, and a third at Arthingworth Hall in Northamptonshire. [Illustration: PLATE XXV.--FRANS HALS PORTRAIT OF A LADY _Louvre, Paris_] The subject is an old beggar man playing in front of the door of a cottage on a ridiculous instrument consisting of an earthen pot covered over like a jampot with a lid of parchment, on which he makes a rude noise with a stick, to the intense delight of a group of children. A picture like this, then, it is evident, instead of hanging in solitary confinement in the house of a great person, was so widely popular that it was copied on all sides, and must have been seen by thousands of people.