In his first drawings he begins boldly; one knows his hand and says: "Only Feuerbach can have done that." And then one is able to trace, step by step, and from sketch to sketch, what pains he takes that the finished picture may be as little of a Feuerbach as possible. The personal and individual element in the drawings is lost, what is Feuerbachian in the composition, the personal contribution of the artist, is effaced, and finally there is produced in the picture the marvellous look of having been painted by a genuine old Venetian as a ghost. And Feuerbach felt the dissonance. He feels that he fully expresses himself no more, and also that he does not reach the level of the old masters. He adds borrowed, conventional figure, like the Boucher Cupids in the "Judgment of Paris"--figures against which every fibre of his being revolts--just to arrive at an outward resemblance to the old pictures, an impression of exultation and joyousness and the spirit of the Renaissance. And when he stands opposite his work he seems to himself like a gravedigger in a harlequin's jacket. He scrutinises himself in despair, and one day comes to feel that his power of production is exhausted. Splendid and unapproachable, from the walls of the galleries, the art of the classic masters stares him in the face; and he enters into a dramatic life-and-death struggle with it. He will not be Feuerbach, and cannot become a Classic. The curtain falls and the tragedy is over. Such destinies have been before in the world, no doubt; but in our time they have multiplied, and seem so much the sadder because they never come to the average man, but only to great and peculiarly gifted natures. [Illustration: _Albert, Munich._ FEUERBACH. DANTE WALKING WITH HIGH-BORN LADIES OF RAVENNA.]