Italy, whither he fled on account of a duel, did not alter him. There were new love quarrels. He fought, stabbed a rival, was wounded himself, amused himself extremely, studied little, observed, admired, but neither painted nor copied anything. It was thanks to this indolence that the great past did not take him prisoner. He did not know much, but for what he knew he could thank himself. He loved the old painters, but platonically; their works did not lead him astray. In this lies the explanation of his qualities and his faults: that marvellous mixture of seductive grace and visible weakness, of subtlety and brutality, of refinement and ignorance. He merits equally sympathy and blame, is as genial as he is unequal. But one would not wish him to be otherwise: if there had been more order and proportion in his works his good qualities would have been lost. He would have suffered in spontaneity, vivacity, originality, and quietly taken his anchorage in the sleepy haven of mediocrity. As he is, he is wholly the child of his country: from head to foot a Spaniard of the eighteenth century, a son of that downfallen Spain that was dying from loss of blood. For hundreds of years a black cloud, extinguishing all joy, had hung over Spanish life, a cloud out of which, only here and there in dismal lightning flashes, there emerged obscure figures of sombre despots, sick ascetics, and silent martyrs. All mundane inclinations were suppressed, all sensuous desires prohibited. Men spent their nights with their eyes fixed upon the gory histories and passionate exhortations of the Old Testament, hearing in imagination the menacing, thunderous voice of a dreadful God, until at last in their own hearts the fanatical inspiration of the prophetic seer awoke anew, and their feverish forms were torn asunder by ecstatic visions and religious hallucinations. When Goya began his career the sinister country of the Inquisition had grown frivolous. A breath of revolution was passing over men's minds. An intoxicating odour of mundane voluptuousness penetrated everywhere, even into the convents themselves; the figures of the French Rococo Olympus had brought confusion into the Christian paradise. Spain no longer believed; it laughed at the Inquisition, trembled no more when it was threatened with the pains of Hell. It had grown frivolous, wanton, epicurean, full of grace and laughter. The rosy-red and blue shepherds of the Trianon had made an entry into the sombre Court of Aranjuez. Literature, taste, and art were infected by French influences, Parisian sparks of wit, lightning _esprit_, and Parisian immorality; and the same rumbling earthquake which wrecked the throne of France was soon to shatter that of Spain. In Goya's works there is a refulgence of all this. But, like every great artist, he is not only the expression of his epoch, but also its leader; he almost anticipates the age which shall succeed it. Like a