So Jones’s cat, Prince, picked up a little waif in the court and brought it home, and the two lay together and were much lovelier than Prince was by himself. {153} Holbein at Basle How well he has done Night in his “Crucifixion”! Also he has tried to do the Alps, putting them as background to the city, but he has not done them as we should do them now. I think the tower on the hill behind the city is the tower which we see on leaving Basle on the road for Lucerne, I mean I think Holbein had this tower in his head. Van Eyck Van Eyck is delightful rather in spite of his high finish than because of it. De Hooghe finishes as highly as any one need do. Van Eyck’s finish is saved because up to the last he is essentially impressionist, that is, he keeps a just account of relative importances and keeps them in their true subordination one to another. The only difference between him and Rembrandt or Velasquez is that these, as a general rule, stay their hand at an earlier stage of impressionism. Giotto There are few modern painters who are not greater technically than Giotto, but I cannot call to mind a single one whose work impresses me as profoundly as his does. How is it that our so greatly better should be so greatly worse—that the farther we go beyond him the higher he stands above us? Time no doubt has much to do with it, for, great as Giotto was, there are painters of to-day not less so, if they only dared express themselves as frankly and unaffectedly as he did. Early Art The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it. Sincerity It is not enough that the painter should make the spectator feel what he meant him to feel; he must also make him feel that this feeling was shared by the painter himself _bona fide_ and without affectation. Of all the lies a painter can tell the worst is saying that he likes what he does not like. But the poor wretch seldom knows himself; for the art of knowing what gives him pleasure has been so neglected that it has been lost to all but a very few. The old Italians knew well enough what they liked and were as children in saying it. X The Position of a Homo Unius Libri Trübner and Myself WHEN I went back to Trübner, after Bogue had failed, I had a talk with him and his partner. I could see they had lost all faith in my literary prospects. Trübner told me I was a _homo unius libri_, meaning _Erewhon_. He said I was in a very solitary position. I replied that I knew I was, but it suited me. I said: