Redon could see and feel. Sometimes his words are poetry, especially when he addresses the sea. In words he snares amazing, unexpected revelations. In his unselfconscious hours of meditation, sometimes he is a thinker. Again I am impressed with the fact that they who are great, keep within untapped deeps of good. He declares that that which comes from the heart can not die. Goethe said something similar. And that was the teaching of Faust. The last resolve of its united modern and mediæval wisdom was the heart’s supremacy. Beethoven asserted it. Redon, as it happened, adored Beethoven. As I recall the musician’s words they were these: “Man’s title to nobility is his heart.” Now I recall Goethe’s words: _Nur was vom Herzen kommt, zum Herzen geht._ This completing of logic in word-phrase is a characteristic, I think, of the great German. Redon goes on to say that if on some centenary of Michael Angelo he were chosen to make the address, he would speak only of the great soul of the man. There were long periods when Michael Angelo neither painted nor modeled. In these between spaces his sonnets were written. I recall at this moment a sonnet in that old Italian tongue I have loved so long, which tells how he likes sleep and the substance of stone: _Caro m’è ’l sonno, e piu esser di sasso._ The woman whom Michael Angelo loved declared she wrote only to give vent to inner grief:— _Scrivo sol per sfogar l’interna doglia._ He was greater. He wrote selflessly. It was in Bordeaux, a letter informs me, that Redon was born, instead of Marseilles.... He seems to have possessed a noble nature, with a peculiarly personal quality of penetration. He stood face to face with basic emotions. He declares the dilettante amuses himself, while the artist, going through agony, produces grain for broader sowing. Mixed with his love, his knowledge of art, there was reverence. He explains how memories of what his father used to tell him in childhood helped him. Of his father, he remarks: “He loved the outdoor world. He talked often about the pleasure the great spaces of America gave him, and forests, where once he was lost for days. He liked to recall the wild life of his youth, this daring follower of luck and liberty.” His father was in New Orleans at time of the Wars of the First Empire. In his sensitive childhood, Brittany made him sad. He explains that in Celtic lands the human soul has accumulated too much emotion. The passion of days, of years, is piled there, until material things become uncannily imbued. Hence the wealth of legends. Legends and poetry become the permanent safety vault of the agony, of the desires, of a race. Once he pauses to praise the wines of France. He blesses men who grow the grape, who make precious liquid to dilute bitter fate with a little optimism. He calls it _liquid of dreams_. He rejoices that there is something that can exalt mind.