It would seem that this strange, self-contained life wished to be silent; for it is perhaps not too fanciful to read this meaning into that answer given by El Greco when asked, in connection with the writ served on him for the ‘Expolio,’ whether he had been brought to Toledo to paint the retablo of Santo Domingo: “I am neither bound to say why I came to this city nor to answer the other questions put to me.” Here we gain hints of certain very real traits of character. And, if the facts of his life are meagre enough, we can find suggestions of this same temper, silent, yet passionate, in that visit of Pacheco to the Toledan painter when he was old, in 1611, of which we have spoken before. Pacheco tells us that El Greco was a student of many things, a writer on art, a great philosopher given to witty sayings, a sculptor and architect as well as a painter. He writes of much work that he saw, and speaks in particular of a cupboard in which were models in clay of each picture El Greco had finished. The two painters talked on many subjects, of colour and its supreme quality in painting, of Michael Angelo and his failure as a colourist. But in all the account of Pacheco, always so minutely laborious, it is significant to note in one sentence the impression he formed of Domeniko Greco: “He was in all things as singular as in his painting.” Nor will it do to overlook the testimony of Giuseppe Martinez, whose “Practical Letters on the Art of Painting,” though not printed until 1866, were written a century before. He too speaks of Domeniko Greco as of extravagant disposition, and in proof recounts that he engaged musicians to play to him that he might “enjoy an additional luxury during meals.” The prudent Aragonese condemns this “too much ostentation,” but we capture again some fresh clues and hints of this strangely effective personality--a fanatic of life, a fanatic of painting. But we have not settled the account of genius when we have called it unusual, fanatic, or decadent. It is the solution of the dull that genius is extravagant consciously. El Greco can have had no desire, no power, to repeat the easy, the commonplace. If strange, exaggerated even, his art is without a trace of affectation. When he painted a vision he felt it natural to symbolise his idea in the way that he did. In colour, in form, he painted only what his imagination saw, gaining in colour fresh harmonies for himself, and a new suggestion of movement in his imaginative compositions, to which our imagination must find answer. El Greco understood all nature as a Living Presence; his art was a series of experiments to express this. And every one must be struck with the peculiar development of this special personality in his art from stage to stage--stages that with sufficient accuracy may be divided into three periods.