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of gold, and moon all of silver, and many other very wonderful works of art, which made him marvel at the subtle ingenia' of men in foreign lands. At Michaelmas he went to Aachen and saw King Karl crowned Emperor with lordly splendour. Thence he journeyed on to Köln, where he visited St. Ursula's Church and saw the holy maid's relics, and paid two white pfennigs as we pay to-day-for opening the Dombild by the old master of Köln, Meister Stephan. There the confirmation of his pension by the Emperor reached him, and thus 'after great trouble and labour' he at length attained the object of his journey. But he was in no hurry to return home. He had made many friends in Antwerp, and drew and painted many portraits, amongst others that of the great Erasmus of Rotterdam and Nikolas Kratzer, astronomer to Henry VIII. of England, with whom he had much in common, and whom we find writing to congratulate Dürer in 1524 on the success of the Reformation at Nürnberg. Now that you are all evangelical in Nürnberg I must write to you. God grant you grace to persevere; the adversaries indeed are strong, but God is stronger, and is wont to help the sick who call upon Him and acknowledge Him' (p. 28). And he bought all manner of rare and curious things, precious stones and sandalwood, and porcelain and ivories, and sent off a large bale of presents to his Nürnberg friends and their wives, lace and silks, and buffalo horns and sugar canes, and pistachios and sweetmeats, not forgetting a scarlet cap for his little godson, Hans Imhof's child. In December he went on an expedition to Zeeland to see a monster whale which had been stranded by a high tide; but when he got there, after narrowly escaping shipwreck off Walcheren, the great fish had been washed away. On this expedition he had what he calls a wondrous attack of sickness,' and brought home with him the seeds of that fatal disease which never left him till the day of his death. His visits to Bruges and Ghent in the springtime proved more successful. He saw the alabaster Madonna sculptured by Michelangelo of Rome, and the Painters' Chapel, and Jan Van Eyck's 'Adoration of the Lamb,' which he calls a most precious painting, full of thought, 'ein überköstlich, hochverständig Gemahl. On his way back to Antwerp he stopped at Mechlin, and paid a visit to Lady Margaret, the Regent of the Netherlands, who 'showed him' all her beautiful things, including a precious library and forty-six small Flemish oil-paintings, 'the like of which for precision and excellence I have never beheld,' but behaved very meanly, and gave him nothing for the drawings which he made and presented to her. After

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Corpus Christi he sent off his trunk to Nürnberg, and prepared to return home in earnest; but his departure was delayed by the King of Denmark, ‘a manly handsome man,' who made him paint his portrait and travel with him to Brussels, where he saw the Emperor ride forth to receive him, and dined with these august personages at the great banquet given in honour of their royal guest. Then at length he and his wife set out on their journey, and on July 15, they reached Köln. Dürer's diary ends. In spite of his grumblings, although he declares that in all his doings, spendings, sales, and other dealings with high and low,' he had suffered loss, this journey to the Netherlands had brought him both fame and money. He had accomplished the main object of his journey, and during the remainder of his life his pension was paid regularly on St. Martin's Day. And so great was the honour in which he was held at Antwerp that the council offered him a salary of three hundred florins and a house if he would remain there. But he refused that offer, preferring, he said, to remain near his fatherland rather than to be rich and held in honour elsewhere, as he had refused the offer made him by the Venetian Senate fifteen years before. He had lived all his life in Nürnberg, and at Nürnberg he would die, in the old wooden house under the shadow of the ancient Veste.

A few years were all that were now left him of life, and those years were less fruitful and busy than of old. His strength was rapidly failing, and he suffered much from the old sickness, which had first attacked him in Zeeland. But still he painted some of his finest portraits-that of Hans Imhof at Madrid, and of the grand old city councillor Holzschuher at Berlin. Then, too, he engraved that splendid likeness of his old friend Pirkheimer, which brings the man before us as he was-strong and lusty, fond of men of learning, and of fair women too, enjoying all the good things of life, and at the same time taking an active part in the political and religious movements of the age. Another remarkable engraving of these last years was that of Melanchthon, with whom Dürer became intimately acquainted when he came as a guest to Pirkheimer's house in 1525. The gentle, amiable nature of the two men exactly suited, and Melanchthon used to say of Dürer that, much as he esteemed his painting, it was the least of his accomplishments. Failing health woke up the old anxieties about money, and in 1524 he wrote a touching letter to the Town Council, begging them to receive his savings of a thousand florins, and give him fifty florins a year as interest, so that he and his wife might be sure

of a competence now that they were growing daily older, feebler, and more helpless. The request was granted, and it was part of this money that, after Dürer's death, his wife, in fulfilment of her husband's wishes, gave towards the endowment of Melanchthon's theological college at Wittemberg. That year Nürnberg, first among the free towns of the Empire, declared for the Reformation. Dürer's sympathies, as well as those of his friends, had long been with the reforming party. He had long been an earnest and careful student of Luther's writings, and in 1520 had written to Spalatin, the chaplain of his patron, Duke Friedrich of Saxony, begging him to send him anything new that Doctor Martin might write.

'I pray your worthiness,' he adds, 'to beseech his Electoral Grace to take the praiseworthy Doctor Martin Luther under his protection, for the sake of Christian truth; for that is of more importance to us than all the power and riches of this world; because all things pass away with time-truth alone endureth for ever. God helping me, if ever I meet Dr. Martin Luther I intend to draw his portrait carefully from life and engrave it on copper, to be a lasting remembrance of a Christian man, who helped me out of great distress' (p. 156).

And in a famous passage in the 'Netherlands Diary,' written under the impression that Luther had been treacherously taken prisoner by the Emperor's orders, he addresses Erasmus in a strain of almost fanatical enthusiasm :—

'Oh Erasmus of Rotterdam, where wiltt hou stop? Behold how the wicked tyranny of worldly power, the might of darkness, prevails. Hear, thou knight of Christ; ride on by the side of the Lord Jesus. Guard the truth. Attain the martyr's crown. Already, indeed, thou art an aged little man [ein altes Männiken'], and myself have heard thee say that thou givest thyself but two years more wherein thou mayest still be fit to accomplish somewhat. Lay out the same well for the good of the Gospel, and of the true Christian faith, and make thyself heard. So, as Christ says, shall the gates of Hell (the Roman Chair) in no wise prevail against thee. . . . Oh ye Christian men, pray God for help; for His judgment draweth nigh, and His justice shall appear. Then shall we behold the innocent blood which the Pope, Priests, Bishops, and Monks have shed, judged and condemned' (p. 159).

In spite of these passionate convictions, Dürer, we have seen, retained his respect for the splendid ceremonial and traditions of the Church of his fathers. He went regularly to confession, and lost no whit of his love and reverence for 'our dear Lady.' And in the account of his father's death written

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in 1526, he begs all his friends to remember his soul with a Paternoster and an Ave Maria. In the last years of his life it is evident that events were beginning to move too fast for him. The extravagances of the Anabaptists and hot-headed youth of Nürnberg vexed his soul, and he protested strongly against the destruction of pictures and images, saying that ‘a Christian would no more be led to superstition by a picture or an effigy than an honest man to commit murder because he carries a weapon by his side. . . . A fine work of art is wellpleasing to God, and He is angry with such as destroy the works of great mastership, for that is bestowed by God alone' (p. 153). No wonder, then, he looked with alarm on the signs of the times, and might have made his own the words of Pirkheimer when he wrote, 'Originally I was a good Lutheran, and so was our friend Albrecht of blessed memory, for we hoped that the roguery of Rome and the knavery of monks and priests would be bettered; but, instead of that, things have so gone from bad to worse that the Evangelical knaves make these Popish knaves look pious by contrast' (p. 149).

Inspired by these feelings Dürer painted his last great work, the Four Preachers,' now at Munich. Once more he took up his old parable of the Four Temperaments, and painted St. John as the melancholic or contemplative type and St. Peter as the phlegmatic on one panel, and on the other St. Mark and St. Paul as the sanguine and the choleric on the other; and below the figures he wrote certain verses from Luther's translation of the Gospels, containing words of rebuke and warning to his fellow-citizens. These Saints, so splendid in form and colouring, were Dürer's last message to the men of his own times. He finished them towards the close of 1526, and presented them to the Town Council of Nürnberg. After that he devoted himself to the publication of those theories on art which had filled so large a part of his life. In 1525 his Book on the Teaching of Measurements had appeared, and in 1527 he issued his treatise on the Art of Fortification. Then he revised his old studies on Human Proportions, which, together with the preceding essays on Measurements, were intended to form part of one great encyclopædic work on art. Two books were ready for the press, the other two were only waiting to be revised, and the dedication of the whole to Pirkheimer had been already drawn up, when suddenly and quietly the end came. Death had always seemed to him a terrible thing, when he saw his mother die, and when he drew the skeleton king with the grim face on the pale horse. And now it came to him calmly

and gently as a little child, so that his friends almost envied him when they heard that he was gone. He died in Holy Week, on April 6, 1528, and was buried in the JohannisKirchhof just outside the gate. On his tomb Pirkheimer, inspired by that fine feeling which, even in souls of coarser fibre, is often the outcome of a deep affection, wrote the word 'Emigravit.' Out of the struggles and the sighing, out of the storms and clouds, the artist-soul had passed into the perfect day.

Many, besides Pirkheimer, wept when the sad news reached them, and they knew that the greatest man in Nürnberg was dead. But Luther, when he heard that he was gone, wrote to the friend from whom the message had come: 'As to Dürer it is natural and right to weep for so excellent a man; still you should rather think him blessed, as one whom Christ has taken in the fulness of His wisdom and by a happy death from these most troublous times, and perhaps from times even more troublous which are to come, lest one, who was worthy to look upon nothing but excellence, should be forced to behold things most vile. May he rest in peace. Amen.'

ART. IV. TATIAN'S DIATESSARON.

1. Tatiani Evangeliorum Harmoniæ Arabice: nunc primum ex duplici codice edidit et translatione Latina donavit P. AUGUSTINUS CIASCA. (Romæ, 1888.)

2. Evangelii Concordantis expositio facta a Sancto Ephraemo: in Latinum translata a R. P. AUCHER, Mechitarista, cuius versionem emendavit, illustravit et edidit G. MOESINGER. (Venetiis, 1876.)

3. The Diatessaron of Tatian. Now first edited in an English form, with Introduction and Appendices, by SAMUEL HEMPHILL, B.D., Professor of Biblical Greek in the University of Dublin. (London and Dublin, 1888.)

WHEN the late Bishop of Durham published his article on Tatian's Diatessaron in the Contemporary Review for 1877 very little was known as to its contents. Some few allusions in Greek and Syriac literature-vague for the most part, and sometimes obviously inexact-had to be classified, sifted, and explained, as in the above-mentioned article, in order that we might get at the residuum of truth which they contained.

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