soon told all over Bâle, and orders were given to prevent the loss
to the city of so great an artist. But Holbein had quietly gone off,
furnished with letters of introduction from Erasmus, who wrote in one of
them that in Bâle the arts were chilled; which might well be true of a
place where so much ado was made about the painting of a fly.

In England, Holbein found a friend and patron in Sir Thomas More,--Henry
the Eighth's great Lord Chancellor; and a sight of some of his works won
him, ere long, the favor of the King himself. He was appointed Court
Painter, with apartments at the palace, and a yearly salary of two
hundred florins, (or thirty pounds, equal to about two hundred pounds
now,) which he received in addition to the price of his pictures. After
about three years of prosperity he went home to his wife and children;
but as he soon returned to England, we may safely conclude that his
visit was to provide for the latter, and with no hope of living with the
former. Some years after, in 1538, when his fame was still increasing,
the city of Bâle, proud of its son, offered him a handsome annuity,
in the hope that that might induce him to return to his country, his
children, and his wife. But he could not be tempted. Though not the
wisest of men, he was Solomon enough to know that "it is better to dwell
in a corner of the house-top than with a brawling woman and in a wide
house"; and as he was successful and held in honor in England as well as
Bâle, he contented himself with a corner of King Henry's palace.

But although he fled from his wife, he painted her portrait; and we need
no testimony to warrant the likeness. She is the very type of one of
those meek shrews, alternately a martyr and a fury, that drive a man to
madness when they speak and to despair when they are silent. We might
reasonably wonder that he would paint so vivid a representation of that
which he so sedulously shunned. But poor Hans, who probably had some