was this trinity, and Goya could have made it a quartet.

But if Spain was not a country of original artists--as was Italy, for
example--she developed powerful and astounding individualities.
Character is her _leit motìv_ in the symphony of the nations. The rich
virility and majestic seriousness of her men, their aptitudes for war,
statesmanship, and drama, are borne out in her national history.
Perhaps the climate plays its part. Havelock Ellis thinks so. "The
hard and violent effects, the sharp contrasts, the strong colours, the
stained and dusky clouds, looking as if soaked in pigment, may well
have affected the imagination of the artist," he writes. Certainly the
landscapes of Velasquez could not be more Spanish than they are; and,
disagreeing with those who say that he had no feeling for nature, the
bits of countryside and mountain Goya shows are truly peninsular in
their sternness. It may be well to remark here that the softness of
Tuscany is not to be found in the lean and often arid aspects of
Spain. Spain, too, is romantic--but after its own fashion. Goya
revived the best traditions of his country's art; he was the last of
the great masters and the first of the moderns. Something neurotic,
modern, disquieting, threads his work with devilish irregularity. He
had not the massive temper of Velasquez, of those men who could paint
day after day, year after year, until death knocked at their ateliers.
As vigorous as Rubens in his sketches, Goya had not the steady, slow
nerves of that master. He was very unequal. His life was as disorderly
as Hals's or Steen's, but their saving phlegm was missing. In an
eloquent passage--somewhere in his English Literature--Taine speaks of
the sanity of genius as instanced by Shakespeare. Genius narrowly
escapes nowadays being a cerebral disorder, though there was Marlowe
to set off Shakespeare's serene spirit, and even of Michael Angelo's
mental health and morals his prime biographer, Parlagreco, does not