achieves the only illusion with which art is concerned, and its value
will depend on its beauty and the beauty of the means employed to
deliver it.




CHAPTER VIII

IN CONCLUSION

After turning over Duerer prints and drawings, after meditating on his
writings, we feel that we are in the presence of one of those forces
which are constant and equal, which continue and remain like the growth
of the body, the return of seasons, the succession of moods. This is
always among the greatest charms of central characters: they are mild
and even, their action is like that of the tides, not that of storms.
"If only you had my meekness," Duerer wrote to Pirkheimer (set: p. 85),
half in jest doubtless, but with profound truth:--though the word
meekness does not indeed cover the whole of what we feel made Duerer's
most radical advantage over his friend; at other times we might call it
naivety, that sincerity of great and simple natures which can never be
outflanked or surprised. Sometimes it might be called pride, for it has
certainly a great deal of self-assurance behind it, the self-assurance
of trees, of flowers, of dumb animals and little children, who never
dream that an apology for being where and what they are can be expected
of them. Such natures when they come home to us come to stop; we may go
out, we may pay no heed to them, we may forget them, but they abide in
the memory, and some day they take hold of us with all the more force
because this new impression will exactly tally with the former one; we