did not make light of impurity, but thought it less criminal than spite
and malice and envy and vanity and ignorance. The loose sort were at
least made human and modest by their very faults, and he regarded
avarice and arrogance as blacker sins in a priest than a hundred
concubines." This spirit was not that of the Reformation which came to
stop, yet it existed and was widespread at that time; it was I think the
spirit which either formed or sustained most of the great artists. At
any rate it both formed and sustained Albert Duerer. Yet the true nature
of these ideas, derived from Jesus, could not be understood even by
Colet, even by Erasmus. For them it was tradition which gave value and
assured truth to Christ's ideas, not the truth of those ideas which gave
value to the traditions and legends concerning him. The value of those
ideas was felt, sometimes nearer, sometimes further off; it was loved
and admired; their lives were apprehended by it, and spent in
illustrating and studying it, as were also those of Albert Duerer and
Michael Angelo. To understand the life and work of such men, we must
form some conception of the true nature and value of those ideas, as I
have striven to do in this chapter. Otherwise we shall merely admire and
love them, as they admired and loved Jesus; and it has now become a
point of honour with educated men not only to love and admire, but to
make the effort to understand. Even they desired to do this. And I think
we may rejoice that the present time gives us some advantage over those
days, at least in this respect.


X

And lastly, in order to bring us back to our main subject, let us quote
from a stray leaf of a lost MS. Book of Duerer's, which contains the
description of his father's death.