against Pourbus,
that one was unable to walk behind the figure in his picture, could
never hold with Jan Steen. His every figure stands out surrounded
by atmosphere, and never more so than in the "Oyster Feast". Again,
in the "Cat's Dancing Lesson" (opposite page 158), what drawing there
is in the girl playing the pipe, and what life in the whole scene!

It is odd that Jan Steen in Holland, and George Morland in England,
both topers, should have had this secret of simple charm so highly
developed: one of nature's curious ironies, very confusing to the
moralist. In the second Hague picture (opposite page 80) Leyden's
genial tosspot has achieved a farther triumph--he has painted one of
the most radiantly delicate figures in all art. One must go to Italy
and seek among the early Madonnas to find anything to set beside the
sweet Wordsworthian character of this little Dutch girl who feeds
the animals.

It was Jan Steen's way to scamp much of every picture; but in every
picture you will find one figure that could not be excelled. Nothing
probably could be more slovenly, more hideously unpainted, than, for
example, the bed and the guitar-case in the "Sick Woman"--No. 2246
at the Ryks Museum--opposite page 22. But I doubt if human skill
has ever transcended the painting of the woman's face, or the sheer
drawing of her. Look at her arm and hand--Jan Steen never went wrong
with arms and hands. Look at the hands of the boy playing the pipe in
the picture opposite page 74; look at the woman filling a pipe at the
table. To-day we are accustomed to pictures containing children: they
are as necessary as sunsets to picture buyers: all our figure-painters
lavish their talents upon them; but who had ever troubled to paint
a real peasant child before Jan Steen? It was this rough toper that
showed the way, and no one since has ever excelled him.

Parallels have been drawn between Jan Steen and Hogarth, and there
are critics who would make Jan a moralist too. But I do not see how
we can compare them. Steen did what Hogarth could not, Hogarth did
what Steen would not. Hogarth is rarely charming, Steen is rarely
otherwise. It is not Hogarth with whom I should associate Jan, but
Burns. He is the Dutch Burns--in colour.

I wish we had more facts concerning him, for he must have been
a great man and humorist. The story is told of Hogarth that on
being commissioned to paint a scriptural picture of the Red Sea
for a too parsimonious patron wh