Vasari, "they were done just as well, if not
better than Giorgione himself could have done them, had he been alive!"

It was absurd of Giorgione to die of a broken heart and let Titian come
in, making free with everything in his studio, and complete his work. It
was very absurd.

Time is the great avenger--let us wait. Morta del Feltri, the perfidious
friend, grew tired of his mistress: their love was so warm it shortly
burned itself to ashes--ashes of roses.

Morta deserted the girl, fled from Venice, joined the army, and a javelin
plunged through his liver at the battle of Zara ended his career.

The unhappy young woman, twice a widow, fought off hungry wolves by
finding work in a glass-factory, making mosaics at fourteen cents a day.
When she was seventy, Titian, aged seventy-five, painted her picture as a
beggar-woman.

* * * * *

The quality of sentiment that clings about the life of Giorgione seems to
forbid a cool, critical view of his work. Byron indited a fine poem to
him; and poetic criticism seems for him the proper kind. The glamour of
sentiment conceals the real man from our sight. And anyway, it is hardly
good manners to approach a saint closely and examine his halo to see
whether it be genuine or not. Halos are much more beautiful when seen
through the soft, mellow light of distance.

Giorgione's work was mostly in fresco, so but little of it has survived.
But of his canvases several surely have that tender, beseeching touch of
spirit which stamps the work as great art.

Whether Mrs. Jameson is right in her assumption that all canvases bearing
Giorgione's name are spurious which lack that look of pity, is a
question. I think that Mrs. Jameson is more kind than critical, although
my hope is that Renan is correct in his gratuitous statement, "At the
Last Great Day men will be judged by women, and the Almighty will merely
vise the verdict." If this be true, all who, like Giorgione, have died
for the love of woman will come off lightly.

But the fact is, no man is great all the time. Genius is an exceptional
mood even in a genius, and happy is the genius who, like Tennyson, builds
a high wall about his house, so he is seen but seldom, and destroys most
of his commonplace work.

Ruskin has printed more rubbish than literature--ten times over. I have
his complete works, and am sorry to say that, instead of confining myself
to "Sesame and Lilies," I have foolishly read a