human nature.

II. ON BOOKS OF REFERENCE

The history of modern Rembrandt bibliography properly begins with the
famous work by C. Vosmaer, "Rembrandt Harmens van Rijn, sa Vie et ses
OEuvres." Vosmaer profited by the researches of Kolloff and Burger
to bring out a book which opened a new era in the appreciation of the
great Dutch master. It was first issued in 1868, and was republished
in 1877 in an enlarged edition. This book was practically alone in the
field until the recent work of Emile Michel appeared. In the English
translation (by Florence Simmonds) edited by Walter Armstrong,
Michel's "Rembrandt" is at the present moment our standard authority
on the subject. It is in two large illustrated volumes full of
historical information and criticism and containing a complete
classified list of Rembrandt's works--paintings, drawings, and
etchings.

The "Complete Work of Rembrandt," by Wilhelm Bode, is now issuing from
the press (1899), and will consist of eight volumes containing
reproductions of all the master's pictures, with historical and
descriptive text. It is to be hoped that this mammoth and costly work
will be put into many large reference libraries, where students may
consult it to see Rembrandt's work in its entirety.

The series of small German monographs edited by H. Knackfuss and now
translated into English has one number devoted to Rembrandt,
containing nearly one hundred and sixty reproductions from his works,
with descriptive text. Kugler's "Handbook of the German, Flemish, and
Dutch Schools," revised by J. A. Crowe, includes a brief account of
Rembrandt's life and work, which may be taken as valuable and
trustworthy. For a critical estimate of the character of Rembrandt's
art, its strength and weaknesses, and its peculiarities, nothing can
be more interesting than what Eugene Fromentin, French painter and
critic, has written in his "Old Masters of Belgium and Holland."

Rembrandt's etchings have been the exclusive subject of many books.
There are voluminous descriptive catalogues by Bartsch ("Le Peintre
Graveur") Claussin, Wilson, Charles Blanc, Middleton, and Dutuit. A
short monograph on "The Etchings of Rembrandt," by Philip Gilbert
Hamerton (London, 1896), reviews the most famous prints in a very
pleasant way.

There are valuable prints from the original plates of Rembrandt in the
Harvey D. Parker collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and in
the Gray collection of the Fogg Museum at