, both of which are now in the Louvre, he returned again and
again to its study, producing each time a masterpiece. His portraits,
again, are most masterly, occasionally rising through sheer force of
rendering each characteristic trait of his model (as in the portrait
of M. Bertin, the editor of the "Debats"), to the extreme exactitude
of Holbein, coupled with an _allure_ so thoroughly modern that
the whole epoch of Louis Philippe lives before us. In the slighter
drawings of his earlier years in Rome, one of which is reproduced
here, only the most typical details are chosen, and these are
indicated with a delicacy of touch, a sureness of hand, that not
only indicates the master, but lends a distinctive charm of truthful
delicacy of which none but Ingres has known the secret. It is in such
works that his influence will be felt the longest; for, as with his
master, the great pictures in which he exemplified his principles
remain cold and uninteresting. The "Homer Deified," reproduced here,
was originally intended as a ceiling for the Louvre, and from a
decorative point of view would excite a pitying smile from Veronese
or Tiepolo. Taken bit by bit, as a beautiful exhibition of supreme
knowledge, of the evasive quality of style in drawing, it is, however,
admirable, and as a whole it has the merits of grave, balanced
composition. It was the spirit of work like this which the master
sought to force upon his epoch, rather than that of his portraits or
of pictures like the "Source;" and the austerity of these principles
met with more submission in the earlier years of the century than when
later Gericault had shown the path in which the audacious Delacroix
threw himself at the head of a band of romantic followers.

[Illustration: DANTE AND VIRGIL CROSSING THE LAKE WHICH SURROUNDS THE
INFERNAL CITY OF DITE. FROM A PAINTING BY EUGENE DELACROIX, IN THE
LOUVRE.

The subject is taken from Dante's "Inferno," and represents the poet
and his companions and guide standing in a bark conducted by Phlegyas,
while around them appear on the surface of the water the writhing
bodies of the condemned, among whom Dante recognizes certain
Florentines.]

I have used the term audacious in speaking of Delacroix, and
circumstances forced him to justify the epithet. Yet to a student of
his work, and still more of his character as revealed in his writings
(his recently published letters and the few articles published during
his life in the "Revue