scamps, and d'Argenville are dumb regarding
him. Those who, by chance, treat of him, commit so many errors that it
is best to take no account of their words. Three cities, Amsterdam,
Koeverden, and a village, Middelharnais, in the province of Guelder,
which he has made famous by the marvellous picture, the subject of our
notice, dispute the honour of being his birthplace. But, it seems,
although nothing can be affirmed with certainty, that he first saw the
light in Amsterdam in 1638. He was the son of a sergeant in the
Netherland army and spent his early life in Koeverden, where he was
baptized and where his father was in garrison. At a later period he
established himself in Amsterdam, where he became the pupil and soon the
comrade and friend of J. Ruysdael, who served as witness to his marriage
with Eeltie Vinck, celebrated in this same city, Oct. 2, 1668. From that
time he scarcely ever left Amsterdam, where he died, Dec. 14, 1709, five
years after his wife, in the sad Roosegraft, which had seen Rembrandt
expire thirty years before. He was sixty-seven years of age. Have we any
need to add that, like Rembrandt, the painter of painters, he died
poor?

That is all we know of Meindert Hobbema. It is little enough, but quite
sufficient. Have we not the man complete in his work? What more could we
wish?

Jouin, _Chefs-d'oeuvre: Peinture, Sculpture, Architecture_
(Paris, 1895-97).

THE DANCE OF THE DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS

(_ANDREA DEL SARTO_)

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

With the majestic and tragic things of art we began, at the landmarks
set by Leonardo and Michael Angelo; and are come now, not quite at
random, to the lyric and elegiac loveliness of Andrea del Sarto. To
praise him would need sweeter and purer speech than this of ours. His
art is to me as the Tuscan April in its temperate days, fresh and tender
and clear, but lulled and kindled by such air and light as fills the
life of the growing year with fire. At Florence only can one trace and
tell how great a painter and how various he was. There only, but surely
there, can the influence and pressure of the things of time on his
immortal spirit be understood; how much of him was killed or changed,
how much of him could not be. There are the first-fruits of his
flowering manhood, when the bright and buoyant genius in him had free
play and large delight in its handiwork; when the fresh interest of
invention was still his, and the dramatic sense, th