with the refinement of modern times. Part of the most decorous of these missives we shall, however, translate as nearly as we can render the quaint and often obsolete language.

"First of all my willing service, dear sir; and if it go well with you, I am as heartily glad thereof as though the case were mine own."-(Some excuses for not writing sooner, which we omit, conclude thus:) "Therefore I humbly pray you to forgive me, for I have no friend on earth but you. Also I give it no belief that you are angry with me, since I hold you no otherwise than a father. I wish you were here at Venice; there are so many pleasant companions amongst the Italians, who, the longer the more, consort with me, so that it touches one's heart; for reasonable, learned, good lute-players, fifers, good judges of painting, and noble-minded right virtuous persons, do me great honor and friendship. On the other hand, there are also here the falsest, most lying, thievish knaves, as I believe none such exist on the face of the earth; and he who should not know it, would think them the pleasantest people in the world. I myself cannot choose but laugh at them when they talk with me; they know that ́one knows such wickedness of them but they care nothing about the matter. I have many good friends amongst the Italians, who warn me not to eat and drink with their painters; and indeed many of these are my enemies, and copy my things in the churches and wherever they can get at them, and then revile them, and say they are not after the antique fashion, and therefore not good; but Sambelliny" (Giovanni Bellini, Titian's master, called Zan Belin in the Venetian dialect), "he has praised me very highly before many gentlemen; he would fain have something of mine, and came to me himself, and prayed me to do him something, and he would pay me well for it: and all people tell me he is so worthy a man that I equally value him. He is very old, and is still the best at painting. Given at Venice, at nine o'clock at night, on the Saturday after Candlemas, in the year 1506."

The reader will recollect that the year then began at Lady day.

In another letter the announcement of his approaching return home is followed by these exclamations. "Oh how I shall shiver for the sun! Here, I am a lord; at home a mere Nobody!" We have no room for more specimens of our painter's naïf epistolary style; and must pass over various letters to Pirkheimer or other correspondents, whether of friendship or of business, even though much in the latter move our inward man; e. g. the writer's earnest argument against the low prices offered him for his pictures, founded upon his large expenditure of money in the purchase of ultramarine, and of time in minutely and highly finishing them, and the petitions, extorted doubtless by his wife, for something extra, in the nature of something to drink, as a compliment to that insatiate and arbitrary dame.

After the settlement of his Venetian affairs, Albert Durer paid a short visit to Bologna to study perspective, and then returned to Nuremberg. Thence he despatched a letter and a portrait of himself to Raphael, who appears to have received both as marks of esteem from one whom he himself esteemed, and repaid them in kind, by a letter and some drawings. The German artist was now in truth at the summit of his fame. His native city gloried in his

reputation, and testified her respect by electing him a member of her great municipal council; a dignity not to be confounded with the civic honors of a London alderman, for be it remembered that every Free Imperial City (and such was Nuremberg), though a member of the federal German empire, constituted a self-governed republic; the councils of those cities being their legislative, and the bürgermeister, or mayor, their executive authority. The most distinguished literati throughout Europe sought Durer's acquaintance; kings and princes sat to, and honored him, and the Emperor Maximilian named him his Court Painter, with a yearly salary of one hundred gulden, * besides paying separately for every picture he should bespeak or purchase. An anecdote is related, illustrative of Maximilian's value for the favorite artist, closely resembling, in kind at least, one preserved of Henry VIII. and Holbein.

As Albert Durer was sketching upon a wall in presence of the Emperor and his court, the ladder upon which he stood slipped, and the monarch bade the nobleman who was nearest the painter hold it. The nobleman, drawing back, beckoned a servant to perform in his stead an office which he judged derogatory to his rank. Maximilian rebuked him; and when the courtier urged in his justification the necessity of maintaining his dignity, indignantly rejoined, "Albert's excellence in his art raises him far above a nobleman; for I can transform a peasant into a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, but not a nobleman into an artist."

To return to the Taschenbuch. The letters are followed by the painter's poetical attempts, as they are properly designated. The sister arts, we believe, like mere mortal sisters, choose severally to engross the affections of their respective votaries, thinking it foul scorn to accept a divided allegiance. At least, if examples there be of individuals acquiring supreme excellence in two unconnected arts, assuredly Albert Durer was not one of these phoenixes (to speak in the plural of that which is essentially singular), and we hold it best to pass over his verses.

We now come to the most curious, and in many respects the most interesting of the relics here preserved, i. e. the Diary of Albert Durer's Netherland journey in the years 1520-1521. This private record of his thoughts and actions deliciously reveals the simplicity, goodness, and piety of the writer's character, together with his modest vanity, if we may thus modify a quality by its opposite, and his cordial delight in all that was great, extraordinary, or beautiful: it moreover affords us a glimpse of the state of opinion and of social intercourse in those days; but the minuteness of detail, especially with respect to the journalist's expenses, renders it occasionally tedious. We shall endeavour to exhibit it under every

*If we cannot quite tell how much this came to in sterling money, we know that it was half of the sum total of his wife's marriage portion; a sufficient measure of relative value.

point of view, in the extracts we are about to make, after we have rectified a mistake of Strutt, in his Biographical Dictionary of Engravers. It is there said that Albert Durer's main object in the journey was to escape for a while from his intolerable wife. Had it been so, harsh were the moralist who would have severely blamed him; but this was not the case. His objects were to study more closely the masterpieces of a school more akin to his own than the Italian,' when he himself was fitter to appreciate and profit by them than during the wanderschaft of his novice years, and also to make money both as a painter and an engraver. The duration of a journey undertaken for such purposes could not well be calculated, and as Albert Durer seems to have thought that he had taken a wife "for better for worse," he probably did not hold himself free to leave her behind when his absence might be of long continuance. She and a maid-servant, therefore, accompanied

him.

The journal thus begins; we must premise that we shall abridge and omit at our own discretion:

"On Thursday after St. Kilian's day, I, Albert Durer, at my own cost and charges, set out with my wife from Nuremberg for the Netherlands, and the same day we passed Erlang, and lay that night at Baiersdorf, and there we spent three batzen less six pfennige. ... Thence I drove to Bamberg, and gave the bishop a painted Marienbild (or image of the Virgin), and copperplates to the value of a gulden; he invited me as his guest, and gave me a zoll-brief, and three furder-briefe."

.....

Of the four Briefe, or letters with which the prelate repaid the artist's present, the zoll-briefe, or toll-letter, seems to have been an exemption from tolls and customs, extending even beyond the jurisdiction of the reverend giver; for at almost every town they pass, Albert Durer says, "Then I showed my toll-letter, then they let me go:" and even when it does not so promptly answer the desired purpose, he usually escapes with signing a declaration either that he has no merchandise with him, or that he will bring none back. The fürder-briefe, a sort of letter we never before met with, appear to have been some kind of letters of general recommendation; the only use we observe to be made of them, is that they are shown to Margrave Hans, at Brussels.

"Thence we drove to Antwerp; there I came to the inn of Jobst Planckfeldt, and that same evening the Fugger's factor, by name Bernard Stecher, invited me, and gave us a costly meal. But my wife eat at the inn, and I gave the driver, for bringing us, three persons, three florins in gold. Item, on Saturday my host took me to the bürgermeister of Antwerp's house, beyond measure large, and very well ordered, and with wonderfully

*We believe the batz or batzen was worth about three halfpence, and the pfennig half a farthing; but we have already confessed our monetary ignorance, and hope a general knowledge that these were among the smallest coins current, may satisfy the reader as it does ourselves.

We hope this was a picture of the Virgin, but sadly fear it was a painted wooden image. It is a present more than once mentioned.

beautiful large rooms, and many of them, a costly ornamented tower, an excessively large garden, in short, so magnificent a house, that in all the states of Germany I never saw the like. Item, I gave the

messenger three stivers, two pf. for bread, and two for ink.

"Sunday was St. Oswald's day; then did the painters invite me to their rooms with my wife and maid, and had every thing of silver, and other costly ornaments, and over costly victuals. And their wives were all there. And when I was led to table, then did the people all stand up on both sides, as though a great lord were a-leading. There were also among them very excellent persons of men, who all with deep bows demeaned themselves most reverently towards me; and they said that they would do every thing, as far as might be possible, that they should know would be agreeable to me. And as I sat so, there came the council-messenger of my lords of Antwerp, with two attendants, and bestowed on me, from my lords of Antwerp, four cans of wine; and they sent me word that I should receive it as a present from them, and accept their good will. For this I returned my humble thanks, and offered my humble service. After that came master Peter, the city carpenter, † and bestowed on me two cans of wine, with the offer of his willing service. So, when we had sat long merrily together, and late into the night, then did they attend us home with torches, very honorably, and prayed me to accept their good will, and that I should do whatever I pleased, and they would be helpful to me. So I thanked them, and laid me down to sleep.

"In Brussels, in the golden chamber of the council-house, I have seen the four painted matters, done by the great master Rudiger (Roger van der Weyde.) Also I have seen the things brought to the king from the new gold country (Mexico), a sun, all gold, a whole fathom broad. Also a moon, all silver, equally large; also two roomsfull of the like, weapons, armour, artillery, very strange clothing, bedding, and all sorts of wonderful things for men's use, that are beautiful to look upon. These things are so costly that they are valued at 100,000 gulden. And in all the days of my life I have seen nothing that has rejoiced my heart like these things; for therein have I beheld marvellous works of art, and wondered at the subtle ingenuity of the people in the strange country, and I do not know to speak what I felt.

.

“Item, Lady Margaret (governess of the Netherlands) she sent for me in Brussels, and promised that she would be my protectress with King Charles, and showed herself especially virtuously towards me. I gave her my engravings of the Passion, also one to her treasurer, by name Jan Marini, and drew him in charcoal. Item, I was in the house of him of Nassau, and saw in the chapel the good picture made by master Hugo (van der Goes.) Item, drew Master Bernhardt (von Oelay), the lady Margaret's painter, in charcoal. I have again drawn Erasmus of Rotterdam. I have given to Lorenz Stärck a St. Jerome sitting, and the Melancholy, and I have drawn my landlady's gossip. Item, six persons whom I have drawn at Brussels have given me nothing. I have paid three stivers for two buffalo horns, and one stiver for two Eulenspiegels." [This may either refer to a rare print by Lucas of Leyden, now scarcely to be had for money, or to the book so called; Dr. Campe believes Durer's pur

The guildhall of the painter's company.

A title of municipal dignity, we presume.

It is to be remembered, that in the sixteenth century artillery was not confined to cannon, but seems to have included all missive weapons.

chase to have been the latter.*] "I presented Lady Margaret, the emperor's sister, † with a set of my things, and sketched her two matters on parchment, with all care and great pains, that I value at thirty fl.

"Item, on Friday before Whitsuntide, in the 1521, came the story to Antwerp how Martin Luther had been so treacherously taken prisoner; ‡ for whereas the Emperor Charles's herald, with an imperial safe-conduct, had been given him, with him he was in trust; but so soon as the herald had brought him to an unfriendly spot near Eisenach, he said he durst stay with him no longer, and rode away. Straight were ten horse there, who treacherously led away the saint, the man enlightened by the Holy Ghost, him who was a follower of the true Christian doctrine. And whether he yet live, or they have murdered him, which I know not, this has he suffered for the sake of Christian truth, and because he chastised the unchristian рарасу. .. And this is especially the heaviest to me, that God will perhaps leave us under their false, blind doctrines, which were invented and set up by men whom they call the Fathers. Oh Lord Jesus Xos, pray for thy people, preserve in us the true Christian faith, call together the widely scattered sheep of thy pasture, of whom a part are still to be found in the Roman church, with the Indians, Moscovites, Russians, Greeks, who, through the false conjurations and avarice of the Popes, through false shows of holiness, have been severed! Oh God! if Luther be dead, who shall henceforward so clearly expound the Holy Scriptures to us? Oh God, what might he not have written for us in another ten or twenty years! Oh, all you pious Christians, help me diligently to bewail this God-inspired mortal, and to pray Him that He would send us another enlightened man! Oh, Erasme Roterodame, where wilt thou abide ?

"I have reckoned with Jobst, and I owe him 31 florins, and I have paid him, taking into account and deducting two portraits painted in oil colors, for which he gave me out 5 pfd. (pounds, probably, of something, but of what we know not). In all my painting, boarding, selling, and other dealings, I have had disadvantage in the Netherlands, in all my concerns with high and low; and especially has the Lady Margaret, for all that I have presented her and done for her, given me nothing. And this settling with Jobst was on St. Peter and St. Paul's day. I gave the Rudiger servant 7 stivers to drink.

"Item, on the Sunday before St. Margaret's day, the king of Denmark gave a grand banquet to the Emperor, the Lady Margaret and the Queen of Spain, § and invited me, and I too ate there. I gave 12 stivers for the

*See Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. viii. p. 370, et seq.

Margaret was sister to no emperor. She was daughter to Maximilian, and aunt to his successor, Charles V., then emperor.

The occasion of this alarm was the concerted seizure of Luther by his constant protector, the Elector of Saxony, in order to conceal him from persecution. Its success depended upon deceiving friends and foes alike; and this passage has historical interest as exhibiting the effect produced by the measure.

§ We know not whom our good Nuremberger means by the Queen of Spain. Charles's wife was of course Empress, and the only true Queen of Spain was his mother the insane Joanna, who lived in a kind of confinement, in Castile.