speaks of the sanity of genius as instanced by Shakespeare.  Genius narrowly escapes nowadays being a cerebral disorder, though there was Marlowe to set off Shakespeare’s serene spirit, and even of Michael Angelo’s mental health and morals his prime biographer, Parlagreco, does not speak in reassuring terms.  Goya was badly balanced, impulsive, easily angered, and not slow to obey the pull of his irritable motor centres when aroused.  A knife was always within reach.  He drove the Duke of Wellington from his presence because the inquisitive soldier asked too many questions while his portrait was being blocked out.  A sword or a dagger did the business; but Wellington returned to the studio and, as Mr. Rothenstein tells us, the portrait was finished and is now at Strathfieldsaye.  A sanguine is in the British Museum.  His exploits in Rome may have been exaggerated, though he was quite capable of eloping with a nun from a convent, as is related, or going around the top of the Cecilia Metella tomb supported only by his thumbs.  The agility and strength of Goya were notorious, though in a land where physical prowess is not the exception.  He was picador, matador, banderillero by turns in the bull ring.  After a stabbing affray he escaped in the disguise of a bull-fighter.

If he was a dompteur of dames and cattle, he was the same before his canvas.  Anything that came to hand served him as a brush, an old brown stick wrapped up in cloth, a spoon—­with the latter he executed that thrilling Massacre, May 2, 1808, in the Prado.  He could have painted with a sabre or on all fours.  Reckless to the degree of insanity, he never feared king or devil, man or the Inquisition.  The latter reached out for him, but he had disappeared, after suffering a dagger-thrust in the back.  When on the very roof of his prosperity, he often slipped downstairs to the company of varlets and wenches; this friend of the Duchess of Alba seemed happier dicing, drinking, dancing in the suburbs with base-born people and gipsies.  A genre painter, Goya delighted in depicting the volatile, joyous life of a now-vanished epoch.  He was a historian of manner as well as of disordered souls, and an avowed foe of hypocrisy.

Not “poignantly genteel,” to use a Borrovian phrase, was he.  Yet he could play the silken courtier with success.  The Arabs say that “one who has been stung by a snake shivers at a string,” and perhaps the violence with which the painter attacked the religious may be set down to the score of his youthful fears and flights when the Inquisition was after him.  He was a sort of Voltaire in black and white.  The corruption of churchmen and court at this epoch seems almost incredible.  Goya noted it with a boldness that meant but one thing—­friends high in power.  This was the case.  He was admired by the king, Charles IV, and admired—­who knows how much!—­by his queen, Marie Louise of Parma, Goya painted their portraits; also painted the portraits of the royal favourite and prime minister and Prince de la Paz, Manuel Godoy—­favourite of both king and queen.  Him, Goya left in effigy for the scorn of generations to come.  “A grocer’s family who have won the big lottery prize,” was the witty description of Theophile Gautier when he saw the picture of the royal family.