English ways were very different from those of the Continent, but Rubens soon spoke the language with fluency, even if not with precision.

Rubens spoke seven languages, and to speak seven languages is to speak no one well.  On this point we have a little comment from high authority.  Said Charles the First, writing to Buckingham, “The Fleming painter prides himself on being able to pass for an Englishman, but his English is so larded with French, Dutch and Italian that we think he must have been employed on the Tower of Babel.”

While painting the ceiling of the banqueting-room at Whitehall (where a Dutchman was later to be crowned King of England), he discussed politics with the Duke of Buckingham and the King, from the scaffold.  Some years after we find Buckingham visiting Rubens at his home in Antwerp, dickering for his fine collection of curios and paintings.

The Duke afterwards bought the collection and paid Rubens ten thousand pounds in gold for it.

Every one complimented Rubens on his shrewdness in getting so much money for the wares, and Rubens gave a banquet to his friends in token of the great sale to the Britisher.  It was a lot of money, to be sure, but the Englishman realized the worth of the collection better than did Rubens.  We have a catalog of the collection.  It includes nineteen Titians, thirteen Paul Veroneses, seventeen Tintorettos, three Leonardos, three Raphaels and thirteen pictures by Rubens himself.

A single one of the Titians, if sold at auction today, would bring more than the Duke paid for the entire collection.

James McNeil Whistler has said, “There may be a doubt about Rubens having been a Great Artist; but he surely was an Industrious Person.”

There is barely enough truth in Mr. Whistler’s remark, taken with its dash of wit, to save it; but Philip Gilbert Hamerton’s sober estimate is of more value:  “The influence of Rubens for good can not be overestimated.  He gave inspiration to all he met, and his example of industry, vivid imagination, good-cheer and good taste have had an incalculable influence on art.  We have more canvases from his hand than from the hand of any other master.  And these pictures are a quarry to which every artist of today, consciously or unconsciously, is indebted.”

MEISSONIER

I never hesitate about scraping out the work of days, and beginning afresh, so as to satisfy myself, and try to do better.  Ah! that “better” which one feels in one’s soul, and without which no true artist is ever content!

     Others may approve and admire; but that counts for nothing,
     compared with one’s own feeling of what ought to be.

    —­Meissonier’s Conversations

[Illustration:  Meissonier]

Life in this world is a collecting, and all the men and women in it are collectors.