Giorgione’s work was mostly in fresco, so but little of it has survived.  But of his canvases several surely have that tender, beseeching touch of spirit which stamps the work as great art.

Whether Mrs. Jameson is right in her assumption that all canvases bearing Giorgione’s name are spurious which lack that look of pity, is a question.  I think that Mrs. Jameson is more kind than critical, although my hope is that Renan is correct in his gratuitous statement, “At the Last Great Day men will be judged by women, and the Almighty will merely vise the verdict.”  If this be true, all who, like Giorgione, have died for the love of woman will come off lightly.

But the fact is, no man is great all the time.  Genius is an exceptional mood even in a genius, and happy is the genius who, like Tennyson, builds a high wall about his house, so he is seen but seldom, and destroys most of his commonplace work.

Ruskin has printed more rubbish than literature—­ten times over.  I have his complete works, and am sorry to say that, instead of confining myself to “Sesame and Lilies,” I have foolishly read all the dreary stuff, including statistics, letters to Hobbs and Nobbs, with hot arguments as to who fished the murex up, and long, scathing tirades against the old legal shark who did him out of a hundred pounds.  Surely, to be swindled by a lawyer is not so unusual a thing that it is worth recording!

But Ruskin wrote about it, had it put in print, read the proof, and printed the stuff, so no one, no matter how charitably disposed, can arise and zealously declare that this only is genuine, and that spurious.  It’s all genuine—­rubbish, bosh and all.

Titian painted some dreary, commonplace pictures, and he also painted others that must ever be reckoned as among the examples of sublime art that have made the world stronger in its day and generation and proud of what has been.

Titian was essentially a pagan.  When he painted Christian subjects he introduced a goodly flavor of the old Greek love of life.  Indeed, there is a strong doubt whether the real essence of Christianity was ever known at Venice, except in rare individual cases.

It was the spirit of the sea-kings, and not the gentle, loving Christ, that inspired her artists and men of learning.

The sensuous glamour of the Orient steeped the walls of San Marco in their rainbow tints, and gave that careless, happy habit to all the Venetian folk.  In Titian’s time, as today, gay gallants knelt in the churches, and dark, dreamy eyes peeked out from behind mantillas, and the fan spoke a language which all lovers knew.  Outside was the strong smell of the sea, and never could a sash be flung open to the azure but there would come floating in on the breeze the gentle tinkle of a guitar.

But Titian, too, as well as Giorgione, infused into his work at times the very breath of life.