n
with Blake-like hints--for Blake was master of the "flaming door" and
the ecstasy that consumes.

A design that attracts is a flight of steps feebly lighted by a
solitary light, hemmed in by ancient walls; on the last step lurks an
anonymous person. A fine bit of old-fashioned romance is conjured up;
also memories of Piranesi.

The drowning woman is indescribable, yet not without a note of pathos.
Buddha is one of the artist's highest flights. The Oriental mysticism,
the Kef, as ecstasy is called in the East, are admirably expressed.
His studies of deep-sea life border on the remarkable. I have seldom
encountered such solicitude for exact drawing, such appreciation of
the beauties of form and surface colouring, as these pictures of
shells, sea flora, and exotic pearls. The Cardinal series must not be
forgotten, those not easily forgotten portraits of a venerable
ecclesiastic.

It is difficult to sum up in a brief article all the characteristics
of this versatile Bohemian, as it is difficult to find a picture that
will give a general idea of his talent. I select the Nero, not because
it exhibits any technical prowess (on the contrary, the arms are of
wood), but because it may reveal a tithe of the artist's fancy. Nero
has reached the end of a world that he has depopulated; there remains
the last ship-load of mankind which he is about to destroy at one
swoop. The design is large in quality, the idea altogether in
consonance with the early emotional attitude of Kubin toward life.

II

Edvard Munch, the Norwegian, is a much bigger man and artist. The
feminine note, despite his sensibility, is missing. He has control of
his technical forces and he never indulged in such nervous excesses as
Kubin. Besides, he is sincere, while the other is usually cynical. He
deals with the same old counters, love and death, debauchery and
consequent corruption. He is an exponent of feverish visions, yet you
never feel that he is borne down by his contact with dwellers on the
threshold. A border-lander, as is Maurice Maeterlinck, Munch has a
more precise vision; in a word he is a mystic, and a true mystic
always sees dreams as sharp realities.

It was Mr. Saintsbury who first called attention to the clear flame of
Flaubert's visions as exemplified by his Temptation of St. Anthony. So
Munch, who pins to paper with almost geometrical accuracy his personal
adventures in the misty mid-region of Weir.