nd
when his debts accumulated in greater proportion even than his receipts,
in place of having recourse, like Rubens, to his painting-room, Van Dyck
tried a shorter road to get rich, by following the idle example of Sir
Kenelm Digby in his pursuit of alchemy and the philosopher's stone.

In the year of his marriage, Van Dyck re-visited Flanders, in company
with his wife, and then repaired to France, it is understood with the
intention of settling there. He was instigated to the step by his wife,
and his own ambition of rivalling Rubens' triumphs at the Luxembourg;
but the preference which the French gave to the works of their
countryman, Nicolas Poussin, roused his latent jealousy, and so
mortified him as to induce him to renounce his intention. He determined
to return to England, and was, to his credit, confirmed in his
resolution by the threatening civil war which was to shake his royal
master's throne to the foundation, rather than deterred from it.

Again in England, Van Dyck employed Sir Kenelm Digby to make an offer on
the painter's part that for eight hundred pounds he would paint the
history, and a procession of the Knights of the Garter on the walls of
the Knights' banqueting-room at Whitehall--that palace which was to
have surpassed the Louvre, the Tuileries, and the Escurial, and from one
of the windows of which Charles stepped out on his scaffold. But the
proposal was rejected, and immediately afterwards the civil war broke
out, and was speedily followed by the death of Van Dyck, about a year
after his marriage, when he was a little over forty years old, at
Blackfriars, in 1641. He was buried in old St Paul's, near the tomb of
John of Gaunt. His daughter, Justiniana, was born a short time--some say
only eight days--before her father died, and was baptized on the day of
his death. Van Dyck left effects and sums due to him to the amount of
twenty thousand pounds; but the greater part of the debts were found
beyond recovery at the close of the civil war. His daughter grew up, and
married a Mr Stepney, 'who rode in King Charles's life guards.' His
widow re-married; her second husband was a Welsh knight.

Van Dyck's contradictory elements. He was actuated by opposite motives
which are hard to analyze, and which in their instability have within
themselves, whatever their outward advantages, the doom of failure in
the highest excellence. He was a proud man, dissatisfied both with
himself and his calling, resentin