secondly, that in the matter of his pronouncements the critical
expert also may occasionally be regarded as

_Un animal qui s'habille, deshabille et babille toujours;_

and thirdly, that in default of incontestable documentary proofs the
modest "so far as I have been able to discover" of Holbein's first
biographer, Van Mander, is a capital anchor to windward, and is at
any rate preferable to driving forth upon the howling waters of
Classification, like Constance upon the Sea of Greece, "Alle sterelesse,
God wot."

But my chief reason for not pursuing the Protean phantom of Holbein's
Augsburg period is that,--apart from my own disagreement with many
accepted views about the works it includes, and the utter lack of
data or determining any position irrefutably,--it is comparatively
unimportant to the purpose of this little book. For wherever the younger
painter was born,--whether at Augsburg or Ulm or elsewhere,--and
whatever I believe to be his rightful claim to such paintings as the St.
Elizabeth and St. Barbara of the St. Sebastian altar-piece at Munich,
Fame, like Van Mander, has rightly written him down Holbein
_Basiliensis_.

It is true that his father's brushes were his alphabet. It may be true,
though I doubt it, that his father's teaching was his only technical
school. But if he was, as to the last he gloried in being, the child of
the Old Period, he was much more truly the immediate pupil of the Van
Eycks than of his father's irresolute ideals; while Basel was his
university. And whatever may have been his debt to those childish years
when the little Iulus followed his father with trembling steps, his
debt to Basel was immensely greater. The door-sill of Johann Froben's
printing-house was the threshold of his earthly immortality.

When he turned his back on the low-vaulted years of Augsburg, it was
because for him also the time was ripe. The Old Period had cast his
genius; the New was to expand it to new powers and purposes.

_Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new;
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretch'd in his last-found home and knew the old no more._

* * * * *

It may easily have been the elder Hans' continuous troubles, whether due
to his fault or his misfortune it is idle now to inquire, which made his
sons leave Augsburg. Certain it is that he but