rspective of San Francisco as being Meryon's most masterly design.
In 1846 he quit seafaring. He was in mediocre health, and though from
a cadet he had attained the rank of lieutenant it was doubtful if he
would ever rise higher. His mother had left him four thousand dollars,
so he went over to the Latin Quarter and began to study painting. That
he was unfitted for, and meeting Eugene Blery he became interested in
etching. A Dutch seventeenth-century etcher and draughtsman, Reiner
Zeeman by name, attracted him. He copied, too, Ducereau and Nicolle.
"An etching by the latter of a riverside view through the arch of a
bridge is like a link between Meryon and Piranesi," says D.S. MacColl.
Meryon also studied under the tuition of a painter named Phelippes. He
went to Belgium in 1856 on the invitation of the Duc d'Aremberg, and
in 1858 he was sent to Charenton suffering from melancholy and
delusions. He left in a year and returned to Paris and work; but, as
Baudelaire wrote, a cruel demon had touched the brain of the artist. A
mystic delirium set in. He ceased to etch, and evidently suffered from
the persecution madness. In every corner he believed conspiracies were
hatching. He often disappeared, often changed his abode. Sometimes he
would appear dressed gorgeously at a boulevard cafe in company with
brilliant birds of prey; then he would be seen slinking through mean
streets in meaner rags. There are episodes in his life that recall the
career of another man of genius, Gerard de Nerval, poet, noctambulist,
suicide. It is known that Meryon destroyed his finest plates, but not
in a mad fit. Baudelaire says that the artist, who was a
perfectionist, did not wish to see his work suffer from rebiting, so
he quite sensibly sawed up the plates into tiny strips. That he was
suspicious of his fellow-etchers is illustrated in the story told by
Sir Seymour Haden, who bought several of his etchings from him at a
fair price. Two miles away from the atelier the Englishman was
overtaken by Meryon. He asked for the proofs he had sold, "as they
were of a nature to compromise him"; besides, from what he knew of
Haden's etchings he was determined that his proofs should not go to
England. Sir Seymour at once returned the etchings. Now, whether
Meryon's words were meant as a compliment or the reverse is doubtful.
He was half crazy, but he may have seen through a hole in the
millstone.

Frederick Keppel once met in Paris an old printer named Beil