te emotions to their highest point becomes
the first in a file of a long series of men"; but, adds Mr. Ellis: "To
be a leader of men one must turn one's back on men." El Greco, like
Charles Baudelaire, cultivated his hysteria. He developed his
individuality to the border line across which looms madness. The
transmogrification of his temperament after living in Toledo was
profound. Born Greek, in art a Venetian, the atmosphere of the
Castilian plain changed the colour of his soul. In him there was
material enough for both a Savonarola or a Torquemada--his piety was
at once iconoclastic and fanatical. And his restlessness, his
ceaseless experiments, his absolute discoveries of new tonalities, his
sense of mystic grandeur--why here you have, if you will, a Berlioz of
paint, a man of cold ardours, hot ecstasies, visions apocalyptic, with
a brain like a gloomy cathedral in which the _Tuba Mirum_ is
sonorously chanted. But Greco is on the side of the angels; Berlioz,
like Goya, too often joined in the infernal antiphonies of Satan
_Mekatrig_. And Greco is as dramatic as either.

Beruete admits that his idol, Velasquez, was affected by the study of
El Greco's colouring. Canaille Saint-Saens, when Liszt and Rubinstein
were compared, exclaimed: "Two great artists who have nothing in
common except their superiority." It is bootless to bracket Velasquez
with his elder. And Gautier was off the track when he spoke of Greco's
resemblance to the bizarre romances of Mrs. Radcliffe; bizarre Greco
was, but not trivial nor a charlatan. As to his decadent tendencies we
side with the opinion of Mr. Frank Jewett Mather, Jr.: "Certain
pedants have written as if the world would be better without its
disorderly geniuses. There could, I think, be no sorer error. We need
the unbalanced talents, the _poetes damnes_ of every craft. They strew
the passions that enrich a lordlier art than their own. They fight
valiantly, a little at the expense of their fame, against the only
unpardonable sins, stupidity and indifference. Greco should always be
an honoured name in this ill-destined company."

In the Prado Museum there is a goodly collection. The Annunciation,
The Holy Family, Jesus Christ Dead, The Baptism of Christ, The
Resurrection, The Crucifixion--a tremendous conception; and The Coming
of the Holy Ghost; this latter, with its tongues of fire, its
flickering torches, its ecstatic apostles and Mary, her face flooded
by a supernal illumination, m