hools.

But before you call a man a master, you should ask, Are his pupils
greater or less than himself? If they are greater than himself, he is a
master indeed;--he has been a true teacher. But if all his pupils are
less than himself, he may have been a great _man_, but in all
probability has been a bad _master_, or no master.

Now these men, whom I have signally left out of my groups, are true
_Masters_.

Niccola Pisano taught all Italy; but chiefly his own son, who succeeded,
and in some things very much surpassed him.

Orcagna taught all Italy, after him, down to Michael Angelo. And these
two--Lippi, the religious schools, Verrocchio, the artist schools, of
their century.

Lippi taught Sandro Botticelli; and Verrocchio taught Lionardo da Vinci,
Lorenzo di Credi, and Perugino. Have I not good reason to separate the
masters of such pupils from the schools they created?

54. But how is it that I can drop just the cards I want out of my pack?

Well, certainly I force and fit matters a little: I leave some men out
of my list whom I should like to have in it;--Benozzo Gozzoli, for
instance, and Mino da Fiesole; but I can do without them, and so can you
also, for the present. I catch Luca by a hair's-breadth only, with my
1400 rod; but on the whole, with very little coaxing, I get the groups
in this memorable and quite literally 'handy' form. For see, I write my
lists of five, five, and seven, on bits of pasteboard; I hinge my rods
to these; and you can brandish the school of 1400 in your left hand, and
of 1500 in your right, like--railway signals;--and I wish all railway
signals were as clear. Once learn, thoroughly, the groups in this
artificially contracted form, and you can refine and complete afterwards
at your leisure.

55. And thus actually flourishing my two pennons, and getting my grip of
the men, in either hand, I find a notable thing concerning my two flags.
The men whose names I hold in my left hand are all sculptors; the men
whose names I hold in my right are all painters.

You will infallibly suspect me of having chosen them thus on purpose.
No, honor bright!--I chose simply the greatest men,--those I wanted to
talk to you about. I arranged them by their dates; I put them into three
conclusive pennons; and behold what follows!

56. Farther, note this: in the 1300 group, four out of the five men are
architects as well as sculptors and painters. In the 1400 group, there
is one architect; in the 1500