whole of the works ordinarily ascribed to one or other of the two brothers alone.

At the outset of our inquiry I spoke of problems attaching to the history of the two brothers. Our investigation, if my conclusions are well founded, reveals yet another problem. The period from the death of Hubert Van Eyck in 1426 to the death of John in 1440, is well accounted for in John's works, signed and unsigned. The same may, I think, be said of the period reckoning back from the death of Hubert in 1426 to the year 1410, when we may assume that John began to work in collaboration with Hubert-" in partnership," as Messrs. Crowe and Calvacaselle have phrased it. But where are the works executed by Hubert during the youth of John, a period of, let us say, twenty years—the twenty years by which Hubert was the senior of John ? If my conclusions are correct, there is scarcely a single work-indeed, I do not know of even one-that we can assign to this period as the sole work of Hubert. It is a singular coincidence that the attainment by John of an age when we may assume that he would be qualified to enter on his career as a painter, should agree with the date assigned to the discovery of the new method of oilpainting. M. Paul Durrieu thinks that he has identified Hubert as the painter of the marvellous miniatures of Turin and Milan, works that would add to the renown even of the painter of the Ghent altar-piece.* Was Hubert engaged in another branch of art up to the time when his discovery of the new method launched him and his pupil on a

* In Gazette des Beaux Arts,' January and February, 1903.

new and wider career? There is perhaps here a solution of what seems to be a fresh enigma in the story of these two great lives.

The inscription of the Ghent altar-piece declares that no greater painter than Hubert Van Eyck was to be found; John was second to him. But after a time the very name of Hubert was all but forgotten; his invention and his works alike came to be ascribed to the younger brother. In our day we have witnessed a somewhat violent reaction. In spite of the inscription on the altar-piece of Ghent declaring that the bulk of the work was executed by John, in spite of the clear indications furnished by the altarpiece itself, some modern criticism has gone so far as to refuse to John all share in this great picture beyond the two small panels of Adam and Eve.* But we must not allow our desire to do justice to the greater to betray us into injustice to the less. We cannot doubt that to Hubert we owe the conception and design of this immortal work. Greater he was than John if, as we should, we place first the gifts of a lofty imagination and the power of awakening the deepest emotion. On the other hand, John is here revealed as a very great master. As the result of our inquiry we may to-day unhesitatingly grant the claim that he is the father of landscape painting, that, in the words of Lord Lindsay, "all that we gaze at with such rapture in the works of Poussin and Claude, Cuyp and Ruysdael, nay, even in the lovely backgrounds of Perugino, Pinturicchio, Ghirlandajo, Bellini, Francia, Zingaro, Leonardo, and Raphael, may be traced

* Weale (W. H. James), in Athenæum,' December 6th, 1902.

back to his sunny banks, shady woods, and glittering waters, the green freshness of his foregrounds, and the transparent purity of the atmosphere through which the eye roves delightedly over hill and mountain, till lost in azure distance." *

We need not to grudge to John his share in the execution of The Adoration of the Lamb. It is a marvel that in any age of painting two such great artists should have been found to collaborate, for the most part, in complete and well-adjusted harmony of endeavour. It is a unique instance. Each was supreme in his own domain. To each let us render due and unstinted homage.

It only remains for me to record my obligations to some of those who have very generously assisted me in this inquiry. To Mr. James Britten, of the Natural History Museum, I am indebted for frequent help in botanical questions. I have already mentioned my obligations to Mr. G. H. Birch, and to his name I must add that of Mr. R. Phené Spiers. Both gave me much assistance in the architectural part of my study. It is hardly necessary to add that no one of these gentlemen is to be held responsible for my conclusions.

* Lindsay (Lord), 'Sketches of the History of Christian Art,' 2nd edit., 1885, vol. ii, pp. 318, 319.

ON THE

PROBABLE AUTHORSHIP AND

DATE OF THE TREATISE ON THE
SUBLIME' ATTRIBUTED TO LONGINUS.

BY DR. RICHARD GARNETT, C.B., F.R.S.L.

[Read November 25th, 1903.]

ONE effect of the essay which I am about to have the honour of addressing to you will be, I fear, to suggest to you how much easier it is in criticism to arrive at negative than at positive conclusions. My subject is the authorship of one of the world's classics, the famous Treatise on the Sublime' attributed to Dionysius Cassius Longinus. Could we maintain the belief in Longinus's authorship which was held undoubtingly until about the beginning of last century, all would be plain and easy. If I could tell you that this memorable work was indubitably written by the celebrated Longinus, a bright light in a dark age, and counsellor of the Queen of Palmyra, I might spare myself much curious and, as I must own, not very satisfactory speculation as to its authorship. I might, mutatis mutandis, address you as the Emperor Francis of Austria addressed the Hungarians: "Totus mundus stultizat, et vult habere novas constitutiones, sed vos jam habetis unam constitutionem antiquam, ut non opus sit his novitatibus peregrinis." The rejection of the author

VOL. XXIV.

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ship of Longinus, on the other hand, leaves us at sea with little prospect of finding a port. I need hardly say that it would be far more satisfactory if the result of the investigation should be to leave Longinus in possession of the Treatise. He was a great man, great not only by ability but by character. By the unanimous testimony of his contemporaries, he towered above every other man of letters of his age. But, with the exception of this fine torso, the Treatise on the Sublime,' if, indeed, it be his, and of a treatise on rhetoric which has got entangled with the work of another author, his works are lost; and if he is deprived of this, his preeminence must be accepted on the testimony of things not seen. One would not like to bereave him of any title to fame, or diminish his wreath by a single leaf of laurel. Much rather would we see it augmented, and the general testimony of his contemporaries and successors leaves little room for doubt that his lost writings would be found to equal the Treatise on the Sublime' in critical discernment, though, if we may judge by the few fragments which have survived, hardly in elevation of thought or vigour of expression.

Yet the pursuit of truth alone must influence our inquiry, and, should it appear that this work is indeed wrongly attributed to Longinus, the recognition of the fact will bring with it one great gain. It must in that case have suffered from the want of the right historical background. Although a treatise of abstract criticism, it cannot have been uninfluenced by the circumstances of the time at which