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Add to it, you know, from time to time; but begin with 'Margaret, perhaps, and Retzsch's 'Hamlet' or 'Faust, or a collection of fine wood engravings, such as Mrs. Harris has, and perhaps one of Albert Dürer's ugly things to show off with. What do you think of it, Laura?" "Do you ever look at Mrs. Harris's nowadays, Del?" "Why, no, I can't say I do, now.
The profound impression made upon him by Margaret's story is expressed in two letters about Retzsch's illustrations: "The artist makes one envy his happiness that he can sketch such things with calmness, which I only dared look upon once, and which made my brain swim round only to touch the leaf on the opposite side of which I knew that it was figured."
A lady must not be escorted home from an evening party by a gentleman, but by a servant with a lantern; and as the streets have no lamps, I never could see the breaking-up of any such entertainment without recalling Retzsch's quaint pictures of the little German towns, and the burghers plodding home with their lanterns, unless, perchance, what a foreign friend of ours called a "sit-down chair" came rattling by, and transferred our associations to Cranford and Mr.
Beside a bier knelt a winged figure, in act of stealing the rigid form, and to the awful yet strangely beautiful face of the messenger of gloom, she had given the streaming hair, the sunken, cavernous but wonderfully radiant eyes of Moritz Retzsch's weird image of Death.
'Who's master now? snarled Mr. Paul Dangerfield, through his clenched teeth, and smiting the senseless iron with a vindictive swoop of his cane. I fancy his face at this moment had some of the peculiar lines and corrugations which we observe in that of Retzsch's Mephistopheles, when he gripes the arm of Faust to drag him from Margaret's cell.
Most of us remember Retzsch's drawing of destiny in the shape of Mephistopheles playing at chess with man for his soul, a game in which we may imagine the clever adversary making a feint of unintended moves so as to set the beguiled mortal on carrying his defensive pieces away from the true point of attack.
The reverence of the papal Romans for their treasures of either classic or Christian art is well illustrated by Retzsch's outline, in which a lovely statue of Apollo, broken and half buried, defiled by dogs and swine, serves as a seat for a loutish herd, who tries to copy a miserable modern Virgin and Child from a wayside shrine.
But tell me honestly, Geoffrey, are you really well?" "Perfectly, except for a growing disposition to yawn," said her husband laughing. "Well, what are the last accounts of the patient?" "He is doing very well: the last thing I did before coming away, was to lay him down on the sofa, with Retzsch's outlines to look at: so you may guess that he is coming on quickly.
Some of these, as the six elephant folios on the Louvre, are in superb bindings; while many others, among which are the Dresden Gallery and Retzsch's Outlines, derive an additional value from once having formed a part of the elegant collection of William Reginald Courtenay.
The walls of the room in which he is just now lounging have their crimson and gold almost covered with pictures, copies of rare Murillos and Raphaels, and an original head of a boy, by Greuze, with the lips as fresh as they were a hundred years ago. An exquisite "Dying Stork," in bronze, stands on a bracket below Sassoferrato's sweetest Madonna, and Retzsch's "Hamlet" lies open on a side-table.
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