German with a child's heart and a boy's rash courage.
Frankly I say you cannot admire Dürer if you be honestly ignorant or ignorantly honest.
We of to-day are too level-headed; our brains cannot encompass the world that crowded Dürer's dreams.
For the German's brain was always crowded; he had not that nice sense of space and emptiness that makes Italian Art so pleasant to look upon, and which the Japanese employ with astonishing subtlety. You remember Wagner's words in Goethe's "Faust"—
"Zwar weiss ich viel; doch möcht ich Alles wissen." (I know a lot, yet wish that I knew All.)
It is not only his eagerness to show you all he knows, but also his ravenous desire to know all that is to be known. Hence we speak of German thoroughness, at once his boast and his modesty.
