At the question of the disputed etchings we have not space even to glance. It is a delicate and difficult one, and could only be treated to any advantage at considerable length. It is, furthermore, one of interest to experts and collectors alone, and so directly opposite in many cases are their opinions that it is certain no finality can ever be hoped for. The reader who desires to enter upon this thorny ground must content himself with pinning his faith finally to one or another recognised authority, and abiding by his decision; unless, having first thoroughly studied the undisputed etchings, he is prepared to undertake the trial and judgment of each for himself, in which case he will, without doubt, sooner or later find himself differing on one point or another with every previous writer on the subject.
The less ambitious reader, who wishes only to know and appreciate what Rembrandt beyond question did do, will be wiser to confine himself to a study of the undisputed plates. In them he will find ample justification for the high position to which Rembrandt as an etcher has been elevated by his successors in the art. Beginning with the early etchings of himself or the members of his family, often mere drawings on copper, with little or no appeal to the variety of line and tone obtainable in etching, he may follow the artist's sure and rapid development, until he finds him master of every method the art permits. He may trace the progress of his work, from a first sketch of an idea, dashed off on the copper in one sitting, to the high perfection of such an elaborate portrait as that of "Burgomaster Six." He will further perceive, as was first pointed out by Sir F. Seymour Haden, how during the first ten years he confined himself almost entirely to pure etching, how during the following ten he began more and more to supplement his work with additions in dry-point, and how during the last ten years he to a considerable extent expressed himself by means of the point alone. He will, in especial, discover, if he compares Rembrandt's etched work with that of other masters, and without doing so he can never rightly understand it, that it is not in technique, masterly as that often is, so much as in expressiveness that his pre-eminence lies. It is in the mental qualities more than in the manual, that he so incomparably excels. Drawing often carelessly, blind or indifferent to superficial beauties, he, nevertheless, gets straight to the heart of the matter, grasps the essentials, and feels clearly and records frankly and simply all that speaks to the fundamental humanity in himself, and must therefore strike an answering chord in the breasts of his fellow-men. It is in this perceiving and revealing the true inwardness of the matter, through and apart from the mere accidents of environment, that he is unapproachable, far more than in the strength and direction of line, depth of shadow or brightness of light, application of acid or scraping of copper. In such a plate as the "Blind Tobit" (B. 42) there is not a detail of the technique which other men could not have done as well; but for such another presentment of the hurried, helpless groping for the door by a blind, weak old man not yet inured to the perpetual darkness that has fallen on him, we must wait for a second Rembrandt--and the wait is likely to be long.