"But what is this?" the patron asked. "The Red
Sea--surely." "Where then are the Israelites?" "They have all crossed
over." "And Pharaoh's hosts?" "They are all drowned." The story is
perhaps an invention; but a somewhat similar joke is credited to Jan
Steen. His commission was the Flood, and his picture when finished
consisted of a sheet of water with a Dutch cheese in the midst
bearing the arms of Leyden. The cheese and the arms, he pointed out,
proved that people had been on the earth; as for Noah and the ark,
they were out of the picture.
Jan Steen's picture of "A Quaker's Funeral" I have not seen, but
according to Pilkington it is impossible to behold it and refrain from
laughter. The subject does not strike one as being in itself mirthful.
A century earlier Leyden had produced another Jan, separated from
Jan Steen by a difference wide asunder as the poles. Yet a very
wonderful man in his brief season, standing high among the world's
great madmen. I mean Jan Bockelson, the Anabaptist, known as Jan of
Leyden, who, beginning as pure enthusiast, succumbed, as so many a
leader of women has done, to the intoxication of authority, and became
the slave of grandiose ambition and excesses. Every country has had
its mock Messiahs: they rise periodically in England, not less at
the present day than in the darker ages (hysteria being more powerful
than light); yet the history of none of these spiritual monarchs can
compare with that of the tailor's son of Leyden.
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