may serve, however, to illustrate and corroborate our theory. As to the last, the connection between his Nose and the peculiar bias of his mind is obvious.
“The founder of the Science of Political Economy” must have possessed a natural attraction towards commercial affairs; and it could only have been by a very large share of acute observation and shrewd penetration that he could have worked out the principles of so abstruse a science, and made it acceptable to the mass of mankind.
“It was,” says one of his admirers, “one of the few, but greatest, errors of Adam Smith, that he was too apt to consider man as a mere money-making animal, who will never hesitate to work provided he is well paid for it. He does not consider that the desire of power and of esteem are more powerful principles than the desire of wealth.”
ADAM SMITH.
It is impossible to desire a description of his character more exactly correspondent to the form of his Nose.
It has been much disputed among his biographers whether Correggio was rich or poor. Many anecdotes are related which indicate his extreme poverty; while on the other hand, numerous facts seem to prove that he must at least have been in easy circumstances. He married a lady of good fortune, and he was well appreciated in his own time, and received many valuable orders for paintings from patrons of high rank and great liberality. It is however undisputed that his disposition was penurious and miserly, and this fact—indicated also by his unusually well-developed hawk-nose—will serve to reconcile the apparently contradictory assertions of his biographers.
CORREGGIO.
It is probable that, like most misers, he was always complaining of poverty, and even denied himself necessaries which he could have well afforded. Those who credited these complaints, recorded his poverty and lamented over it with mistaken kindness; while others, who more critically considered his actual means, would better appreciate them and reveal the true state of the case. There is an anecdote recorded of him by his friend and cotemporary, Vasari, which though it may not be wholly true, has probably some foundation. This characteristic anecdote is to the effect, that having received a payment of sixty crowns in copper, he carried it home on foot in sultry weather, and the over-fatigue brought on a fever, of which he died. It is not, as Gibbon has shrewdly remarked, of much importance whether an anecdote of a person is actually true or false; for it almost equally displays the character of the person of whom it is recorded. A tale of liberality is not told of a known miser; nor an instance of penuriousness of a liberal man. An anecdote, to be received, must at least be probable and have an air of verisimilitude. Neither, considering the character of Correggio, is there any such inconsistency in the story as to render it incredible. The objection that sixty crowns in copper would weigh two hundred pounds, and therefore be an impossible weight for a man to carry, is a mere quibble. It only proves that the quantity is exaggerated, and not that the main story is false.