Older northe Rogues among Whisht I Slips

This is from an essay on Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Pater, in a section describing La Gioconda (Mona Lisa): "All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there,... She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her;... and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes..." ALP, like HCE, goes a long way back.