rue honesty in the world. And yet we know how easily
that effort is beset by fears and jealousies and failure in generosity,
how lightly we who should together give all our energy to the service of
our art, waste it in little concerns of spite and self-interest. And it
is in just such ways as this that great example may serve us nobly, and
there has surely never lived an artist in whom such example more clearly
shone. Art, which for him embraced and crystallised all that was brave
and adventurous and tender, was the worship of Lovat Fraser's life,
a worship which he kept with an absolute loyalty.

It is my privilege to know most of the best artists, in all kinds, of my
age. One has this distinction, another that. But I think that he had the
loveliest of them all. I have known nobody who brought to his art a
devotion so pure and utterly removed from self-interest. If he could
serve the beauty that he loved, he was eager always to do so with
perfect indifference to his own reward. Nobody could be with him for ten
minutes without feeling that art was a thing far greater than any
artist. He had the lovely, humorous humility that is the one sure sign
of greatness. One felt always that if he should think that another might
do given work better than he, there could be for him nothing but
distress if the best was not done, even though it meant the loss of
personal opportunity. But it is one of the happy things of genius that
this exquisite humility can only live with great creative gifts, so that
Lovat Fraser knew from day to day the supreme joy of mastery. The
humility, however, is our example, and the thought that seems most
worthy to-day is that he stands at this moment, for all he was younger
than most of us, as a challenging leader to us all. It will, I think,
always be impossible to remember him without feeling that anything mean
or grudging in the spirit in which we do our work is a betrayal and an
intolerable thing. With all his gaiety, his fun, his simplicities, and
his powers, he showed us not only what a fine artist can do but what a
fine artist can be. And under his leadership at this moment may we not
go back to our work in the world with renewed courage and faith,

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers."

For his fame none of us have any fear. There is in his public
achievement and his portfolios a solid body of work that more and more
must establish itself. However futile prophecy in these things must be,