sion. 'The year has not produced a
single masterpiece. Glad as we have been to welcome Mr. Blank's verse,
"Larkspurs" cannot be compared with his first delicious volume,
"Tealeaves," published thirty years ago.' Then turn to the review in the
same paper of 'Tealeaves' thirty years ago. 'Coarse animalism draped in
the most seductive hues of art and romance, we will not analyse these
poems, we will not even pretend to give the reasons on which our opinion
is based.' Or read the incisive 'Musings without Method,' in
_Blackwood's Magazine_, on contemporary literature and contemporary
things generally.

Again, every painter is told that his work is not as good as last year,
and that we have no one like Titian or Velasquez. The Royal Academy is
always said to be worse than usual. I have known the summer exhibitions
at Burlington House for twenty years. Let me assure you throughout that
period they have always been quite as bad as they are now. But we do not
want painters like Titian or Velasquez; we want something else. If
painters were like Titian or Velasquez they would not be artists at all.
When Velasquez went to Rome he was told he ought to imitate Raphael; had
he done so should we regard him as the greatest painter in the world? If
Rossetti had merely been another Fra Angelico or one of the early artists
from whom he derived such noble inspiration, should we regard him as we
do, as even the fierce young modern art student does, as one of the
greatest figures in English art of the nineteenth century? In the latter
part of that century I think he is the greatest force in English
painting. I would reserve for him the largest print in my manual of
English art. But have we declined since the death of Rossetti? On the
contrary, I think we have advanced and are advancing. You must not think
I am depreciating the past. The past is one of my witnesses. The past
was very like our present; it nearly always depreciated itself
intellectually and materially.

We all of us think of Athens in the fifth century as a golden period of
great men, when every genius was appreciated, but you know that they put
Pheidias in prison. And take the instance of Euripides. The majority of
his countrymen said he was nothing to the late Aeschylus. He was chiefly
appreciated by foreigners, as you will remember if you are able to read
'Balaustion's Adventure' (so much more difficult than Euripides in the
original Greek). Listen to