e. These were all classics admitting of no
criticism, but some books were illuminated by commentary. For instance,
the frequent comparison of Goethe with Shakespeare which G.H. Lewes
makes in his "Life of Goethe" grew tiresome to the hearer, who quietly
asked me to read the word Elephant instead of Shakespeare next time it
occurred, and the change proved refreshing. But there was a kind of book
that he reserved for himself and never liked any one to read to
him--"The Broad Stone of Honour" and "Mores Catholici" are instances:
they were kept in his own room, close to his hand, and often dipped into
in wakeful nights or early mornings.

"Sillyish books both," he once said, "but I can't help it, I like them."
And no wonder, for his youth lay enclosed in them.

MY FACES
[Sidenote: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_]

"Of course my faces have no expression in the sense in which people use
the word. How should they have any? They are not portraits of people in
paroxysms--paroxysms of terror, hatred, benevolence, desire, avarice,
veneration, and all the 'passions' and emotions that Le Brun and that
kind of person find so _magnifique_ in Raphael's later work--mostly
painted by his pupils and assistants, by the way. It is Winckelmann,
isn't it, who says that when you come to the age of expression in Greek
art you have come to the age of decadence? I don't remember how or where
it is said, but of course it is true--can't be otherwise in the nature
of things."

"Portraiture," he also said, "may be great art. There is a sense,
indeed, in which it is perhaps the greatest art of any. Any portraiture
involves expression. Quite true, but expression of what? Of a passion,
an emotion, a mood? Certainly not. Paint a man or woman with the damned
'pleasing expression,' or even the 'charmingly spontaneous' so dear to
the 'photographic artist,' and you see at once that the thing is a mask,
as silly as the old tragic and comic mask. The only expression allowable
in great portraiture is the expression of character and moral quality,
not of anything temporary, fleeting, accidental. Apart from portraiture
you don't want even so much, or very seldom: in fact you only want
types, symbols, suggestions. The moment you give what people call
expression, you destroy the typical character of heads and degrade them
into portraits which stand for nothing."

FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS
[Sidenote: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_]

The different stages