[Illustration]

_A Correction_

[Sidenote: _The World_, Nov. 14, 1883.]

A supposititious conversation in _Punch_ brought about the following
interchange of telegrams:--

From Oscar Wilde, Exeter, to J. McNeill Whistler, Tite Street.--_Punch_
too ridiculous--when you and I are together we never talk about
anything except ourselves.

From Whistler, Tite Street, to Oscar Wilde, Exeter.--No, no, Oscar,
you forget--when you and I are together, we never talk about anything
except me.

[Illustration]

_A Warning_

[Sidenote: _The World_, June 1, 1881.]

[Sidenote: _REFLECTION:_

"A foolish man's foot is soon in his neighbour's house;
but a man of experience is ashamed of him."

[Illustration]]

My dear James,--I see from a weekly paper that your late residence,
the White House, in Tite Street, is now occupied by Mr. Harry Quilter,
"the excellent art critic and writer on art," or words to that effect.
This is the great man who has succeeded Mr. Tom Taylor on the _Times_,
and whose vagaries in art criticism you and I, my dear James, have
previously noticed....

ATLAS.

_Naif Enfant_

[Sidenote: _The Times_, May 2, 1881.]

Close to this is another portrait of extreme interest, and, though of
another kind, it is not inappropriately near Mr. Hunt's work. This is
Mr. John Ruskin, painted by Mr. Herkomer. It is difficult to
dissociate this picture, as regards the merit of its painting, from
the interest which attaches to it as being the first oil portrait we
have ever seen of our great art critic.... The picture remains a
singularly fine one, and is, in our opinion, Mr. Herkomer's best
portrait.

_A Straight Tip_

[Sidenote: _The World_, May 18, 1881.]

"Ne pas confondre intelligence avec gendarmes"--but surely, dear
Atlas, when the art critic of the _Times_, suffering possibly from
chronic catarrh, is wafted in at the Grosvenor without guide or
compass, and cannot by mere sense of smell distinguish between oil and
water colour, he ought, like Mark Twain, "to inquire."

Had he asked the guardian or the fireman in the gallery, either might
have told him not to say that one of the chief interests of Mr.
Herkomer's large water-colour drawing of Mr. Ruskin "attaches to it as
being _the first oil portrait_ we have ever seen of ou