uggest that Whistler's painting was a
quite serious thing.

Yes, that painting and that writing are marvellously akin; and such
differences as you will see in them are superficial merely. I spoke of
Whistler's vanity in life, and I spoke of his timidity and reverence in
art. That contradiction is itself merely superficial. Bob Acres was
timid, but he was also vain. His swagger was not an empty assumption to
cloak his fears; he really did regard himself as a masterful and
dare-devil fellow, except when he was actually fighting. Similarly,
except when he was at his work, Whistler, doubtless, really did think
of himself as a brilliant effortless butterfly. The pose was, doubtless
a quite sincere one, a necessary reaction of feeling. Well, in his
writing he displays to us his vanity; whilst in his Painting we discern
only his reverence. In his writing, too, he displays his
harshness--swoops hither and thither a butterfly equipped with sharp
little beak and talons; whereas in his painting we are conscious only
of his caressing sense of beauty. But look from the writer, as shown by
himself, to the means by which himself is shown. You will find that for
words as for colour-tones he has the same reverent care, and for
phrases as for forms the same caressing sense of beauty.
Fastidiousness--'daintiness,' as he would have said--dandyishness, as
we might well say: by just that which marks him as a painter is he
marked as a writer too. His meaning was ever ferocious; but his method,
how delicate and tender! The portrait of his mother, whom he loved, was
not wrought with a more loving hand than were his portraits of Mr.
Harry Quilter for The World.

His style never falters. The silhouette of no sentence is ever blurred.
Every sentence is ringing with a clear vocal cadence. There, after all,
in that vocal quality, is the chief test of good writing. Writing, as a
means of expression, has to compete with talking. The talker need not
rely wholly on what he says. He has the help of his mobile face and
hands, and of his voice, with its various inflexions and its variable
pace, whereby he may insinuate fine shades of meaning, qualifying or
strengthening at will, and clothing naked words with colour, and making
dead words live. But the writer? He can express a certain amount
through his handwriting, if he write in a properly elastic way. But his
writing is not printed in facsimile. It is printed in cold, mechanical,
monotonous type. For h