ts, Turner perhaps lent himself most to _Punch's_ satire.
Ruskin had not yet arisen to champion the mighty painter's
ill-appreciated art; and Turner's colour-dreams, in which "form" was
often to a great extent ignored, were not more tempting to the satirical
Philistine than those extraordinary quotations from his formless epic,
called "The Fallacies of Hope," extracts from which he loved to append
to his pictures' titles. Nothing could be better in the way of satire
than the manner in which _Punch_ turned upon the poor painter, and
"guy'd" his picture with a burlesque of his own poetic "style." It was
in the Royal Academy of 1845 that the artist exhibited his celebrated
"Venice--Returning from the Ball;" and this is how _Punch_ received
it:--

"Oh! what a scene!--Can this be Venice? No.
And yet methinks it is--because I see
Amid the lumps of yellow, red, and blue
Something which looks like a Venetian spire.

* * * * *

This in my picture I would fain convey;
I hope I do. Alas! _What_ FALLACY!"

Turner, unhappily, was acutely sensitive to these attacks; but _Punch_
cared little for that, and probably--to do him justice--knew still less.
It is, however, notable that--doubtless on account of that very
common-sense which has nearly always kept him right on great
questions--_Punch_ has usually in art been nearly as much a Philistine
as the public he represents. When Sir Edward Burne-Jones burst forth
into the artistic firmament, _Punch_ joined, if not the mockers, at
least the severer critics. "BURN JONES?" said he; "by all means do." Of
the exquisite "Mirror of Venus" and "The Beguiling of Merlin" he ignored
the poetry, and saw little but the quaintness, his criticism being the
more weighty for its being clever. Of the first-named picture he
observed:--

"Or crowding round one pool, from flowery shelves
A group of damsels bowed the knee
Over reflections solid as themselves
And like as peasen be."

While in the latter

"... mythic Uther's diddled _son_ was seen
Packed in a trunk with cramped limbs awry,
Spell-fettered by a Siren, limp and lean,
And at least twelve heads high."

No doubt, the grounds of _Punch's_ opposition were not only those which
are recognised as belonging to the humorist; they consisted not a little
in that healthy hatred of the affectation with which so much good art is
husked. In more recent times _Punch_ did not ignore the