'; others
are jubilant, as 'Paint firm and be jolly'; and many are purely
autobiographical, such as No. 97, 'Few of us understand what it is that
we mean by Art.' Nor is Mr. Quilter's manner less interesting than his
matter. He tells us that at this festive season of the year, with
Christmas and roast beef looming before us, 'Similes drawn from eating
and its results occur most readily to the mind.' So he announces that
'Subject is the diet of painting,' that 'Perspective is the bread of
art,' and that 'Beauty is in some way like jam'; drawings, he points out,
'are not made by recipe like puddings,' nor is art composed of 'suet,
raisins, and candied peel,' though Mr. Cecil Lawson's landscapes do
'smack of indigestion.' Occasionally, it is true, he makes daring
excursions into other realms of fancy, as when he says that 'in the best
Reynolds landscapes, one seems _to smell the sawdust_,' or that 'advance
in art is of a _kangaroo_ character'; but, on the whole, he is happiest
in his eating similes, and the secret of his style is evidently 'La
metaphore vient en mangeant.'

About artists and their work Mr. Quilter has, of course, a great deal to
say. Sculpture he regards as 'Painting's poor relation'; so, with the
exception of a jaunty allusion to the 'rough modelling' of Tanagra
figurines he hardly refers at all to the plastic arts; but on painters he
writes with much vigour and joviality. Holbein's wonderful Court
portraits naturally do not give him much pleasure; in fact, he compares
them as works of art to the sham series of Scottish kings at Holyrood;
but Dore, he tells us, had a wider imaginative range in all subjects
where the gloomy and the terrible played leading parts than probably any
artist who ever lived, and may be called 'the Carlyle of artists.' In
Gainsborough he sees 'a plainness almost amounting to brutality,' while
'vulgarity and snobbishness' are the chief qualities he finds in Sir
Joshua Reynolds. He has grave doubts whether Sir Frederick Leighton's
work is really 'Greek, after all,' and can discover in it but little of
'rocky Ithaca.' Mr. Poynter, however, is a cart-horse compared to the
President, and Frederick Walker was 'a dull Greek' because he had no
'sympathy with poetry.' Linnell's pictures, are 'a sort of "Up, Guards,
and at 'em" paintings,' and Mason's exquisite idylls are 'as national as
a Jingo poem'! Mr. Birket Foster's landscapes 'smile at one much in the
same way that Mr. Car