and, is rather tedious. The last President
never said much that was true, but the present President never says
anything that is new; and, if art be a fairy-haunted wood or an enchanted
island, we must say that we prefer the old Puck to the fresh Prospero.
Water is an admirable thing--at least, the Greeks said it was--and Mr.
Ruskin is an admirable writer; but a combination of both is a little
depressing.

Still, it is only right to add that Mr. Wyke Bayliss, at his best, writes
very good English. Mr. Whistler, for some reason or other, always
adopted the phraseology of the minor prophets. Possibly it was in order
to emphasise his well-known claims to verbal inspiration, or perhaps he
thought with Voltaire that Habakkuk etait capable de tout, and wished to
shelter himself under the shield of a definitely irresponsible writer
none of whose prophecies, according to the French philosopher, has ever
been fulfilled. The idea was clever enough at the beginning, but
ultimately the manner became monotonous. The spirit of the Hebrews is
excellent but their mode of writing is not to be imitated, and no amount
of American jokes will give it that modernity which is essential to a
good literary style. Admirable as are Mr. Whistler's fireworks on
canvas, his fireworks in prose are abrupt, violent and exaggerated.
However, oracles, since the days of the Pythia, have never been
remarkable for style, and the modest Mr. Wyke Bayliss is as much Mr.
Whistler's superior as a writer as he is his inferior as a painter and an
artist. Indeed, some of the passages in this book are so charmingly
written and with such felicity of phrase that we cannot help feeling that
the President of the British Artists, like a still more famous President
of our day, can express himself far better through the medium of
literature than he can through the medium of line and colour. This,
however, applies only to Mr. Wyke Bayliss's prose. His poetry is very
bad, and the sonnets at the end of the book are almost as mediocre as the
drawings that accompany them. As we read them we cannot but regret that,
in this point at any rate, Mr. Bayliss has not imitated the wise example
of his predecessor who, with all his faults, was never guilty of writing
a line of poetry, and is, indeed, quite incapable of doing anything of
the kind.

As for the matter of Mr. Bayliss's discourses, his views on art must be
admitted to be very commonplace and old-fashioned. What is