e
spirits of the dead appeared to him, and that he took their portraits.

"_C'etait donc un fou_," remarked the Frenchman.

"_Non_, Monsieur," I replied, "he was not a madman. He was almost a
genius. Indeed, _c'etait un Dore manque_" (he was all but a Dore).

There was a roar of laughter from all around, and I, innocently supposing
that I had said something clever unawares, laughed too.

After all had departed, and I was smoking alone with Sir Charles, he
said--

"Well, what did you think of Dore?"

"Dore!" I replied astonished, "why, I never saw Dore in all my life."

"That was Dore to whom you were talking," he answered.

"Ah! well," was my answer, "then it is all right."

I suppose that Dore believed that I knew at the time who he was. Had he
been aware that I did not know who he was, the compliment would have
seemed much stronger.

I have either been introduced to, conversed with, or been well acquainted
at one time or another with Sir John Millais, Holman Hunt, the Rossettis,
Frith, Whistler, Poynter, Du Maurier, Charles Keene, Boughton, Hodges,
Tenniel (who set my motive of "Ping-Wing," as I may say, to music in a
cartoon in _Punch_), the Hon. John Collier, Riviere, Walter Crane, and of
course many more--or less--here and there in the club, or at receptions.
Could I have then foreseen or imagined that I should ever become--albeit
in a very humble grade--an artist myself, and that my works on design and
the minor arts would form the principal portion of my writings and of my
life's work, I should assuredly have made a greater specialty of such
society. But at this time I could hardly draw, save in very humble
fashion indeed, and little dreamed that I should execute for expensive
works illustrations which would be praised by my critics, as strangely
happened to my "Gypsy Sorcery." But we never know what may befall us.

"Oh, little did my mother think,
The day she cradled me,
The lands that I should travel in,
Or the sights that I should see;
Or gae rovin' about wi' gypsy carles,
And sic like companie."

As the _Noctes_ varies it. For it actually came to pass that a very well-
known man of letters, while he, with the refined politeness
characteristic of his style, spoke of mine as "rigmarole," still praised
my pictures.

In April we went to Leamington to pay a visit to a Mr. Field, where we
also met his brother, my old friend Leonard Field, whom I had known in
Paris