various opinions expressed by the great Five-o'clock-tea School of
Criticism which was largely represented. For our own part, we found Mr.
Image's lecture extremely suggestive. It was sometimes difficult to
understand in what exact sense he was using the word 'literary,' and we
do not think that a course of drawing from the plaster cast of the Dying
Gaul would in the slightest degree improve the ordinary art critic. The
true unity of the arts is to be found, not in any resemblance of one art
to another, but in the fact that to the really artistic nature all the
arts have the same message and speak the same language though with
different tongues. No amount of daubing on a cellar wall will make a man
understand the mystery of Michael Angelo's Sybils, nor is it necessary to
write a blank verse drama before one can appreciate the beauty of Hamlet.
It is essential that an art critic should have a nature receptive of
beautiful impressions, and sufficient intuition to recognise style when
he meets with it, and truth when it is shown to him; but, if he does not
possess these qualities, a reckless career of water-colour painting will
not give them to him, for, if from the incompetent critic all things be
hidden, to the bad painter nothing shall be revealed.




ART AT WILLIS'S ROOMS


(Sunday Times, December 25, 1887.)

Accepting a suggestion made by a friendly critic last week, Mr. Selwyn
Image began his second lecture by explaining more fully what he meant by
literary art, and pointed out the difference between an ordinary