a brotherhood. And thus grow up cliques and coteries, of people
who, by mutual admiration, try to console one another for the
absence of the applause which the world will not concede them, and
to atone for the coldness of the public by a warmth of intimate
proximity.

This does not in the least apply to groups of people who are
genuinely and keenly interested in art of any kind, and form a
congenial circle in which they discuss, frankly and
enthusiastically, methods of work, the books, ideas, pictures, and
music which interest them. That is quite a different thing, a real
fortress of enthusiasm in the midst of Meshech and Kedar. What
makes it base and morbid is the desire to exclude for the sake of
exclusion; to indulge in solitary raptures, hoping to be overheard;
to keep the tail of the eye upon the public; to attempt to mystify;
and to trade upon the inquisitive instinct of human beings, the
natural desire, that is, to know what is going on within any group
that seems to have exciting business of its own.

The Pre-Raphaelites, for instance, were a group and not a coterie.
They were engaged in working and enjoying, in looking out for
artistic promise, in welcoming and praising any performance of a
kind that Rossetti recognised as "stunning." They were sure of
their ground. The brotherhood, with its magazine, The Germ, and its
mystic initials, was all a gigantic game; and they held together
because they were revolutionary in this, that they wished to slay,
as one stabs a tyrant, the vulgarised and sentimental art of the
day. They did not effect anything like a revolution, of course. It
was but a ripple on the flowing stream, and they diverged soon
enough, most of them, into definite tracks of their own. The