For, all these are intimately
known to the London Correspondent of the Tattlesnivel Bleater, and
all these deceive him.
Sir, put it to the proof. There is the Bleater on the file--
documentary evidence. Weeks, months, before the Exhibition of the
Royal Academy, the Bleater's London Correspondent knows the subjects
of all the leading pictures, knows what the painters first meant to
do, knows what they afterwards substituted for what they first meant
to do, knows what they ought to do and won't do, knows what they
ought not to do and will do, knows to a letter from whom they have
commissions, knows to a shilling how much they are to be paid. Now,
no sooner is each studio clear of the remarkable man to whom each
studio-occupant has revealed himself as he does not reveal himself
to his nearest and dearest bosom friend, than conspiracy and fraud
begin. Alfred the Great becomes the Fairy Queen; Moses viewing the
Promised Land, turns out to be Moses going to the Fair; Portrait of
His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, is transformed, as if by
irreverent enchantment of the dissenting interest, into A Favourite
Terrier, or Cattle Grazing; and the most extraordinary work of art
in the list described by the Bleater, is coolly sponged out
altogether, and asserted never to have had existence at all, even in
the most shadow thoughts of its executant! This is vile enough, but
this is not all.
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