602 Hon. Maurice Baring [June 2, 



Or again : — 



"But when the breezes blow, 

 I generally go below, 



And seek the seclusion that a cabin grants, 

 And so do his sisters and his cousins and his aunts." 



We find the same pat neatness in his prose. Take Ko-Ko'& 

 explanation to the Mikado : — 



"When your Majesty says 'let a thing be done,' it's as good a& 

 done — practically it is done — because your Majesty's will is law. 

 Your Majesty says, ' Kill a gentleman ! ' and a gentleman is told off 

 to be killed. Consequently that gentleman is as good as dead — 

 practically, he is dead — and if he is dead, why not say so ? " 



Another remarkable fact about Gilbert's satire is this : Just those 

 subjects which, when he treated them, were thought to be the most 

 local and ephemeral, have turned out, as treated by him, to be the 

 most perennial and enduring. Take Patience, for instance. Patience 

 was a satire on the aesthetic craze of the 'eighties. It was produced 

 in 1881. It was aimed at the follies and exaggerations of the 

 aesthetic school — the greenery-yallery, Grosvenor-gallery, foot-in-the 

 grave, hollow-cheeked, long-necked and long-haired brood of de- 

 votees of blue china and peacocks' feathers and sunflowers, who 

 were the imitators, the hangers-on and the parasites of a group 

 of real artists and innovators, such as Whistler, Burne-Jones and 

 Rossetti. 



Punch started the campaign of ridicule, and Du Maimer's pictures 

 of the adventures of Maudle and Postlethwaite towards the end of 

 the 'seventies, are amongst the most entertaining and delightful of 

 his drawings. Patience is said to have killed the phase ; but outside 

 the pages of Punch it is doubtful if aesthetes were really very plentiful, 

 and Patience was based on the legend of a few, of a very few, people. 

 But in writing this satire, Gilbert, if he magnified the follies of his 

 contemporaries, hit the bull's-eye of a wider target. He struck the 

 heart of artistic sham, so that his satire is appropriate to any time 

 and any place. 



Wherever there is real art there is always exaggerated imitation, 

 and wherever there is real admiration there is false admiration, too. 

 In Bunthorne and Grosvenor, Gilbert drew two types which sum up 

 between them the whole gamut of artistic pretension and humbug. 

 In every false world of art there is always a Bunthorne who has 

 discovered that all is commonplace, and the burden of whose song is 

 " Hollow, hollow, hollow." There is always, too, a Grosvenor, the 

 apostle of simplicity, who is ready to write " a decalet, a pure and 

 simple thing, a very daisy — a babe might understand it. To 

 appreciate it, it is not necessary to think of anything at all." There 

 is always a rapturous maiden ready to say "not supremely, perhaps, 

 but oh so all but." 



