26 THE GENTLE ART OF BLAZON 



craft whereof he has not mastered the rudiments. 

 Heraldically, he does not know his right hand from his 

 left, and has perpetrated an affront upon the figure of 

 highest dignity in the art of blazon. 



Now, why all this fuss, asks the reader, about a 

 picture by an unknown artist ? Why can't you look 

 at the pretty young lady and leave out the heraldry ? 

 This invites the retort, why could not the painter leave 

 it out ? We suffer fools gladly, so long as they have 

 the tact not to thrust their folly under our noses. 

 Painting, it is true, has this advantage over the sister 

 art of Music, that nobody need look at a picture unless 

 he choose, while the sensitive ear is always liable to 

 outrage from discord or iteration. All the same, 

 pictures invite inspection : they are only painted to be 

 looked at ; and offence by the painter who represents 

 things falsely who attempts to depict what he has 

 never studied is as direct to the eye and intelligence 

 as that offered to the ear and temper by the pianist 

 who fills the house (and perhaps the next house) with 

 excruciating renderings of compositions beyond his 

 power. Nobody blames him who gives way to strong 

 language under the affliction of a mangled sonata: may 

 not a murmur be allowed to one who witnesses the 

 desecration of the chivalrous science ? 



Oh, I know how I shall be set down. ' Art for art ! ' 

 cries the painter ; ' criticism of your kind is puerile. 

 False heraldry well painted is finer art than the most 

 accurate heraldry in a bad picture. Let the critic mell 

 only with conception and execution.' Very well ; so be 

 it. Set the marriage feast at Cana in Galilee with wine 



