GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 
entirely into the hands of a few, a very few, able men of strong 
predilections, and stronger prejudices. These men hold, and quite 
legitimately hold, their own views on the province and practice 
of the arts both of painting and sculpture, but unfortunately 
they are partisans rather than critics. Yet I believe that the 
clever, and very enthusiastic writers who sign their names to articles 
filled with laudatory passages on this or that leader of some very 
advanced clique, or who advocate the latest fad or craze brought 
over from abroad by speculative dealers, honestly feel the admira- 
tion they express for works which, in spite of their supporters’ 
ubiquitous efforts to convince—are not convincing, either to common 
sense, or to artistic intelligence. 
And remember, no man can be a fair judge of art; fit, that is, 
to lead a pliant and uninstructed public—the public which, after 
all, supplies the artist with his bread and cheese—who is not sym- 
pathetic as well as critical—who is a special pleader; who is 
incapable of laying aside for the moment his own preferences, 
pet aversions, and pet theories—even his personal independent 
convictions, and of contemplating and judging a work of art from 
the standpoint of the artist himself. In doing so he may rest assured 
that the artist is more dissatisfied with it than ever he can be 
—though for different reasons—because it is no mere platitude to 
say that a true artist never attains to his ideal. 
‘* What is art ?”’ is a question never yet satisfactorily answered. 
And it is one that every fair-minded man whose business it is to 
translate the artist to the public, should ask of himself. For one 
thing it is a means to the expression of a man’s idiosyncrasy ; his 
mentality, his emotions, his attitude towards nature, and his 
outlook on life—and so varied is this idiosyncrasy, that within 
certain felt limits—beyond which no man may go and call himself 
artist, men “‘ gang their ain gait,’ and no man should say them 
‘nay.’ The Royal Academy itself has had room at one and the 
same time for a Tadema and a Brangwin, and outside it might 
recently be found, almost contemporaneously, men of such diverse 
aims and practice, as Holman-Hunt and Augustus John, Whistler 
and Burne-Jones—yet each has his place in the firmament of 
art, although of some of them it may be said that whether they 
are fixed stars, or passing vaporous meteors, the world is not yet 
old enough to know. 
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