pain. Sometimes he would etch in thin vermilion lines upon a
ground of white the languid bridegroom and his bride, with Eros
hovering round them--an Eros like one of Donatello's angels, a
little laughing thing with gilded or with azure wings. On the
curved side he would write the name of his friend. [Greek text
which cannot be reproduced] or [Greek text which cannot be
reproduced] tells us the story of his days. Again, on the rim of
the wide flat cup he would draw the stag browsing, or the lion at
rest, as his fancy willed it. From the tiny perfume-bottle laughed
Aphrodite at her toilet, and, with bare-limbed Maenads in his
train, Dionysus danced round the wine-jar on naked must-stained
feet, while, satyr-like, the old Silenus sprawled upon the bloated
skins, or shook that magic spear which was tipped with a fretted
fir-cone, and wreathed with dark ivy. And no one came to trouble
the artist at his work. No irresponsible chatter disturbed him.
He was not worried by opinions. By the Ilyssus, says Arnold
somewhere, there was no Higginbotham. By the Ilyssus, my dear
Gilbert, there were no silly art congresses bringing provincialism
to the provinces and teaching the mediocrity how to mouth. By the
Ilyssus there were no tedious magazines about art, in which the
industrious prattle of what they do not understand. On the reed-
grown banks of that little stream strutted no ridiculous journalism
monopolising the seat of judgment when it should be apologising in
the dock. The Greeks had no art-critics.

GILBERT. Ernest, you are quite delightful, but your views are
terribly unsound. I am afraid that you have been listening to the
conversation of some one older than yourself. That is always a
dangerous thing to do, and if you allow it to degenerate into a
habit you will find it absolutely fatal to any intellectual