A Grosvenor without him so strange is,
We miss the long chins and knock-knees,
The angel of bronze, who for change is
Tied up to the stiffest of trees:
Limp lads with their belli capelli,
Mad maidens with love smitten sore,
Oh, shade of defunct Botticelli,
Burne-Jones comes to startle no more!
I deal in another section with the fashionable cult of æstheticism, which was now at its zenith. In estimating its artistic importance, Punch erred in his refusal to discriminate between eccentricity and independence. He continued to "belabour B.-J.," and brackets him with Whistler in the ribald suggestion that they were jointly responsible for the pictures exhibited by the "Screevers" or pavement artists. Millais is congratulated on breaking away from Pre-Raphaelitism, and invidious comparisons are drawn in 1886 between his pictures and those of Holman Hunt:—
There couldn't be a better foil to the manliness of the Millais Show at the Grosvenor than the pseudo-mediæval-O-quite-too-beautiful-namby-pamby-gilt-edged-and-gothic-clasped-Church-service style of the effeminate religious Art of Mr. Holman Hunt. Millais tried it, and, after a struggle, snapped the Pre-Raphaelite fetters, and escaped.