At the time I was not able to judge fairly of the causes which led to his ultimate desertion of those earlier ideals, and I could only remember with a regret, too harshly expressed, that we were no longer to expect of him another “Huguenot” or “Ophelia,” or to welcome again from his hand such achievements as the “Carpenter’s Shop” or the “Feast of Lorenzo.”
But a knowledge of the man himself very speedily enabled me to take a juster view of his place as a painter. There are artists in every line, in literature as well as in painting, whose personality does not willingly associate itself with their work. This was certainly true of Browning, who would seem in social intercourse to be almost perversely desirous of enabling you to forget that he was a poet, and it was true no less of Millais, who rather sought by preference in his leisure hours the companionship of men who were not concerned with the art he professed.
Millais had about him, as I first recall him, and retained to the end of his life, even in the days that
THE FINDING OF MOSES BY PHARAOH’S DAUGHTER.
From Lays of the Holy Land.
By Sir J. E. Millais, Bart., P.R.A.
Engraved by the Brothers Dalziel.
(Reproduced from their Fifty Years’ Work.)
By permission of
Messrs. James Nisbet and Co., Ltd.