If the work be foolish, it surely is not less foolish because an honest and misspent lifetime has been passed in producing it.
What matters it that the offending worker has grown old among us, and has endeared himself to many by his caprices as ratepayer and neighbour?
Personally, he may have claims upon his surroundings; but, as the painter of poor pictures, he is damned for ever.
You see, my Henry, that it is not sufficient to be, as you are in wit and wisdom, among us, amazing and astute; a very Daniel in your judgment of many vexed questions; of a frankness and loyalty withal in your crusade against abuses, that makes of the keen litigator a most dangerous Quixote.
This peculiar temperament gives you that superb sense of right, outside the realms of art, that amounts to genius, and carries with it continued success and triumph in the warfare you wage.
But here it helps you not. And so you find yourself, for instance, pleasantly prattling in print of "English Art."
Learn, then, O! Henry, that there is no such thing as English Art. You might as well talk of English Mathematics. Art is Art, and Mathematics is Mathematics.
What you call English Art, is not Art at all, but produce, of which there is, and always has been, and always will be, a plenty, whether the men producing it are dead and called ——, or (I refer you to your own selection, far be it from me to choose)—or alive and called ——, whosoever you like as you turn over the Academy catalogue.
The great truth, you have to understand, is that it matters not at all whom you prefer in this long list. They all belong to the excellent army of mediocrity; the differences between them being infinitely small—merely microscopic—as compared to the vast distance between any one of them and the Great.
They are the commercial travellers of Art, whose works are their wares, and whose exchange is the Academy.