The following is the letter from Mr. Whistler's publishers:—
Dear Sir—In reply to your question we have to say that we certainly have not sent out any copy of the "Ten o'Clock" to the press, or to anybody else excepting yourself. The work is still in the printers' hands, and we have for a long time past been advertising it only as "shortly" to be published; indeed, only a few proofs have so far been taken from the type.
Yours faithfully,
CHATTO And WINDUS.
An Apostasy
To speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth may Mr. Whistler's Lecture on Art, by Algernon Charles Swinburne.
Fortnightly Review, June 1888. justly be required of the average witness; it cannot be expected, it should not be exacted, of any critical writer or lecturer on any form of art....
... And it appears to one at least of those unfortunate "outsiders" for whose judgment or whose "meddling" Mr. Whistler has so imperial and Olympian a contempt....
Let us begin at the end, as all reasonable people always do: we shall find that Mr. Whistler concedes to Greek art a place beside Japanese. Now this, on his own showing, will never do; it crosses, it contravenes, it nullifies, it pulverizes his theory or his principle REFLECTION:
"If" indeed!
