"We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes; we stumble at noonday as in the night."
"We roar all like bears."
Taking the Bait
By the simple process of applying snippets of published sentences to works of art to which the original comments The Academy, Feb. 24, 1883. were never meant to have reference, and sometimes, too, by lively misquotation—as when a writer who "did not wish to understate" Mr. Whistler's merit is made to say he "did not wish to understand" it, Mr. Whistler has counted on good-humouredly confounding criticism. He has entertained but not persuaded; and if his literary efforts with the scissors and the paste-pot might be taken with any seriousness we should have to rebuke him for his feat. But we are far from doing so. He desired, it seems, to say that he and Velasquez were both above criticism. An artist in literature would have said it in fewer words; but indulgence may fairly be granted to the less assured methods of an amateur in authorship.
F. WEDMORE.
An Apology
Atlas—There are those, they tell me, who have the approval of the people—and live! For them the succès d'estime; for me, O Atlas, the succès d'exécration—the only tribute possible from the Mob to the Master! The World, Feb. 28, 1883. This I have now nobly achieved. Glissons! In the hour of my triumph let me not neglect my ambulance.
Mr. Frederick Wedmore—a critic—one of the wounded—complains that by dexterously substituting "understand" for "understate," I have dealt unfairly by him, and wrongly rendered his writing. Let me hasten to acknowledge the error, and apologise. My carelessness is culpable, and the misprint without excuse; for naturally I have all along known, and the typographer should have been duly warned, that with Mr. Wedmore, as with his brethren, it is always a matter of understating, and not at all one of understanding.
Quant aux autres—well, with the exception of "'Arry," who really is dead, they will recover. Scalped and disfigured, they are not mortally hurt; and—would you believe it?—possessed with an infinite capacity for continuing, they have already returned, nothing doubting, to their limited literature, of which I have exhausted the stock.—Yours, en passant,