PREFACE
Ten years and more have passed since Leighton died, yet it is still difficult to get sufficiently far away, to take in the whole of his life and being in their just proportion to the world in which he lived.
When we are in Rome, hemmed in by narrow streets, St. Peter's is invisible; once across that wonderful Campagna and mounting the slopes of Frascati, there, like a huge pearl gleaming in the light, rises the dome of the Mother Church. As distance gives the true relation between a lofty building and its suburbs, so time alone can decide the height of the pedestal on which to place the great.
The day after Leighton's death Watts wrote to me:—
"...The loss to the world is so great that I almost feel ashamed to let my personal grief have so large a place.
"I am glad you knew him so well. I am glad for any one who knew him. No one will ever know such another, alas! alas! alas!
"I am glad you have enjoyed the friendship of one of the greatest men of any time."
This is the estimate of a great artist who knew Leighton for forty years, and for many of those years enjoyed daily intercourse with him.
A few like Watts required no length of time before forming a right estimate of Leighton. They not only knew him to be great, but knew why he was great. Undoubtedly as a draughtsman Leighton was unrivalled; but bearing in mind his English contemporaries—Watts, Millais, Holman Hunt, Rossetti, and Burne-Jones—it is not as a painter that even his truest friends would claim for him his right to the exceptional position he undoubtedly occupied.