Amongst the dead lions of the past, some of us have prematurely reckoned those of Peterborough Court. Matt. Arnold was supposed to have administered, if not the coup de grâce, at any rate a serious blow to their gambollings in Friendship's Garland.
It is therefore a matter for unfeigned rejoicing to find that they are not only alive but rampant, with all their old splendid command of polysyllabic periphrasis. One need only turn to the notice of "The John Exhibition" in last Thursday's Daily Telegraph, from which we select the following page:—
"It [the exhibition] is a display of purposeful portraiture that helps one to realise the effect which Theotokopoulos produced upon his watchful contemporaries, and to understand why the Cretan continued to walk alone on his way. If some insist on finding modern El Greco versions of Inspectors and Inquisitors-general in this John gathering, compounded of comparatively innocuous personalities, the privilege is, of course, permissible, and incidentally brightens conversation in irresponsible circles."
But a higher level of full-throated bravura is attained later on:—
"If reiteration may also be the mark of the best portraiture, pace Lord Fisher, commendation should be given to Mr. John for continuing to visualize the great seaman as Jupiter Tonans flashing in gold lace."
How delightful it is, after the arid methods of the modern critics, bred up on Benedetto Croce, to hear the old authentic leonine ecstasy of Sala, "monarch of the florid quill!" Mr. Punch, once hailed by the D.T. as "the Democritus of Fleet Street," on the strength of his "memorable monosyllabic monition," in turn salutes the immortal protagonist of the purple polysyllable.
WITCHCRAFT.
(A Mediæval Tragedy.)