PREFACE

It is now just twenty years since I wrote the first number of these Notes, and fifteen since they were discontinued. I have no intention of renewing the series, unless occasionally, should accident detain me in London during the spring. But this year, for many reasons, it seemed to me imperatively proper to say as much as is here said.

And that the temper of the saying may not, so far as I can prevent it, be mistaken, I will venture to ask my reader to hear, and trust that he will believe, thus much concerning myself. Among various minor, but collectively sufficient, reasons for the cessation of these Notes, one of the chief was the exclamation of a young artist, moving in good society,—authentically, I doubt not, reported to me, —“D—— the fellow! why doesn't he back his friends?” The general want in the English mind of any abstract conception of justice, and the substitution for it of the idea of fidelity to a party, as the first virtue of public action, had never struck me so vividly before; and thenceforward it seemed to me useless, so far as artists were concerned, to continue criticism which they would esteem dishonourable unless it was false.