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In the sunset of his life a man often finds himself unable to put dateseven upon events in which his sympathies were, and perhaps are still,engaged; all things seem to have befallen yesterday, and yet it cannot beless than three years since we were anxious to testify to our belief in thekindness and justice with which you had fulfilled your double duties in theMorning Post towards us and the proprietors of the paper.
A committee sprang up quickly, and a letter was addressed by it to all thenotable workers in the arts and to all those who were known to beinterested in the arts, and very soon a considerable sum of money wascollected; but when the committee met to decide what form the commemorativegift should take, a perplexity arose, many being inclined towards a pieceof plate. It was pointed out that a piece of plate worth eight hundredpounds would prove a cumbersome piece of furniture—a white elephant, infact—in the small house or apartment or flat in which a critic usuallylives. The truth of this could not be gainsaid. Other suggestions wereforthcoming for your benefit, every one obtaining a certain amount ofsupport, but none commanding a majority of votes; and the perplexitycontinued till it was mooted that the disposal of the money should be leftto your option, and in view of the fact that you had filled the post of artcritic for many years, you decided to found a Slade scholarship. It seemedto you well that a young man on leaving the Slade School should be providedwith a sum of money sufficient to furnish a studio, and some seven or eighthundred pounds were invested, the remainder being spent on a trinket foryour personal wear—a watch. I have not forgotten that I was one of thedissidents, scholarships not appealing to me, but lately I have begun tosee that you were wise in the disposal of the money. A watch was enough forremembrance, and since I caught sight of it just now, the pleasant thoughtsit has evoked console me for your departure: after bidding you good-bye onthe doorstep, I return to my fireside to chew the cud once again of thetemperate and tolerant articles that I used to read years ago in theMorning Post.
You see, Ross, I was critic myself for some years on the Speaker,but my articles were often bitter and explosive; I was prone to polemicsand lacked the finer sense that enabled you to pass over works with whichyou were not in sympathy, and without wounding the painter. My intentionwas often to wound him in the absurd hope that I might compel him to dobetter. My motto seems to have been 'Compel them to come in'—words used byJesus in one of his parables, and relied on by ecclesiastics as ajustification of persecution, and by many amongst us whose names I will notpillory here, for I have chosen that these pages shall be about you andnothing but you. If I speak of myself in a forgotten crusade, it is toplace you in your true light. We recognized your critical insight and yourliterary skill, but it was not for these qualities that we, the criticized,decided to present you, the critic, with a token of our gratitude; nor wasit because you had praised our works (a great number of the subscribers hadnot received praise from you): we were moved altogether, I think, by theconsciousness that you had in a difficult task proved yourself to be akindly critic, and yet a just one, and it was for these qualit