SAMUEL PALMER'S " ECLOGUES OF 'VIRGIL." [To THE EDITOR OF
THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—After Mr. Hamerton's letter in your impression of last week, further comment from me may seem superfluous ; but
although so ably defended, I must ask your permission to say a parting word. "Critics," says your reviewer, "are scarcely to be blamed too severely for accepting as matters of fact the state- ments of the author of the work which they are criticising." I must frankly express my regret for the oversight to which he is alluding, but that is scarcely the point at issue. Should not one who is appointed to instruct " the public who are unlearned in art matters," in writing of an illustration referred to by the author in two conflicting statements, be learned enough to judge for himself which of them is right ? Warned by the incon- sistency, should he not be able to avoid so great a blunder as the confounding a photogravure fac-simile of a pen-and-ink drawing with an etching P The charge of failing power has been answered. For my part, I will bow to the judgment which includes among the plates contemptuously dismissed as being "of no value as works of art" a finished etching by Samuel Palmer; but touching the second illustration of the first eclogue, your reviewer must pardon me if I repeat what I have already said. Having too readily accepted a misstatement about one plate, he is cautious in taking my word for the fact that I worked for three weeks upon another. But can a person whose knowledge of the sub- ject is so limited that he is unable to distinguish between an etching and a photogravure, be quite competent to give an ea: cathedra opinion upon the extent to which a photogravure has been retouched ? Because he fails to discover in the plate " any trace of an etching-needle," your reviewer asks if I am " con- fusing" it with the next. Can it be possible that he is ignorant of facts upon which a copper-plate printer's apprentice could enlighten him,—ignorant that besides the needle, en- gravers use the burin, the scraper, and the burnisher P My reply to the amusing but rather querulous inquiry,why,
if I did work upon that plate for three weeks, I did not say so, is,—why should I P No doubt, it would be kinder to some critics not only to label each illustration as your reviewer recom- mends, but to append a register of the time it took, for it might. save them from the horns of some very unpleasant dilemma.
The issue of the matter seems to me to have as much to dos with the critic as the criticised. Authors and editors would be weak, indeed, who either asked or expected mercy, but they have a right to justice. Shall the award of praise and blame,. the duty of instructing the unlearned in Art matters, of en- couraging genuine work, and condemning empiricism, be- entrusted to judges incompetent to sitt the evidence on either side, and ignorant of the technicalities involved P Is it just for a critic to pronounce an unfavourable verdict on the result of labour the difficulty of which he has no means of guessing, nay, abnost to impute dishonesty to the publishers, on the strength. of an inspection admittedly superficial, and certainly unskilled? —I am, Sir, &c.,
Farnborough, Kent, January 1st. A. H. PALMER.
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