As for his Sententiae, they differ very widely in character and subject.  Some of them are ethical, such as ‘Humility may be carried too far’; some literary, as ‘For one Froude there are a thousand Mrs. Markhams’; and some scientific, as ’Objects which are near display more detail than those which are further off.’  Some, again, breathe a fine spirit of optimism, as ‘Picturesqueness is the birthright of the bargee’; others are jubilant, as ‘Paint firm and be jolly’; and many are purely autobiographical, such as No. 97, ’Few of us understand what it is that we mean by Art.’  Nor is Mr. Quilter’s manner less interesting than his matter.  He tells us that at this festive season of the year, with Christmas and roast beef looming before us, ’Similes drawn from eating and its results occur most readily to the mind.’  So he announces that ‘Subject is the diet of painting,’ that ’Perspective is the bread of art,’ and that ‘Beauty is in some way like jam’; drawings, he points out, ‘are not made by recipe like puddings,’ nor is art composed of ’suet, raisins, and candied peel,’ though Mr. Cecil Lawson’s landscapes do ‘smack of indigestion.’  Occasionally, it is true, he makes daring excursions into other realms of fancy, as when he says that ’in the best Reynolds landscapes, one seems to smell the sawdust,’ or that ’advance in art is of a kangaroo character’; but, on the whole, he is happiest in his eating similes, and the secret of his style is evidently ’La metaphore vient en mangeant.’

About artists and their work Mr. Quilter has, of course, a great deal to say.  Sculpture he regards as ‘Painting’s poor relation’; so, with the exception of a jaunty allusion to the ‘rough modelling’ of Tanagra figurines he hardly refers at all to the plastic arts; but on painters he writes with much vigour and joviality.  Holbein’s wonderful Court portraits naturally do not give him much pleasure; in fact, he compares them as works of art to the sham series of Scottish kings at Holyrood; but Dore, he tells us, had a wider imaginative range in all subjects where the gloomy and the terrible played leading parts than probably any artist who ever lived, and may be called ‘the Carlyle of artists.’  In Gainsborough he sees ‘a plainness almost amounting to brutality,’ while ‘vulgarity and snobbishness’ are the chief qualities he finds in Sir Joshua Reynolds.  He has grave doubts whether Sir Frederick Leighton’s work is really ‘Greek, after all,’ and can discover in it but little of ‘rocky Ithaca.’  Mr. Poynter, however, is a cart-horse compared to the President, and Frederick Walker was ‘a dull Greek’ because he had no ‘sympathy with poetry.’  Linnell’s pictures, are ’a sort of “Up, Guards, and at ’em” paintings,’ and Mason’s exquisite idylls are ’as national as a Jingo poem’!  Mr. Birket Foster’s landscapes ’smile at one much in the same way that Mr. Carker used to “flash his teeth,"’ and Mr. John Collier gives his sitter ’a cheerful slap on the back,