Connoisseur in several arts, he had designed a little church in
the manner of Inigo Jones for a burial ground near the Marble
Arch. Though I now think his little church a masterpiece, its
style was more than a century too late to hit my fancy at two or
three and twenty; and I accused him of leaning towards that
eighteenth century
That taught a school
Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and clip, and fit
Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit,
Their verses tallied.
Another fanaticism delayed my friendship with two men, who are now
my friends and in certain matters my chief instructors. Somebody,
probably Lionel Johnson, brought me to the studio of Charles
Ricketts and Charles Shannon, certainly heirs of the great
generation, and the first thing I saw was a Shannon picture of a
lady and child arrayed in lace, silk and satin, suggesting that
hated century. My eyes were full of some more mythological mother
and child and I would have none of it, and I told Shannon that he
had not painted a mother and child but elegant people expecting
visitors and I thought that a great reproach.
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