Rossetti used to say that since Blake there has been no more visionary painter in the art world than Smetham. Rossetti had a quite affectionate feeling towards Smetham, and several of his pictures (small ones) were on Rossetti's studio walls. I remember one or two extraordinary pictures of his--especially one depicting a dragon in a fen, of which Rossetti had a great opinion; and I believe this, with other pictures of Smetham's, is in the hands of Mr. Watts-Dunton. The author of _Aylwin_ would have been much amused had he seen, as I did, in an American magazine the statement that 'Wilderspin' was identified with William Morris--a man who was as much the opposite of the visionary painter as a man can be. Morris, whom I had the privilege of knowing very well, and with whom I have stayed at Kelmscott during the Rossetti period, is alluded to in _Aylwin_ (chap. ix. book xv.) as the 'enthusiastic angler' who used to go down to 'Hurstcote' to fish. At that time this fine old seventeenth-century manor house was in the joint occupancy of Rossetti and Morris. 'Wilderspin' was Smetham with a variation: certain characteristics of another painter of genius were introduced, I believe, into the portrait of him in _Aylwin_; and the story of 'Wilderspin's' early life was not that of Smetham. The series of 'large attics in which was a number of enormous oak beams' supporting the antique roof was a favourite resort of my own; but all the ghostly noise that I there heard was the snoring of young owls--a peculiar sound that had a special fascination for Rossetti; and after dinner Rossetti, my brother, and I would go to the attics to listen to them. But a more singular mistake with regard to the _Aylwin_ characters than that of Morris being confounded with 'Wilderspin' was that of confounding, as certain newspaper paragraphs at the time did, 'Cyril Aylwin' with Mr. Whistler. I am especially able to speak of this character, who has been inquired about more than any other in the book. I knew him, I think, even before I knew Rossetti and Morris, or any of that group. He was a brother of Mr. Watts-Dunton's--Mr. Alfred Eugene Watts. He lived at Park House, Sydenham, and died suddenly either in 1870 or 1871, very shortly after I had met him at a wedding party. Among the set in which I moved at that time he had a great reputation as a wit and humorist. His style of humour always struck me as being more American than English. While bringing out humorous things that would set a dinner-table in a roar, he would himself maintain a perfectly unmoved countenance. And it was said of him, as 'Wilderspin' says of 'Cyril Aylwin,' that he was never known to laugh. The pen-picture of him in _Aylwin_ is one of the most vivid things in the book.