Yet in the next two years Millais is criticized for sacrificing character to "prettiness" and desecrating his talent by placing it at the disposal of the advertiser. Watts's enigmatic "Hope" was "guyed" in 1887 under the title "Cutting off her head with a saw." The multifarious activities of Herkomer--painter, etcher, director of a school of art at Bushey, designer of posters, operatic composer, etc.--did not escape _Punch's_ amused notice. _Punch_ himself, as might readily be expected, did not enjoy an immunity from art criticism. In 1883 he had congratulated Ruskin on his second election to the Slade Professorship at Oxford; at the end of the year Ruskin repaid the compliment, in his lectures on the Art of England, by a long detailed and in the main highly eulogistic survey of _Punch's_ artistic work. But the panegyric was tempered by certain reserves:-- Says Mr. Ruskin, having before him in review one or two selected specimens of _Mr. Punch's_ cartoons:-- "Look, too, at this characteristic type of British heroism--'John Bull guards his pudding.' Is this the final outcome of King Arthur and Saint George, of Britannia and the British Lion? And is it your pride or hope or pleasure that in this sacred island that has given her lion hearts to Eastern tombs and her Pilgrim Fathers to Western lands, that has wrapped the sea round her as a mantle, and breathed against her strong bosom the air of every wind, the children born to her in these latter days should have no loftier legend to write upon their shields than 'John Bull guards his Pudding'?" And then Mr. Ruskin, as if conscious that the very onward sweep of his own free fancy has carried him beyond the limits of fair and reasonable estimate, as it were, harks somewhat back again, and offering _Mr. Punch_ something in the nature of an apology, acquits him of all true responsibility for this same terrible and offending "pudding":-- "It is our fault" (proceeds Mr. Ruskin) "and not the Artist's; and I have often wondered what Mr. Tenniel might have done for us if London had been as Venice, or Florence, or Siena. In my first course of Lectures I called your attention to the Picture of the Doge Mocenigo kneeling in prayer; and it is our fault more than Mr. Tenniel's if he is forced to represent the heads of the Government dining at Greenwich rather than worshipping at St. Paul's." [Sidenote: _Punch's Virtues as an Art Critic_]