Transcriber’s Note: Italics are enclosed in _underscores_, boldface in =equals signs=. Additional notes will be found near the end of this ebook. ON BOOKS AND ARTS ON BOOKS AND ARTS BY FREDERICK WEDMORE LONDON HODDER AND STOUGHTON 27 PATERNOSTER ROW 1899 Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty _NOTE_ _In the pages that here follow I have gathered up such of my more or less critical contributions to various Reviews, and to one great daily paper, as I am least unwilling to preserve within the covers of a book._ _As the proportion borne by things reprinted from the ‘Standard’ will seem small to those who know during how many years I have been permitted to contribute to its columns the expression of opinion on many of those arts which have been both my delight and my laborious study, let me just simply say that every line that I have written in that paper has been written with a single eye to the needs of the occasion and the moment, and the more expressly any writing is designed for a particular need and place, the less, I think, is it adapted for transplanting._ _There has been no attempt to bring these essays, or these fragments, ‘up-to-date’--to bring them to the point of view, I mean, of the time at which they chance to be republished. A suppression here, and there the alteration of a phrase--little else is attempted. They remain, frankly, ‘contributions.’_ _F. W._ _Westminster, October 1899._ CONTENTS PAGE THE SHORT STORY 1 MY RARE BOOK 25 BALZAC 44 GEORGE ELIOT 55 MY FEW THINGS 64 ANNE OLDFIELD 97 SIDDONS AND RACHEL 103 JOSEPH JEFFERSON 109 ZOLA’S ‘THÉRÈSE RAQUIN’ 113 ‘MACBETH’ AND IRVING 118 ‘THE DUCHESS OF MALFI’ 122 REMBRANDT 128 DUTCH SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DRAWINGS 144 VELASQUEZ 157 FRENCH EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PAINTING 164 CHARDIN 172 MOREAU 188 GAINSBOROUGH 202 COTMAN 219 H. G. HINE 233 THOMAS COLLIER 235 LORD LEIGHTON 237 MILLAIS 248