“Mr. Whistler’s catalogue, however, is our present game. He takes for motto, ‘Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?’ But Mr. Whistler mistakes his vocation. He is no butterfly. He might be compared, perhaps, to a bird,--the bird that can sing but won’t. If one judged, however, from some of his etchings, one would say a spider was nearer his mark. But a butterfly! the emblem of all that is bright and beautiful in form and color! Daniel Lambert might as reasonably have taken the part of the Apothecary in ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ or Julia Pastrana have essayed the _rôle_ of Imogen. “Criticism _is_ powerless with him in many different ways. It is powerless to correct his taste for wilfully drawing ill. If a school-girl of ten showed such a picture of a human being as this (referring to illustration), for instance, we might criticise usefully enough. We might point out that no human being (we suppose the thing is intended for a human being, but it may be meant for a rag-bag) ever had such features or such shape. But of what use would it be to tell Mr. Whistler as much? He knows it already, only he despises the public so much that he thinks it will do well enough for them. “Again, criticism is powerless to explain what was meant by some such figure as this, in No. 33. The legs we can especially answer for, while the appendages which come where a horse has his feet and pasterns are perfect transcripts--they are things we never could forget. We have not the faintest idea what they really are. We would not insult Mr. Whistler by supposing he tried to draw a horse with the customary equine legs, and so failed as to produce these marvels. Perhaps Dr. Wilson knows of some animal limbed thus strangely. “It is because of such insults as these to common sense and common understanding, and from no ill-will we bear him, that we refuse seriously to criticise such work as Mr. Whistler has recently brought before the public. Whatever in it is good adds to his offence, for it shows the offence to be wilful, if not premeditated.”[16] Poor etchings,--condemned for their virtues, condemned for their faults,--there is no health in them. * * * * * And these and many similar things were written, only twenty years ago, of the greatest etchings the world has known since the days of Rembrandt. When one thinks of the obscurity of Rembrandt to the day of his death, and how little his work was known for long after, of the passing of Meryon without recognition, it must be conceded that Whistler is coming into his own amazingly fast. * * * * * Senefelder discovered the process, but Whistler perfected the art of lithography. It was not until 1877, twenty years after he began etching, that he made his first lithographs.