It has been well said that if Millais had never devoted himself to the painting of oil pictures, but had given his life entirely to the work of book illustration, his position would still have been indisputable, and his magnificent ability would have been amply demonstrated. There is, indeed, a great deal of truth in this contention. Although the world would have been the poorer for the loss of his masterly essays in brushwork, and of his wonderful exercises in the arrangement of strong colour, it would have possessed extremely significant evidence of the reality of his artistic judgment, and of the adaptability of his inventive powers. In his black and white work he showed frequently a side of his capacity that appeared in his painting only on great occasions, a sense of dramatic exigencies, a feeling for illustrative meanings, far beyond what was suggested by the general run of his pictures. As an interpreter of the fancies of other men he was exceptionally intelligent, with a memorable grasp of the salient points of the story and a remarkable facility in summarising essentials. He was afraid of nothing in the way of a subject, and spared no labour to make his drawings completely expressive. His love of black and white was indeed a genuine one. Illustration was not to him, as it so often is with other men, a mere expedient, resorted to because an unappreciative public refused to recognise the merit and importance of his paintings, and abandoned gladly as soon as he found he could make a sufficient income without it. On the contrary, he welcomed the opportunities with which this branch of art practice provided him, and regarded them as of the highest value. For more than twenty years he was a prolific illustrator, constantly busy with drawings that were reproduced in all kinds of books and magazines; and even in his later life occasional examples appeared to prove that his hand had not lost its cunning and that his interest in this type of work was undiminished. How deeply he felt about this particular subject is, perhaps, best proved by his constant advocacy, within and without the Academy, of the claims of illustrative draughtsmen to official recognition. Before the Royal Commission on the Academy he strenuously urged that workers in black and white should be declared eligible for election to membership of that institution as draughtsmen purely, instead of being required to disguise themselves as picture painters before they could hope for admission; and his pleading then expressed a conviction which remained strong in him till his death. He spoke with real authority on a matter that, both by inclination and association, he was fully qualified to discuss. His experience of illustrative drawing, and his acquaintance with the history of its development, were both peculiarly intimate; and he knew exactly what were the possibilities of influence possessed by the craft.