SOME EMINENT VICTORIANS [Illustration: _A Study for the picture of King Cophetua_ (_Philip Comyns Carr_) _By Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Bart._] SOME EMINENT VICTORIANS PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS IN THE WORLD OF ART AND LETTERS BY J. COMYNS CARR [Illustration: colophon] LONDON DUCKWORTH & CO. MCMVIII _All rights reserved_ PREFACE Those of us who have emerged from the Victorian Era with an undiminished reverence for the great names which have made it memorable, must be prepared to endure with patience the pitying tolerance, or even the indulgent rebuke, of the men who herald a younger generation. It was only a few weeks ago that I ventured to enquire of a cultivated young writer of the newer school if Dickens was now much read by the generation which presumably he had a claim to represent. The question gave him no pause. In a sentence that was dictated solely, as it seemed, by a sincere desire to impart accurate information, he gravely informed me that among young men of culture Dickens was now never read after the age of fourteen. I confess that, despite the coldly judicial tone of this utterance, I was not entirely convinced, for I happen to know even young people who are still so far belated in their taste as to regard Dickens as an incomparable genius. But the statement helped me at any rate to realise how easy it is to grow old-fashioned, and suggested to me that in addressing an age which believes that art, like science, is always advancing, it would be prudent, on the threshold of these reminiscences of some of the men I have known and whose work I have worshipped, to make frank avowal of my own faith, and humbly to confess my limitations.