"Of course my faces have no expression in the sense in which people use the word. How should they have any? They are not portraits of people in paroxysms--paroxysms of terror, hatred, benevolence, desire, avarice, veneration, and all the 'passions' and emotions that Le Brun and that kind of person find so _magnifique_ in Raphael's later work--mostly painted by his pupils and assistants, by the way. It is Winckelmann, isn't it, who says that when you come to the age of expression in Greek art you have come to the age of decadence? I don't remember how or where it is said, but of course it is true--can't be otherwise in the nature of things." "Portraiture," he also said, "may be great art. There is a sense, indeed, in which it is perhaps the greatest art of any. Any portraiture involves expression. Quite true, but expression of what? Of a passion, an emotion, a mood? Certainly not. Paint a man or woman with the damned 'pleasing expression,' or even the 'charmingly spontaneous' so dear to the 'photographic artist,' and you see at once that the thing is a mask, as silly as the old tragic and comic mask. The only expression allowable in great portraiture is the expression of character and moral quality, not of anything temporary, fleeting, accidental. Apart from portraiture you don't want even so much, or very seldom: in fact you only want types, symbols, suggestions. The moment you give what people call expression, you destroy the typical character of heads and degrade them into portraits which stand for nothing." FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS [Sidenote: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_] The different stages of his children's lives were of profound interest to him, and as they grew up they found in him an elder brother as well as a father. As soon as Margaret was old enough she began to share and then almost entirely to take my post as reader-aloud in the studio. Beside many other books she went through the whole of Thackeray twice in this way; Dickens was my special province. She and Edward had their own world of fun, and for her he invented a "little language," besides the most unheard-of names. I remember hearing him and Millais once talk to each other about their daughters, each boasting that he was the most devoted father. "Ah, but _you_ don't take your daughter's breakfast up to her in bed," said Edward, certain that the prize belonged to him. Millais' triumphant "Yes, I do!" left them only equal. "ANNA KARENINA" [Sidenote: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_]