"I happened," said Mr. Gladstone, "to be standing at my library table with my hands upon a book, when Mr. Holl said, 'That will do, Mr. Gladstone, exactly,' and the result was that he painted me in that position. But I felt uncommonly awkward and uncomfortable the whole time, and as I have just said, I had to lie down and sleep after each sitting." Now why was this? It was the very attitude of all others with which we who have studied it so often when the ex-Premier has been standing at the table in the House are so familiar. No artist who had once seen him in that position would have failed to select it as the most favourable and characteristic for the purposes of a historical portrait. And yet the picture, when it was completed, was a failure, and the artist himself knew that it was. The explanation is, I think, very simple, and it exemplifies once more the truth of the formula which defines genius to be "an infinite capacity for taking pains." Frank Holl undoubtedly had talent, but his omission of an important detail in this picture--a detail which would have probably made all the difference between success and failure--shows once more by how narrow a line the highest art is often divided from the next best, that art of which we have such a plethora nowadays--which just contrives to miss hitting the bullseye of perfection. When Mr. Holl exclaimed, "That will do, Mr. Gladstone, exactly," he was no doubt impressed with the idea that the great orator was more at ease standing at the table in the House of Commons than in any other position, and he therefore selected it for his picture. But he forgot that upon the table in the House there stands a box on which Mr. Gladstone was always in the habit, when he was speaking, of resting one of his hands, and that if that box was missing he would naturally, although perhaps unconsciously, be sensible that something to which he was accustomed was absent, and that he would therefore be as uncomfortable as a fish out of water. This was actually the case. But if some substitute for the box, of the proper height and size, had been forthcoming, I have not the slightest doubt, from my long and close observation of the habits and movements of Mr. Gladstone in the House, that he would at once have dropped easily into his customary attitude, and that the picture in the hands of so true an artist as Holl would then have been a conspicuous success. Mr. Gladstone was asked whether he thought the tone of the House had degenerated in recent times. He replied that he did not think so at all, quoting in proof that after the introduction of the first Reform Bill many Members used to express their feelings in cock-crows and other offensive ways. Mr. Gladstone, however, at the time I met him, was getting decidedly deaf, and no doubt much that went on behind him in the House "did not reach" him.