Mr. Arthur Symons, writing on "The Psychology of Watts,"[5] quotes a popular preacher who affirmed that "Critics who approach his (Watts') work from the side of technical excellence do not interest him at all. His endeavour has been to make his pictures as good as works of art as was possible to him, for fear that they should fail altogether in their appeal; but, beyond that, their excellence as mere pictures is nothing to him." "Now," writes Mr. Symons, "it is quite possible that Watts may have really said or written something of the kind; he may even, when he set himself down to think, have thought it. The conscious mental processes of an artist have often little enough relation with his work as art; by no means is every artist a critic as well as an artist. But to take a great painter at his word, if he assures you that the excellence of his pictures 'as mere pictures' is nothing to him; to suppose seriously that at the root of his painting was not the desire to paint; to believe for a moment that great pictorial work has ever been done except by those who were painters first, and everything else afterwards, is to confuse the elementary notions of things, hopelessly and finally. And so, when we are told that the technical excellence of Watts' pictures is of little consequence, we can but answer that to the 'painter of earnest truths,' as to all painters, nothing can be of more consequence; for it is only through this technical excellence that 'Hope,' or 'The Happy Warrior,' or 'Love and Life,' is to be preferred to the picture leaflet which the district missionary distributes on his way through the streets." All who knew Watts intimately and watched him working day by day can testify that he spared no labour, time, or patience, in working over and over on a picture in order to attain the finest quality in the actual surface which his material--paint--could possibly produce. Neither the disciples of the original brotherhood of the pre-Raphaelites nor those of Burne-Jones care, as a rule, for Leighton's art. Though starting as one with the pre-Raphaelites, Burne-Jones, possessing a remarkably fine intellect, a subtle fancy, a rich inventiveness in the detail of design, an exquisite sense of grace, and great genius as a colourist, developed so distinct an individuality that his followers cannot be precisely identified with those of the pre-Raphaelites. Leighton fully appreciated the genius of Burne-Jones, and did all in his power to secure his adherence to the Academy; but he had no sympathy for that feeling in art evinced by Burne-Jones' followers, which is so essentially rooted in purely personal moods that even distortion of the human frame is condoned, so long as prominence is given to the suggestion of such moods.