Hogarth, as an illustrator, gave a turn to art which it had not before. It is always a pleasant thought to me, as a native of Britain, that, while looking towards Germany and Holland for our early inspiration in illustrative art, we must return to our own shores once again for its revival, to Hogarth, Bewick, and Turner, with Constable (as a painter), for the apostles of that realism, suggestiveness, and satire with which the other nations now strive to lead off. As in literature, so in art, we were the original creators of those styles, to acquire which our students now go to France and Belgium. Shakespeare made Goethe, Schiller, Hugo, and Zola. Constable and Turner created the modern French school of Impressionists; Bewick the realistic draughtsmen; Hogarth the satirists of the pencil. We may be a heavy nation and apt to take a joke sadly, yet we have had our humourists also who have been appreciated by other nations as well as by their own, and perhaps a little more so. Amongst modern men--that is, comparatively modern men--who have had a great influence in book pictures, I would mention, in landscape art, Turner as the first; in caricature, Cruikshank; and in general force of black and white, Doré. These three, I think, I may safely place as having the greatest influence in their different walks. Turner I now quote as the most imitated painter and illustrator that ever lived, which is about the surest test of his individuality that can be given. Individualism as well as mannerism, alas! for the main body of the imitators could pick up only the mannerisms, without getting one touch of the genius which made him great--those bald sunlight effects which somehow remind us after a grotesque and wearisome fashion of the master whom they have vainly attempted to follow. How often have we taken up a volume of steel engravings in the half light, thinking that we had found a collection of Turner's works, until we brought them to the light and realised our mistake at one stunning instant! The invention and poetry were totally lacking, the effect dry and empty, and the design meaningless. Ruskin is quite right to go into raptures over the great genius of Turner, and in this he shows his own perception of true poetic power, inasmuch as he makes a mistake in overestimating Creswick's black-and-white work; but that he should close his eyes to the glaring faults of Turner, or rather, that he should call these faults virtues, is simply reducing the weight of his critical influence until it is not worth using. If he _will_ hold up for praise blemishes which even the most ignorant can see for themselves, how is it possible for them to set him up for a guide in matters which lie beyond their knowledge?