"The Boyhood of Raleigh," especially, is to be considered on account of its possession of a certain dramatic sentiment which might easily have been made theatrical by an artist less surely endowed with a sense of fitness. But it tells its story with charm and conviction, and there is in the action of the figures, and in the expressions on the faces, just the right degree of vitality needed to make clear the pictorial motive. "The Knight Errant" is, perhaps, less significant as a piece of invention, but it has a distinct place in the artist's list of achievements, because it affords one of the few instances of his treatment of the nude figure on a large scale. It proves plainly enough that his avoidance of subjects of this class was not due to any inability on his part to succeed as a flesh painter, for this figure is beautiful both in colour and handling; it is more probable that the classic formality and conventionality which public opinion in this country requires in the representation of the nude did not appeal to a man with his love of actuality and sincere regard for nature's facts. Indeed, from the standpoint of the decorative figure painter--of men like Leighton, or Albert Moore, for instance--the woman that Millais has represented is too frankly unidealised, too modern in type, and too realistically feminine. But in this disregard of convention there is a kind of summing up of his beliefs as an artist. Though he had changed the outward aspect of his art he was still in spirit a Pre-Raphaelite, and a Pre-Raphaelite he remained to the end of his days. He depended more upon the keenness of vision natural to him, and assiduously cultivated by years of close observation, than upon what powers he may have had of abstract imagining; and he sought to only a limited extent to set down upon his canvas those mental images which satisfy men who look upon nature chiefly as a basis for decorative designs. The mental image with him was a direct reflection of fact, not an adaptation modified and formalised in accordance with recognised rules, not a fancy more or less remotely referable to reality; but he had certainly an ample equipment of that taste which enables the painter to discriminate between the realities which are too crude and obvious to be worth recording, and those which by their inherent beauty claim a permanent place in an artist's memory. He had, too, the judgment to see that the nude, treated as it would have to be to satisfy his æsthetic conscience, would be too plainly stated to be entirely acceptable.