Note 50 — II.

It would be utterly vain to attempt any general account of the works of this painter, unless I were able also to give abstract of the subtlest mythologies of Greek worship and Christian romance. Besides, many of his best designs are pale pencil drawings like Florentine engravings, of which the delicacy is literally invisible, and the manner irksome, to a public trained among the black scrabblings of modern wood-cutter's and etcher's prints. I will only say that the single series of these pencil-drawings, from the story of Psyche, which I have been able to place in the schools of Oxford, together with the two colored beginnings from the stories of Jason and Alcestis, are, in my estimate, quite the most precious gift, not excepting even the Loire series of Turners, in the ratified acceptance of which my University has honored with some fixed memorial the aims of her first Art-Teacher.