The Gentle Art of Making Enemies Author:James McNeill Whistler Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE GENTLE ART OP MAKING ENEMIES 25 Whistler v. Rushin : Art and Art Critics 'J'HE Jin met and spirit of this matter seems to have been utterly missed, or ... more »perhaps willingly winked at, by the journals in their comments. Their correspondents have persistently, and not unnaturally as writers, seen nothing beyond the immediate case in law—viz., the difference between Mr. Ruskin and myself, culminating in the libel with a verdict for the plaintiff. Now the war, of which the opening skirmish was fought the other day in Westminster, is really one between the brush and the pen ; and involves literally, as the Attorney-General himself hinted, the absolute " raison d'etre " of the critic. The cry, on their part, of " II faut vivre," I most certainly meet, in this case, with the appropriate answer, " Je n'en vois pas la necessite." Far from me, at that stage of things, to go further into this discussion than I did, when, cross-examinedby Sir John Holker, I contented myself with the general answer, " that one might admit criticism when emanating from a man who had passed his whole life in the science which he attacks." The position of Mr. Ruskin as an art authority we left quite un- assailed during the trial. To have said that Mr. Buskin's prose among intelligent men, as other than a litterateur, is false and ridiculous, would have been an invitation to the stake; and to be burnt alive, or stoned before the verdict, was not what I came into court for. Over and over again did the Attorney-General cry out aloud, in the agony of his cause, " What is to become of painting if the critics withhold their lash?" As well might he ask what is to become of mathematics under similar circumstances, were they possible. I maintain that two and two the mathematician would continue to make f...« less