ure in angling, a sport which to me seemed idle and empty. I even ventured to fortify my own opinion by quoting Dr. Johnson's famous definition of the angler's implement, "A long rod and line, with a fly at one end, and a fool at the other." But to this he made answer: "You are altogether wrong, and if, as you say, angling has a peculiar charm for men of powerful and active intellect, it is because it calls into play all the powers of observation." These details may indicate that, in whatever he has done, Sir Seymour could be nothing if not original. In Addison's Spectator there is a passage to the effect that every good man has a hobby, while the bad supply its place with a vice; and it sometimes happens that a man's hobby proves to be the most valuable part of his lifework. It was so with Seymour Haden, and his hobby was etching. Instances are not rare of men who, having utterly failed in one career, have afterwards succeeded in another totally different. But for a busy surgeon first to achieve eminence in his own exacting profession, and then, comparatively late in life, to take up painter-etching, the most difficult of all the graphic arts, and in it to produce work which ranks him throughout Europe and America as the greatest living landscape-etcher, is only another proof that genius is not tied down by ordinary limitations; that where it exists it will assert itself triumphantly; and that the artist, like the poet, is "born, not made.” "How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" is the question recorded in the gospel; but though Seymour Haden, fortunately, was never taught art in the schools, yet any one who supposes that he is not a most thoroughly trained artist makes a very great mistake. No artist's work is further removed from being what is called "amateurish." Perhaps the highest attainment in every art is a certain noble and learned simplicity never to be mistaken for the awkward simplicity of ignorance. A French critic says that no does a thing thoroughly well unless he does it with ease. The "art which conceals art" which can hide all evidences of effort high attainment. is a very Seymour Haden's work is instinct with this masterly quality. It is full of what he himself calls "the labor of omission." Of etching as compared with painting, he writes: "The painter, by overlaying his work, may modify and correct it as he goes on. Not so the etcher. Every stroke he makes must tell strongly against him if it be bad, or prove him a master if it be good. In no branch of art does a touch go for so much. The necessity for a rigid selection is therefore constantly present in his mind. If one stroke in the right place tells more for him than ten in the wrong, it would seem to follow that that single stroke is a more learned stroke than the ten by which he would have arrived at his end." "The faculty of doing such work supposes a concentration and a reticence requisite in no other art." And he goes on to say that, for these reasons, etching, of all arts, is the least suited to the half-educated artist. We have all, alas, seen too many demonstrations of the truth of this! I confess that in thus quoting from Seymour Haden's writings, I am putting my own efforts at a great disadvantage. The quotation stands out like the new patch in the old garment. Admitting that Seymour Haden was a born artist, richly endowed with the creative faculty, how was it that he also became the superb technician that he is? This did not come to him by nature nor does it come to any one. It came to him through long, hard, earnest study and practise. He studied the best models - Rembrandt's etchings above all. He was never afraid to pay the necessary price for a faultless proof by Rembrandt. But even before he began to form his unsurpassed collection of the old masterpieces it was his custom to borrow a portfolio of such etchings from a London dealer whom I myself remember as a very old man, Mr. Love, of Bunhill Row, and carrying home such treasures he would sit up at night with them not only delighting in their beauty, as other amateurs do, but also studying and analyzing the method and technic of each master. Then, after long practice in drawing, and with an intimate technical knowledge of the recognized masterpieces of etching, he himself began to etch. Thereafter his hard-earned holidays in the |