Page:Through the torii (IA throughtorii00noguiala).pdf/122

 always playing with his art and also with his friends, and he was so witty and combative; but he was at his heart of hearts most sincere and sad, again like our Hokusai. His strange aloofness in his art as well as in his personality may have been rooted in his Puritan blood; and his Puritanism was touched by the modern cynicism and alternately by the attractive cosmopolitanism; therefore he was both severe and delicate. I do not find a particular reason to call him eccentric, if not in the fact that he was proud in art, uncompromising in intention, eager in aim. If so, he was the most eccentric artist that ever lived.

As there are not two Hogarths, two Velazquez, there will be no other Whistler in the future; just one Whistler is indeed enough. He was his own rule to himself, not belonging to any school already in existence; the school which he established at once was extinguished with his death; that was good. I know that a great art of the world is a creation of prayer, and the great artist is always a sort of priest. But where Whistler lacked the sober reverence towards Nature and Life, he gained, on the Rh