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CONTEMPORARY ART 229
of the Royal Academy. And, although it is
a dangerous thing in the suburbs to ignore
nice
points of precedence and venerable feuds,
such magnanimity makes for
progress. Mr.
Grant, Mr. Lewis, Mr. Epstein, and Mrs. Bell,
at any rate, are all cut by Tooting, for they
have seen the sun rise and warmed themselves
in its rays ; it is particularly to be regretted,
therefore, that Mr. Lewis should have lent his
great powers to the canalizing (for the old
metaphor was the better) of the new spirit in
a little backwater called English vorticism,
which already gives signs of becoming as
insipid as any other puddle of provincialism.
Can no one persuade him to be warned by
the fate of Mr. Eric Gill, who, some ten years
ago, under the influence presumably of Malliol,
gave arresting expression to his very genuine
feelings, until, ridden by those twin hags insu-
larity and wilful ignorance, he drifted along
the line of least resistance and, by an earnest
study of English ecclesiastical ornament, reduced
his art to something a little lower than
English alabasters ? The danger is there
always ; and unless our able young men make
a grand struggle, they too will find themselves
sucked into the backwater, impotent, insigni-
ficant, and prosperous.
It is not treasonable, I think, to hope that
the war will some day be over. And let no