practically blind. Milton in his blindness was a monarch compared to the tortures of this poor artist, striving for light and for fame, condemned by inexorable fate to temporary blindness.
Vierge, the renowned black and white artist, whose illustrations to "Don Quixote" and "Gil Blas" won him European renown, was stricken by paralysis down the right side, and lost his speech. Even this stops a long way short of blindness. Vierge with a bravery that only genius in the supremest moments of tragic difficulty can overcome, now draws with his left hand. But Arthur Boyd Houghton, the sometime blind artist, bereft of one eye, surely stands pre-eminent among men of genius for his heroic fight against Fate and his triumphant victory. His niche in the temple of fame should be doubly honoured, since he wrested success from despairing misfortune.
It cannot fail to be an added tribute new admirers will pay to his genius who now learn for the first time of his affliction. He is not to be judged as a freak. It were pitiable to judge him as a one-eyed man who as a tour-de-force drew beautiful pictures. His work will bear comparison with any black and white artist in England either before or since his day. There is little doubt that he worked with a rapidity born of the circumstances. He worked while there was yet light. He stayed not to perfect or retouch his work with second thoughts. There was no second thought needed. Red-hot from his brain the designs burned themselves on to the wood block. He had a swift hand and an unerring touch, and the dream-
