A Vindication Of The Decorated Pottery Of Japan

A VINDICATION OF THE DECORATED POTTERY OF JAPAN BY JAMES L. BOWES His Imperial Majestys Honorary Consul for Japan at Liverpool AUTHOR OF, Japanese Marks and Seals 11 11 Japanese Enamels 11 Japanese Pottery and Joint Author of Keramic Art of Japan G. PRINTED FOR PRIVATE-CIRCULATION. NOT FOR SALE. .1DCCCXCI. A TEA CLUB. THE following letter, written in reply to an anonymous article referring to my book, Japanese Pottery, which appeared in the New York Nation and the Evening Post, has called forth three, or more perhaps, for aught I know, lengthy letters from Pro fessor MORSE on the same subject. My reply to the original article was refused admission into the columns of the journals named, although the work had not been sent to either of them for review, English literary journals decline, for obvious reasons, to admit notices, by anonymous writers, of works which have not been sent to them for review, but the custom in America appears to differ in this, as well as in another respect for in this country, the conductors willingly allow an author to reply to such an attack as that to which I refer, especially when it is couched in language so temperate as that employed by me, in answer to an article which carried its own condemnation in its tone, The Nation, however, whilst excluding my letter, readily and politely enough accepted a series of paid advertisements-giving the opinions expressed about my work by English journals, and, for a sufficient consideration, afforded them a prominent position. The editor of the Evening Post also refused insertion of the reply, and I venture to refer him for his future guidance to the words which Mr. BIGELOW recently used with reference to his predecessorWILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT He never could be beguiled into personal controversy, insisting that every line of a newspaper belonged to the public that paid for it, and could not honestly be perverted to the gratification of the vanity, or spite, or self-sufficiency of its editors, under which denomination I imagine such writers as the author of the notice in question would come in America, as they certainly would in England. The name of the writer of the anonymous review has i not been disclosed, nor am I in a position to declare it. Professor MORSE refers in his letters to it in a way that would suggest that it was the work of another hand, but the unbe coming language, common to all the articles, leads one to suppose that the whole of the attacks upon my work, and upon myself personally, proceed from the same pen. And, further, the criti cisms in the original article are repeated in the later ones. Although aware that my reply had been refused insertion by the papers named, and that I had, in consequence, found it necessary to issue it as a circular, Professor MORSE condescended to write to the Boston Transcript of my reply as having lurked about in the form of a circular, etc. And here I must express my grateful acknowledgments to the Transcript and Boston Herald and to the New York Studio also, for I understand this journal gave a place to my reply, for - having proved their desire for fairplay by inserting my letter which the newspapers I have named had endeavoured to burke. I would that I could dismiss any further reference to the tone employed by Professor MORSE in his letter, for I consider the personal aspect of the subject altogether subsidiary to the larger question of the rightappreciation of the Keramic Art of Japan. But I find it impossible to avoid mentioning the following sentence in Mr. MORSES letter to the Transcript with reference to mine In the circular now issued by him he leaves out all reference to the Herald, and mendaciously attributes the article quoted as being directed against my illustrated article on Old Satsuma which appeared in Harpers Magazm for September, 1888...