To all this I received endless confirmation, but, alas! the writers did not give me permission to publish their names. I have on my desk before me as I write this page a letter from the editor of our most artistic illustrated weekly: "Allow me to congratulate you; keep pegging away. The Royal Academy of Arts (plural) is nonsense; it is, as you say, a Royal Academy of oil. If the R.A. had done their duty years ago, we would not see such farcical statues in the streets, nor should I (as at present moment employed) be writing to Berlin and Vienna for assistance in matters where skill and taste are required by art workmen." The President of a certain Royal Academy wrote: "I have just read your 'Royal Academy Antics,' and I must confess that, as far as I can judge, many of its strictures are deserved; ... but I can venture to say that many of the antiquated mistakes made by the parent Academy have been carefully avoided by our governing body."
From all sorts and conditions of artists and art employers I received congratulations. Those from the poor struggling outsiders alone repaid me for the trouble I had taken. At that time, only eleven years ago, the Royal Academy and other picture shows were in a very different position from what they are now. Art is no longer a fashion; proportionately the Royal Academy is going down. The glory of Lord Leighton, one of the brightest of Society's stars, attracted hosts of fashionable people to the gatherings of the Academy, and Sir John Millais, too, was much run after by the fashionable crowd. Now that these are gone, the Academy has lost all interest in smart Society. "Academy Antics up to Date" would not have any sale, "An Artistic Joke" in Bond Street would not have any visitors. I fought for the weak when they were crushed by the strong. Now that "My Lady Oil" is feeble and powerless, I desist.
"The Royal Academy has been the subject of many bitter attacks," wrote the editor of the _Magazine of Art_, "during the last hundred years--attacks which, directed against unjust or antiquated rules, have usually been well founded. But never, perhaps, has so effective a charge been made as that which Mr. Furniss brings in his entertaining volume; and if it be true that ridicule will pierce there whence the shafts of indignation will rebound, no little good may be looked for from the publication."