One Was Not Very Brilliant Perhaps

 Having taken Seven Men from the bookshelves, I noticed in "Hilary Maltby and Stephen Braxton" the paragraph

'Which do you think is REALLY the best--"Ariel" or "A Faun"?' Ladies were always asking one that question. 'Oh, well, you know, the two are so different. It’s really very hard to compare them.' One was always giving that answer. One was not very brilliant perhaps.

By the time I was of age, women knew themselves competent to make their own judgments on literature. Or if not, they asked somebody other than one. Still, I understand the sense of flatness in recalling the things one habitually said decades before.

 The mention of Will Rothenstein in "Enoch Soames" led me to look at the National Gallery of Art website. There he appears as Sir William Rothenstein. None of his works are now on view, and for some--unfortunately including his portraits of Max Beerbohm, Hilaire Belloc, and Walter Pater--there is no image available.  ("On view": the National Gallery of Art will reopen on May 14, and until then nothing at all is on view; but I don't know what better term the website could use.)