Commentators have noted a bit of fantasy wish-fulfillment in the tale. The painter is hired to illustrate a series of novels by "the rarest of the novelists—who, long neglected by the multitudinous vulgar and dearly prized by the attentive (...) had had the happy fortune of seeing, late in life, the dawn and then the full light of a higher criticism—an estimate in which, on the part of the public, there was something really of expiation." James's own most laudatory criticism would come only posthumously.