‘nor even in Fuseli’s: but the present men are “dressed in a little
brief authority,” and they wish to make the most of it, without
perceiving the limits. No good can possibly come of this _busy-body_
spirit. The dragging morality into every thing, in season and out of
season, is only giving a handle to hypocrisy, and turning virtue into a
bye-word for impertinence!’

Here Northcote stopped suddenly, to ask if there was not such a word as
_rivulet_ in the language? I said it was as much a word in the language
as it was a thing in itself. He replied, it was not to be found in
Johnson; the word was _riveret_ there. I thought this must be in some of
the new editions; Dr. Johnson would have knocked any body down, who had
used the word _riveret_. It put me in mind of a story of Y— the actor,
who being asked how he was, made answer that he had been indisposed for
some days with a _feveret_. The same person, speaking of the
impossibility of escaping from too great publicity, related an anecdote
of his being once in a remote part of the Highlands, and seeing an old
gentleman fishing, he went up to inquire some particulars as to the mode
of catching the salmon at what are called ‘salmon-leaps.’—The old
gentleman began his reply—‘Why, Mr. Y—,’ at which the actor started back
in great surprise. ‘Good God!’ said Northcote, ‘did he consider this as
a matter of wonder, that, after shewing himself on a stage for a number
of years, people should know his face? If an artist or an author were
recognised in that manner, it might be a proof of celebrity, because it
would shew that they had been sought for; but an actor is so much seen
in public, that it is no wonder he is known by all the world. I once
went with Opie in the stage-coach to Exeter; and when we parted; he to
go on to Cornwall and I to Plymouth, there was a young gentleman in the
coach who asked me, “Who it was that I had been conversing with?” I said
it was Mr. Opie, the painter; at which he expressed the greatest
surprise, and was exceedingly concerned to think he had not known it
before. I did not tell him who I was, to see if my name would electrify
him in the same manner. That brings to my mind the story I perhaps may
have told you before, of a Mr. A— and Dr. Pennick of the Museum. They
got into some quarrel at the theatre; and the former presenting his
card, said with great pomposity, “My name is A—, Sir;” to which the
other answered, “I hear it, Sir, and am not terrified!”’ I asked if this
was the A— who fought the duel with F—. He said he could not tell, but
he was our ambassador to some of the petty German States.

A country-gentleman came in, who complimented Northcote on his pictures
of animals and birds, which I knew he would not like. He muttered
something when he was gone, in allusion to the proverb of _giving snuff
to a cat_. Afterwards, a miniature-painter brought some copies he had
made of a portrait of a young lady by Northcote. They were really very
well, and we learned he was to have five guineas for the larger size,
and two for the smaller ones. I could now account for the humility and
shabby appearance of the artist. He paid his court better than his
rustic predecessor; for being asked by Northcote if the portrait of the
young lady was approved? he said the mother had told him, before she
engaged him to copy it, that ‘it was one of the _loveliest_ pictures
(that was her expression) that had ever been seen!’ This praise was
better relished than that of his dogs and parrots.

I took notice to Northcote that the man had a very good head; but that
he put me in mind of the state and pretensions of the art before artists
wrote _Esquire_ after their names. He said, Yes, he was like Andrew
Taffi, or some of those in Vasari. I observed how little he was paid for
what he really did so well; to which Northcote merely replied, ‘In all
things that are not necessary, those in the second class must always be
miserably paid. Copying pictures is like plain-work among women, it is
what any body can do, and, therefore, nothing but a bare living is to be
got by it.’ He added, that the young lady, whose portrait her family was
so anxious to have copied, was dead, and this was a kind of diversion to
their grief. It was a very natural mode of softening it down; it was
still recurring to the object of their regret, and yet dwelling on it in
an agreeable point of view. ‘The wife of General H—, (he continued) many
years ago, came to me to do a picture of her son, a lieutenant in the
navy, who was killed in battle, but whom I had never seen. There was no
picture of him to go by, but she insisted on my doing one under her
direction. I attempted a profile as the easiest; and she sat behind me
and sang in a soft manner to herself, and told me what I was to do. It
was a wretched business, as you may suppose, being made out from
description; but she would have it to be a great likeness, and brought
all the family and even the servants to see it, who probably did not
dare to be of a different opinion. I said to her, “What a pity it was
Sir Joshua had not done a portrait of him in his life-time!” At this she
expressed great contempt, and declared she would not give two-pence for
all Sir Joshua’s pictures; indeed, she had one which I was very welcome
to have if I chose to come for it. I lost no time in going to her house,
and when I came there, she led me up into an old garret which was used
as a lumber-room, and taking it carefully out of a shabby frame not
worth a groat, said “There, take it, I am not sorry to get it out of the
house.” I asked what it was that made her so indifferent about this
picture? and she answered, “It was a likeness of a young gentleman who
had been kind enough to die, by which means the estate came to the
General.” She spoke in this unfeeling manner, though her own son had
just died in the same circumstances; and she had had a monument made for
him, and strewed flowers upon it, and made such a _fuss_ about his
death, that she would hardly have known what to do if he had come to
life again!’ I asked what was her reason for disliking Reynolds’s
pictures? ‘Oh! that was her ignorance, she did not know why!’

Northcote said, ‘G— called here with his daughter. I asked her about
Lord Byron; she said his temper was so bad that nobody could live with
him. The only way to pass the day tolerably well with him was to
contradict him the first thing in the morning. I have known tempers of
that kind myself; you must quarrel with them in order to be friends. If
you did not conquer them, they would conquer you.’ Something was
observed about Byron and Tom Paine, as to their attacks upon religion;
and I said that sceptics and philosophical unbelievers appeared to me to
have just as little liberality or enlargement of view as the most
bigoted fanatic. They could not bear to make the least concession to the
opposite side. They denied the argument that because the Scriptures were
fine they were therefore of divine origin, and yet they virtually
admitted it; for, not believing their truth, they thought themselves
bound to maintain that they were good for nothing. I had once, I said,
given great offence to a knot of persons of this description, by
contending that Jacob’s Dream was finer than any thing in Shakspeare;
and that Hamlet would bear no comparison with, at least, one character
in the New Testament. A young poet had said on this occasion, he did not
like the Bible, because there was nothing about flowers in it; and I
asked him if he had forgot that passage, ‘Behold the lilies of the
field,’ &c.? ‘Yes,’ said Northcote, ‘and in the Psalms and in the book
of Job, there are passages of unrivalled beauty. In the latter there is
the description of the war-horse, that has been so often referred to,
and of the days of Job’s prosperity; and in the Psalms, I think there is
that passage, “He openeth his hands, and the earth is filled with
plenteousness; he turneth away his face, and we are troubled; he hideth
himself, and we are left in darkness;” or, again, how fine is that
expression, “All the beasts of the forests are mine, and so are the
cattle upon a thousand hills!” What an expanse, and what a grasp of the
subject! Every thing is done upon so large a scale, and yet with such
ease, as if seen from the highest point of view. It has mightily a look
of inspiration or of being dictated by a superior intelligence. They say
mere English readers cannot understand Homer, because it is a
translation; but why will it not bear a translation as well as the book
of Job, if it is as fine? In Shakspeare, undoubtedly, there is a
prodigious variety and force of human character and passion, but he does
not take us out of ourselves; he has a wonderful, almost a miraculous
fellow-feeling with human nature in every possible way, but that is all.
Macbeth is full of sublimity, but the sublimity is that of the earth, it
does not reach to heaven. It is a still stronger objection that is made
to Hogarth; he, too, gave the incidents and characters of human life
with infinite truth and ability; but then it was in the lowest forms of
all, and he could not rise even to common dignity or beauty. There is a
faculty that enlarges and beautifies objects, even beyond nature. It is
for this reason that we must, reluctantly perhaps, give the preference
to Milton over Shakspeare; for his Paradise (to go no further) is
certainly a scene of greater beauty and happiness, than was ever found
on earth, though so vividly described that we easily make the
transition, and transport ourselves there. It is the same difference
that there is between Raphael and Michael Angelo, though Raphael, too,
in many of his works merited the epithet of _divine_.’—I mentioned some
lines from Shakspeare I had seen quoted in a translation of a French
work, and applied to those who adhered to Buonaparte in his misfortunes:

                   —He that can endure
             To follow with allegiance a fallen lord,
             Does conquer him that did his master conquer,
             And earns a place i’ the story.

I said I was struck to see how finely they came in. ‘Oh!’ replied
Northcote, ‘if they were Shakspeare’s, they were sure to be fine. What a
power there always is in any _bit_ brought in from him or Milton among
other things! How it shines like a jewel! I think Milton reads best in
this way; he is too fine for a continuance. Don’t you think Shakspeare
and the writers of that day had a prodigious advantage in using phrases
and combinations of style, which could not be admitted now that the
language is reduced to a more precise and uniform standard, but which
yet have a peculiar force and felicity when they can be justified by the
privilege of age?’ He said, he had been struck with this idea lately, in
reading an old translation of Boccacio (about the time of Queen
Elizabeth) in which the language, though quaint, had often a beauty that
could not well be conveyed in any modern translation.

He spoke of Lord Byron’s notions about Shakspeare. I said I did not care
much about his opinions. Northcote replied, they were evidently
capricious, and taken up in the spirit of contradiction. I said, not
only so (as far as I can judge), but without any better founded ones in
his own mind. They appear to me conclusions without premises or any
previous process of thought or inquiry. I like old opinions with new
reasons, not new opinions without any—not mere _ipse dixits_. He was too
arrogant to assign a reason to others or to need one for himself. It was
quite enough that he subscribed to any assertion, to make it clear to
the world, as well as binding on his valet!

Northcote said, there were people who could not argue. Fuseli was one of
these. He could throw out very brilliant and striking things; but if you
at all questioned him, he could no more give an answer than a child of
three years old. He had no resources, nor any _corps de reserve_ of
argument beyond his first line of battle. That was imposing and
glittering enough. Neither was Lord Byron a philosopher, with all his
sententiousness and force of expression. Probably one ought not to
expect the two things together; for to produce a startling and immediate
effect, one must keep pretty much upon the surface; and the search after
truth is a very slow and obscure process.

                       CONVERSATION THE ELEVENTH

As soon as I went in to-day, Northcote asked me if that was _my_
character of Shakspeare, which had been quoted in a newspaper the day
before? It was so like what he had thought a thousand times that he
could almost swear he had written it himself. I said no; it was from
Kendall’s Letters on Ireland; though I believed I had expressed nearly
the same idea in print. I had seen the passage myself, and hardly knew
at first whether to be pleased or vexed at it. It was provoking to have
one’s words taken out of one’s mouth as it were by another; and yet it
seemed also an encouragement to reflect, that if one only threw one’s
bread upon the waters, one was sure to find it again after many days.
The world, if they do not listen to an observation the first time, will
listen to it at second-hand from those who have a more agreeable method
of insinuating it, or who do not tell them too many truths at once. N—
said, he thought the account undoubtedly just, to whomever it
belonged.[95] The greatest genius (such as that of Shakspeare) implied
the greatest power, and this implied the greatest ease and
unconsciousness of effort, or of any thing extraordinary effected. As
this writer stated—‘He would as soon think of being vain of putting one
foot before another, as of writing _Macbeth_ or _Hamlet_.’ Or as
Hudibras has expressed it, poetry was to him

                  —a thing no more difficile
                  Than to a blackbird ’tis to whistle.

‘This (said he) is what I have always said of Correggio’s style, that he
could not help it: it was his nature. Besides, use familiarizes us to
every thing. How could Shakspeare be expected to be astonished at what
he did every day? No; he was thinking either merely of the subject
before him, or of gaining his bread. It is only upstarts or pretenders,
who do not know what to make of their good fortune or undeserved
reputation. It comes to the same thing that I have heard my brother
remark with respect to my father and old Mr. Tolcher, whose picture you
see there. He had a great friendship for my father and a great opinion
of his integrity; and whenever he came to see him, always began with
saying, “Well, honest Mr. Samuel Northcote, how do you?” This he
repeated so often, and they were so used to it, that my brother said
they became like words of course, and conveyed no more impression of any
thing peculiar than if he had merely said, “Well, good Mr. Northcote,
_et cetera_,” or used any common expression. So Shakspeare was
accustomed to write his fine speeches till he ceased to wonder at them
himself, and would have been surprised to find that you did.’

The conversation now turned on an answer in a newspaper to Canning’s
assertion, that ‘Slavery was not inconsistent with the spirit of
Christianity, inasmuch as it was the beauty of Christianity to
accommodate itself to all conditions and circumstances.’ Did Canning
mean to say, because Christianity accommodated itself to, or made the
best of all situations, it did not therefore give the preference to any?
Because it recommended mildness and fortitude under sufferings, did it
not therefore condemn the infliction of them? Or did it not forbid
injustice and cruelty in the strongest terms? This were indeed a daring
calumny on its founder: it were an insolent irony. Don Quixote would not
have said so. It was like the Italian banditti, who when they have cut
off the ears of their victims, make them go down on their knees, and
return thanks to an image of the Virgin Mary for the favour they have
done them. It was because such things do exist, that Christ came to set
his face against them, and to establish the maxim, ‘Do unto others as
you would that they should do unto you.’ If Mr. Canning will say that
the masters would like to be treated as they treat their slaves, then he
may say that slavery is consistent with the spirit of Christianity. No;
the meaning of those maxims of forbearance and submission, which the
Quakers have taken too literally, is, that you are not to drive out one
devil by another; it aims at discouraging a resort to violence and
anger, for if the temper it inculcates could become universal, there
would be no injuries to resent. It objects against the power of the
sword, but it is to substitute a power ten thousand times stronger than
the sword—that which subdues and conquers the affections, and strikes at
the very root and thought of evil. All that is meant by such sayings, as
that if a person ‘smites us on one cheek, we are to turn to him the
other,’ is, that we are to keep as clear as possible of a disposition to
retaliate and exasperate injuries; or there is a Spanish proverb which
explains this, that says, ‘_It is he who gives the second blow that
begins the quarrel._’

On my referring to what had been sometimes asserted of the inefficacy of
pictures in Protestant churches, Northcote said he might be allowed to
observe in favour of his own art, that though they might not strike at
first from a difference in our own belief, yet they would gain upon the
spectator by the force of habit. The practice of image-worship was
probably an after-thought of the Papists themselves, from seeing the
effects produced on the minds of the rude and ignorant by visible
representations of saints and martyrs. The rulers of the church at first
only thought to amuse and attract the people by pictures and statues (as
they did by music and rich dresses, from which no inference was to be
drawn); but when these representations of sacred subjects were once
placed before the senses of an uninstructed but imaginative people, they
looked at them with wonder and eagerness, till they began to think they
saw them move; and then miracles were worked; and as this became a
source of wealth and great resort to the several shrines and churches,
every means were used to encourage the superstition and a belief in the
supernatural virtues of the objects by the clergy and government. So he
thought that if pictures were set up in our churches, they would by
degrees inspire the mind with all the feelings of awe or interest that
were necessary or proper. It was less difficult to excite enthusiasm
than to keep it under due restraint. So in Italy, the higher powers did
not much relish those processions of naked figures, taken from
scriptural stories (such as Adam and Eve) on particular holidays, for
they led to scandal and abuse; but they fell in with the humour of the
rabble, and were lucrative to the lower orders of priests and friars,
and the Pope could not expressly discountenance them. He said we were in
little danger (either from our religion or temperament) of running into
those disgraceful and fanciful extremes; but should rather do every
thing in our power to avoid the opposite error of a dry and repulsive
asceticism. We _could not_ give too much encouragement to the fine arts.

Our talk of to-day concluded by his saying, that he often blamed himself
for uttering what might be thought harsh things; and that on mentioning
this once to Kemble, and saying it sometimes kept him from sleep after
he had been out in company, Kemble had replied, ‘Oh! you need not
trouble yourself so much about them: others never think of them
afterwards!’

                        CONVERSATION THE TWELFTH

Northcote was painting from a little girl when I went in. B— was there.
Something was said of a portrait of Dunning by Sir Joshua (an unfinished
head), and B— observed, ‘Ah! my good friend, if you and I had known at
that time what those things would fetch, we might have made our fortunes
now. By laying out a few pounds on the loose sketches and sweepings of
the lumber-room, we might have made as many hundreds.’ ‘Yes,’ said
Northcote, ‘it was thought they would soon be forgot, and they went for
nothing on that account: but they are more sought after than ever,
because those imperfect hints and studies seem to bring one more in
contact with the artist, and explain the process of his mind in the
several stages. A finished work is, in a manner, detached from and
independent of its author, like a child that can go alone: in the other
case, it seems to be still in progress, and to await his hand to finish
it; or we supply the absence of well-known excellences out of our own
imagination, so that we have a two-fold property in it.’

Northcote read something out of a newspaper about the Suffolk-street
Exhibition, in which his own name was mentioned, and M—’s, the
landscape-painter. B— said, his pictures were a trick—a streak of red,
and then a streak of blue. But, said Northcote, there is some merit in
finding out a new trick. I ventured to hint, that the receipt for his
was, clouds upon mountains, and mountains upon clouds—that there was
number and quantity, but neither form nor colour. He appeared to me an
instance of a total want of imagination; he mistook the character of the
feelings associated with every thing, and I mentioned as an instance his
Adam and Eve, which had been much admired, but which was a panoramic
view of the map of Asia, instead of a representation of our first
parents in Paradise.

After B— was gone, we spoke of X—. I regretted his want of delicacy
towards the public as well as towards his private friends. I did not
think he had failed so much from want of capacity, as from attempting to
bully the public into a premature or overstrained admiration of him,
instead of gaining ground upon them by improving on himself; and he now
felt the ill effects of the re-action of this injudicious proceeding. He
had no real love of his art, and therefore did not apply or give his
whole mind sedulously to it; and was more bent on bespeaking notoriety
beforehand by puffs and announcements of his works, than on giving them
that degree of perfection which would ensure lasting reputation. No one
would ever attain the highest excellence, who had so little nervous
sensibility as to take credit for it (either with himself or others)
without being at the trouble of producing it. It was securing the reward
in the first instance; and afterwards, it would be too much to expect
the necessary exertion or sacrifices. Unlimited credit was as dangerous
to success in art as in business. ‘And yet he still finds dupes,’ said
Northcote; to which I replied, it was impossible to resist him, as long
as you kept on terms with him: any difference of opinion or reluctance
on your part made no impression on him, and unless you quarrelled with
him downright, you must do as he wished you.—‘And how then,’ said
Northcote, ‘do you think it possible for a person of this hard
unyielding disposition to be a painter, where every thing depends on
seizing the nicest inflections of feeling and the most evanescent shades
of beauty?

‘No, I’ll tell you why he cannot be a painter. He has not virtue enough.
No one can give out to others what he has not in himself, and there is
nothing in his mind to delight or captivate the world. I will not deny
the mechanical dexterity, but he fails in the mental part. There was Sir
Peter Lely: he is full of defects; but he was the fine gentleman of his
age, and you see this character stamped on every one of his works;—even
his errors prove it; and this is one of those things that the world
receive with gratitude. Sir Joshua again was not without his faults: he
had not grandeur, but he was a man of a mild, bland, amiable character;
and this predominant feeling appears so strongly in his works, that you
cannot mistake it; and this is what makes them so delightful to look at,
and constitutes their charm to others, even without their being
conscious of it. There was such a look of nature too. I remember once
going through a suite of rooms where they were shewing me several fine
Vandykes; and we came to one where there were some children, by Sir
Joshua, seen through a door—it was like looking at the reality, they
were so full of life—the branches of the trees waved over their heads,
and the fresh air seemed to play on their cheeks—I soon forgot Vandyke!

‘So, in the famous St. Jerome of Correggio, Garrick used to say, that
the Saint resembled a Satyr, and that the child was like a monkey; but
then there is such a look of life in the last, it dazzles you with
spirit and vivacity; you can hardly believe but it will move or
fly;—indeed, Sir Joshua took his Puck from it, only a little varied in
the attitude.’ I said I had seen it not long ago, and that it had
remarkably the look of a spirit or a faery or preternatural being,
though neither beautiful nor dignified. I remarked to Northcote, that I
had never sufficiently relished Correggio; that I had tried several
times to work myself up to the proper degree of admiration, but that I
always fell back again into my former state of lukewarmness and
scepticism; though I could not help allowing, that what he did, he
appeared to me to do with more feeling than any body else; that I could
conceive Raphael or even Titian to have represented objects from mere
natural capacity (as we see them in a looking-glass) without being
absolutely wound up in them, but that I could fancy Correggio’s pencil
to thrill with sensibility: he brooded over the idea of grace or beauty
in his mind till the sense grew faint with it; and like a lover or a
devotee, he carried his enthusiasm to the brink of extravagance and
affectation, so enamoured was he of his art! Northcote assented to this
as a just criticism, and said, ‘That is why his works must live: but X—
is a hardened egotist, devoted to nothing but himself!’ Northcote then
asked about —, and if she was handsome? I said she might sit for the
portrait of Rebecca in Ivanhoe!

He then turned the conversation to Brambletye-House. He thought the
writer had failed in Charles II. and Rochester. Indeed, it was a daring
attempt to make _bons mots_ for two such characters. The wit must be
sharp and fine indeed, that would do to put into their mouths: even Sir
Walter might tremble to undertake it! He had made Milton speak too: this
was almost as dangerous an attempt as for Milton to put words into the
mouth of the Deity. The great difficulty was to know where to stop, and
not to trespass on forbidden ground. Cervantes was one of the boldest
and most original inventors; yet he had never ventured beyond his depth.
He had in the person of his hero really represented the maxims of
benevolence and generosity inculcated by the Christian religion: that
was a law to him; and by his fine conception of the subject, he had
miraculously succeeded. Shakspeare alone could be said in his grotesque
creations to be above all law. Richardson had succeeded admirably in
Clarissa, because he had a certain rule to go by or certain things to
avoid, for a perfect woman was a negative character; but he had failed
in Sir Charles Grandison, and made him a lump of odious affectation,
because a perfect man is not a negative, but a positive character; and
in aiming at faultlessness, he had produced only the most vapid
effeminacy. After all, Brambletye-House was about as good as the
_Rejected Addresses_. There was very little difference between a parody
and an imitation. The defects and peculiarities are equally seized upon
in either case.

He did not know how Sir Walter would take it. To have imitators seemed
at first a compliment, yet no one liked it. You could not put Fuseli in
a greater passion than by calling Maria Cosway an imitator of his.
Nothing made Sir Joshua so mad, as Miss Reynolds’s portraits, which were
an exact imitation of all his defects. Indeed, she was obliged to keep
them out of his way. He said, ‘They made every body else laugh, and
himself cry.’ It is that which makes every one dread a mimic. Your
self-love is alarmed, without being so easily reassured. You know there
is a difference, but it is not great enough to make you feel quite at
ease. The line of demarcation between the true and the spurious is not
sufficiently broad and palpable. The copy you see is vile or
indifferent; and the original, you suspect (but for your partiality to
yourself) is not perhaps much better.

This is what I have often felt in looking at the drawings of the
students at the Academy, or when young artists have brought their first
crude attempts for my opinion. The glaring defects, the abortive efforts
have almost disgusted me with the profession. Good G—d! I have said, is
this what the art is made up of? How do I know that my own productions
may not appear in the same light to others? Whereas the seeing the
finest specimens of art, instead of disheartening, gives me courage to
proceed: one cannot be wrong in treading in the same footsteps, and to
fall short of them is no disgrace, while the faintest reflection of
their excellence is glorious. It was this that made Correggio cry out on
seeing Raphael’s works, ‘I also am a painter’: he felt a kindred spirit
in his own breast.—I said, I recollected when I was formerly trying to
paint, nothing gave me the horrors so much as passing the old battered
portraits at the doors of brokers’ shops, with the morning-sun flaring
full upon them. I was generally inclined to prolong my walk, and put off
painting for that day; but the sight of a fine picture had a contrary
effect, and I went back and set to work with redoubled ardour.

Northcote happened to speak of a gentleman married to one of the —, of
whom a friend had said, laughing, ‘There’s a man that’s in love with his
own wife!’ He mentioned the beautiful Lady F— P—, and said her hair,
which was in great quantities and very fine, was remarkable for having a
single lock different from all the rest, which he supposed she cherished
as a beauty. I told him I had not long ago seen the hair of Lucretia
Borgia, of Milton, Buonaparte, and Dr. Johnson, all folded up in the
same paper. It had belonged to Lord Byron. Northcote replied, one could
not be sure of that; it was easy to get a lock of hair, and call it by
any name one pleased. In some cases, however, one might rely on its
being the same. Mrs. G— had certainly a lock of Goldsmith’s hair, for
she and her sister (Miss Horneck) had wished to have some remembrance of
him after his death; and though the coffin was nailed up, it was opened
again at their request (such was the regard Goldsmith was known to have
for them!), and a lock of his hair was cut off, which Mrs. G— still has.
Northcote said, Goldsmith’s death was the severest blow Sir Joshua ever
received—he did not paint all that day! It was proposed to make a grand
funeral for him, but Reynolds objected to this, as it would be over in a
day, and said it would be better to lay by the money to erect a monument
to him in Westminster Abbey; and he went himself and chose the spot.
Goldsmith had begun another novel, of which he read the first chapter to
the Miss Hornecks a little before his death. Northcote asked, what I
thought of the Vicar of Wakefield? And I answered, What every body else
did. He said there was that mixture of the ludicrous and the pathetic
running through it, which particularly delighted him: it gave a stronger
resemblance to nature. He thought this justified Shakspeare in mingling
up farce and tragedy together: life itself was a tragi-comedy. Instead
of being pure, every thing was chequered. If you went to an execution,
you would perhaps see an apple-woman in the greatest distress, because
her stall was overturned, at which you could not help smiling. We then
spoke of ‘Retaliation,’ and praised the character of Burke in particular
as a masterpiece. Nothing that he had ever said or done but what was
foretold in it; nor was he painted as the principal figure in the
foreground with the partiality of a friend, or as the great man of the
day, but with a back-ground of history, showing both what he was and
what he might have been. Northcote repeated some lines from the
‘Traveller,’ which were distinguished by a beautiful transparency, by
simplicity and originality. He confirmed Boswell’s account of Goldsmith,
as being about the middle height, rather clumsy, and tawdry in his
dress.

A gentleman came in who had just shown his good taste in purchasing
three pictures of Northcote, one a head of Sir Joshua by himself, and
the other two by Northcote, a whole-length portrait of an Italian girl,
and a copy of Omai, the South-Sea Chief. I could hear the artist in the
outer room expressing some scruples as to the consistency of his parting
with one of them which he had brought from abroad, according to the
strict letter of his Custom-House oath—an objection which the purchaser,
a Member of Parliament, over-ruled by assuring him that ‘the peculiar
case could not be contemplated by the spirit of the act.’ Northcote also
expressed some regret at the separation from pictures that had become
old friends. He however comforted himself that they would now find a
respectable asylum, which was better than being knocked about in garrets
and auction-rooms, as they would inevitably be at his death. ‘You may at
least depend upon it,’ said Mr. — ‘that they will not be sold again for
many generations!’ This view into futurity brought back to my mind the
time when I had first known these pictures: since then, my life was
flown, and with it the hope of fame as an artist (with which I had once
regarded them), and I felt a momentary pang. Northcote took me out into
the other room, when his friend was gone, to look at them; and on my
expressing my admiration of the portrait of the Italian lady, he said
she was the mother of Madame Bellochi, and was still living; that he had
painted it at Rome about the year 1780; that her family was originally
Greek, and that he had known her, her daughter, her mother, and
grandmother. She and a sister who was with her, were at that time full
of the most charming gaiety and innocence. The old woman used to sit
upon the ground without moving or speaking, with her arm over her head,
and exactly like a bundle of old clothes. Alas! thought I, what are we
but a heap of clay resting upon the earth, and ready to crumble again
into dust and ashes!

                      CONVERSATION THE THIRTEENTH

Northcote spoke about the failure of some print-sellers. He said, ‘He
did not wonder at it; it was a just punishment of their presumption and
ignorance. They went into an Exhibition, looked round them, fixed upon
some contemptible performance, and without knowing any thing about the
matter or consulting any body, ordered two or three thousand pounds’
worth of prints from it, merely out of purse-proud insolence, and
because the money _burnt in their pockets_. Such people fancied that the
more money they laid out, the more they must get; so that extravagance
became (by the turn their vanity gave to it) another name for thrift.’
Having spoken of a living artist’s pictures as mere portraits that were
interesting to no one except the people who sat for them, he remarked,
‘There was always something in the meanest face that a great artist
could take advantage of. That was the merit of Sir Joshua, who contrived
to throw a certain air and character even over ugliness and folly, that
disarmed criticism and made you wonder how he did it. This, at least, is
the case with his portraits; for though he made his beggars look like
heroes, he sometimes, in attempting history, made his heroes look like
beggars. Grandi, the Italian colour-grinder, sat to him for King Henry
VI. in the _Death of Cardinal Beaufort_, and he looks not much better
than a train-bearer or one in a low and mean station: if he had sat to
him for his portrait, he would have made him look like a king! That was
what made Fuseli observe in joke that “Grandi never held up his head
after Sir Joshua painted him in his Cardinal Beaufort!” But the pictures
I speak of are poor dry _fac-similes_ (in a little timid manner and with
an attempt at drapery) of imbecile creatures, whose appearance is a
satire on themselves and mankind. Neither can I conceive why L— should
be sent over to paint Charles X. A French artist said to me on that
occasion, ‘We have very fine portrait-painters in Paris, Sir!’... The
poor engraver would be the greatest sufferer by these expensive prints.
Tradespeople now-a-days did not look at the thing with an eye to
business, but ruined themselves and others by setting up for _would-be_
patrons and judges of the art.

              ‘Some demon whisper’d, Visto, have a taste!’

I said I thought L—’s pictures might do very well as mirrors for
personal vanity to contemplate itself in (as you looked in the glass to
see how you were dressed), but that it was a mistake to suppose they
would interest any one else or were addressed to the world at large.
They were private, not public property. They never caught the eye in a
shop window; but were (as it appeared to me) a kind of _lithographic_
painting, or thin, meagre outlines without the depth and richness of the
art. I mentioned to Northcote the pleasure I had formerly taken in a
little print of _Gadshill_ from a sketch of his own, which I used at one
time to pass a certain shop-window on purpose to look at. He said, ‘It
was impossible to tell beforehand what would hit the public. You might
as well pretend to say what ticket would turn up a prize in the lottery.
It was not chance neither, but some unforeseen coincidence between the
subject and the prevailing taste, that you could not possibly be a judge
of. I had once painted two pictures; one of a Fortune-teller (a boy with
a monkey), and another called ‘The Visit to the Grandmother;’ and
Raphael Smith came to me and wanted to engrave them, being willing to
give a handsome sum for the first, but only to do the last as an
experiment. He sold ten times as many of the last as of the first, and
told me that there were not less than five different impressions done of
it in Paris; and once when I went to his house to get one to complete a
set of engravings after my designs, they asked me six guineas for a
proof-impression! This was too much, but I was delighted that I could
not afford to pay for my own work, from the value that was set upon
it!’—I said, people were much alarmed at the late failures, and thought
there would be a ‘blow-up,’ in the vulgar phrase.—‘Surely you can’t
suppose so? A blow-up! Yes, of adventurers and upstarts, but not of the
country, if they mean that. This is like the man who thought that
gin-drinking would put an end to the world. Oh! no—the country will go
on just as before, bating the distress to individuals. You may form an
idea on the subject if you ever go to look at the effects of a fire the
day after: you see nothing but smoke and ruins and bare walls, and think
the damage can never be repaired; but if you pass by the same way a week
after, you will find the houses all built up just as they were before or
even better than ever! No, there is the same wealth, the same industry
and ingenuity in the country as there was before; and till you destroy
that, you cannot destroy the country. These temporary distresses are
only like disorders in the body, that carry off its bad and superfluous
humours.

‘My neighbour Mr. Rowe, the bookseller, informed me the other day that
Signora Cecilia Davies frequently came to his shop, and always inquired
after me. Did you ever hear of her?’ No never! ‘She must be very old
now. Fifty years ago, in the time of Garrick, she made a vast sensation.
All England rang with her name. I do assure you, that in this respect
Madame Catalani was not more talked of. Afterwards she had retired to
Florence, and was the _Prima Donna_ there, when Storace first came out.
This was at the time when Mr. Hoare and myself were in Italy; and I
remember we went to call upon her. She had then in a great measure
fallen off, but she was still very much admired. What a strange thing a
reputation of this kind is, that the person herself survives, and sees
the meteors of fashion rise and fall one after another, while she
remains totally disregarded as if there had been no such person, yet
thinking all the while that she was better than any of them! I have
hardly heard her name mentioned in the last thirty years, though in her
time she was quite as famous as any one since.’ I said, an
_Opera_-reputation was after all but a kind of _Private Theatricals_ and
confined to a small circle, compared with that of the regular stage,
which all the world were judges of and took an interest in. It was but
the echo of a sound, or like the blaze of phosphorus that did not
communicate to the surrounding objects. It belonged to a fashionable
_coterie_, rather than to the public, and might easily die away at the
end of the season. I then observed I was more affected by the fate of
players than by that of any other class of people. They seemed to me
more to be pitied than any body—the contrast was so great between the
glare, the noise, and intoxication of their first success, and the
mortifications and neglect of their declining years. They were made
drunk with popular applause; and when this stimulus was withdrawn, must
feel the insignificance of ordinary life particularly vapid and
distressing. There were no sots like the _sots of vanity_. There were no
traces left of what they had been, any more than of a forgotten dream;
and they had no consolation but in their own conceit, which, when it was
without other vouchers, was a very uneasy comforter. I had seen some
actors who had been favourites in my youth and ‘cried up in the top of
the compass,’ treated, from having grown old and infirm, with the utmost
indignity and almost hooted from the stage. I had seen poor — come
forward under these circumstances to stammer out an apology with the
tears in his eyes (which almost brought them into mine) to a set of
apprentice-boys and box-lobby loungers, who neither knew nor cared what
a fine performer and a fine gentleman he was thought twenty years ago.
Players were so far particularly unfortunate. The theatrical public have
a very short memory. Every four or five years there is a new audience,
who know nothing but of what they have before their eyes, and who
pronounce summarily upon this, without any regard to past obligations or
past services, and with whom the veterans of the stage stand a bad
chance indeed, as their former triumphs are entirely forgotten, while
they appear as living vouchers against themselves. ‘Do you remember,’
said Northcote, ‘Sheridan’s beautiful lines on the subject in his
_Monody on Garrick_?’ I said, I did; and that it was probably the
reading them early that had impressed this feeling so strongly on my
mind. Northcote then remarked, ‘I think a great beauty is most to be
pitied. She completely outlives herself. She has been used to the most
bewitching homage, to have the highest court paid and the most
flattering things said to her by all those who approach her, and to be
received with looks of delight and surprise wherever she comes; and she
afterwards not only finds herself deprived of all this and reduced to a
cypher, but sees it all transferred to another, who has become the
reigning toast and beauty of the day in her stead. It must be a most
violent shock. It is like a king who is dethroned and reduced to serve
as a page in his own palace. I remember once being struck with seeing
the Duchess of —, the same that Sir Joshua painted, and who was a
miracle of beauty when she was young, and followed by crowds wherever
she went—I was coming out of Mrs. W—’s; and on the landing-place, there
was she standing by herself, and calling over the bannister for her
servant to come to her. If she had been as she once was, a thousand
admirers would have flown to her assistance; but her face was painted
over like a mask, and there was hardly any appearance of life left but
the restless motion of her eyes. I was really hurt.’ I answered, the
late Queen had much the same painful look that he described—her face
highly _rouged_, and her eyes rolling in her head like an automaton, but
she had not the mortification of having ever been a great beauty. ‘There
was a Miss —, too,’ Northcote added, ‘who was a celebrated beauty when
she was a girl, and who also sat to Sir Joshua. I saw her not long ago
and she was grown as coarse and vulgar as possible; she was like an
apple-woman or would do to keep the _Three Tuns_. The change must be
very mortifying. To be sure, there is one thing, it comes on by degrees.
The ravages of the small-pox must formerly have been a dreadful blow!’
He said, literary men or men of talent in general were the best off in
this respect. The reputation they acquired was not only lasting, but
gradually grew stronger, if it was deserved. I agreed they were seldom
spoiled by flattery, and had no reason to complain _after they were
dead_. ‘Nor while they are living,’ said N—, ‘if it is not their own
fault.’ He mentioned an instance of a trial about an engraving where he,
West, and others had to appear, and of the respect that was shown them.
Erskine after flourishing away, made an attempt to puzzle Stothard by
drawing two angles on a piece of paper, an acute and an obtuse one, and
asking, ‘Do you mean to say these two are alike?’ ‘Yes, I do,’ was the
answer. ‘I see,’ said Erskine, turning round, ‘there is nothing to be
got by _angling_ here!’ West was then called upon to give his evidence,
and there was immediately a lane made for him to come forward, and a
stillness that you could hear a pin drop. The Judge (Lord Kenyon) then
addressed him, ‘Sir Benjamin, we shall be glad to hear your opinion!’
Mr. West answered, ‘He had never received the honour of a title from his
Majesty;’ and proceeded to explain the difference between the two
engravings which were charged with being copies the one of the other,
with such clearness and knowledge of the art, though in general he was a
bad speaker, that Lord Kenyon said when he had done, ‘I suppose,
gentlemen, you are perfectly satisfied—I perceive there is much more in
this than I had any idea of, and am sorry I did not make it more my
study when I was young!’ I remarked that I believed corporations of art
or letters might meet with a certain attention; but it was the
stragglers and candidates that were knocked about with very little
ceremony. Talent or merit only wanted a frame of some sort or other to
set it off to advantage. Those of my way of thinking were ‘bitter bad
judges’ on this point. A Tory scribe who treated mankind as rabble and
_canaille_, was regarded by them in return as a fine gentleman: a
reformer like myself, who stood up for liberty and equality, was taken
at his word by the very journeymen that set up his paragraphs, and could
not get a civil answer from the meanest shop-boy in the employ of those
on his own side of the question. N— laughed and said, I irritated myself
too much about such things. He said it was one of Sir Joshua’s maxims
that the art of life consisted in not being overset by trifles. We
should look at the bottom of the account, not at each individual item in
it, and see how the balance stands at the end of the year. We should be
satisfied if the path of life is clear before us, and not fret at the
straws or pebbles that lie in our way. What you have to look to is
whether you can get what you write printed, and whether the public will
read it, and not to busy yourself with the remarks of shop-boys or
printers’ devils. They can do you neither harm nor good. The
impertinence of mankind is a thing that no one can guard against.

                      CONVERSATION THE FOURTEENTH

Northcote shewed me a poem with engravings of Dartmoor, which were too
fine by half. I said I supposed Dartmoor would look more gay and smiling
after having been thus illustrated, like a dull author who has been
praised by a Reviewer. I had once been nearly benighted there and was
delighted to get to the inn at Ashburton. ‘That,’ said N—, ‘is the only
good of such places that you are glad to escape from them, and look back
to them with a pleasing horror ever after. Commend me to the Valdarno or
Vallambrosa, where you are never weary of new charms, and which you quit
with a sigh of regret. I have, however, told my young friend who sent me
the poem, that he has shown his genius in creating beauties where there
were none, and extracting enthusiasm from rocks and quagmires. After
that, he may write a very interesting poem on Kamschatka!’ He then spoke
of the Panorama of the North Pole which had been lately exhibited, of
the ice-bergs, the seals lying asleep on the shore, and the strange
twilight as well worth seeing. He said, it would be curious to know the
effect, if they could get to the Pole itself, though it must be
impossible: the veins, he should suppose, would burst, and the vessel
itself go to pieces from the extreme cold. I asked if he had ever read
an account of twelve men who had been left all the winter in Greenland,
and of the dreadful shifts to which they were reduced? He said, he had
not.—They were obliged to build two booths of wood one within the other;
and if they had to go into the outer one during the severity of the
weather, unless they used great precaution, their hands were blistered
by whatever they took hold of as if it had been red-hot iron. The most
interesting part was the account of their waiting for the return of
light at the approach of spring, and the delight with which they first
saw the sun shining on the tops of the frozen mountains. N— said, ‘This
is the great advantage of descriptions of extraordinary situations by
uninformed men: Nature as it were holds the pen for them; they give you
what is most striking in the circumstances, and there is nothing to draw
off the attention from the strong and actual impression, so that it is
the next thing to the reality. G— was here the other day, and I showed
him the note from my bookseller about the _Fables_, with which you were
so much pleased, but he saw nothing in it. I then said G— is not one of
those who look attentively at nature or draw much from that source. Yet
the rest is but like building castles in the air, if it is not founded
in observation and experience. Or it is like the enchanted money in the
_Arabian Nights_, which turned to dry leaves when you came to make use
of it. It is ingenious and amusing, and so far it is well to be amused
when you can; but you learn nothing from the fine hypothesis you have
been reading, which is only a better sort of dream, bright and vague and
utterly inapplicable to the purposes of common life. G— does not appeal
to nature, but to art and execution. There is another thing (which it
seems harsh and presumptuous to say, but) he appears to me not always to
perceive the difference between right and wrong. There are many others
in the same predicament, though not such splendid examples of it. He is
satisfied to make out a plausible case, to give the _pros_ and _cons_
like a lawyer; but he has no instinctive bias or feeling one way or
other, except as he can give a studied reason for it. Common sense is
out of the question: such people despise common sense, and the quarrel
between them is a mutual one. Caleb Williams, notwithstanding, is a
decidedly original work: the rest are the sweepings of his study. That
is but one thing, to be sure; but no one does more than one thing.
Northcote said that Sir Joshua used to say that no one produced more
than six original things. I always said it was wrong to fix upon this
number—five out of the six would be found upon examination to be
repetitions of the first. A man can no more produce six original works
than he can be six individuals at once. Whatever is the strong and
prevailing bent of his genius, he will stamp upon some master-work; and
what he does else, will be only the same thing over again, a little
better or a little worse; or if he goes out of his way in search of
variety and to avoid himself, he will merely become a common-place man
or an imitator of others. You see this plainly enough in Cervantes—that
he has exhausted himself in the Don Quixote. He has put his whole
strength into it: his other works are no better than what other people
could write. If there is any exception, it is Shakspeare: he seems to
have had the faculty of dividing himself into a number of persons. His
writings stand out from every thing else, and from one another. Othello,
Lear, Macbeth, Falstaff are striking and original characters; but they
die a natural death at the end of the fifth act, and no more come to
life again than the people themselves would. He is not reduced to repeat
himself or revive former inventions under feigned names. This is
peculiar to him; still it is to be considered that plays are short works
and only allow room for the expression of a part. But in a work of the
extent of Don Quixote, the writer had scope to bring in all he wanted;
and indeed there is no point of excellence which he has not touched from
the highest courtly grace and most romantic enthusiasm down to the
lowest ribaldry and rustic ignorance, yet carried off with such an air
that you wish nothing away, and do not see what can be added to it.
Every bit is perfect; and the author has evidently given his whole mind
to it. That is why I believe that the _Scotch Novels_ are the production
of several hands. Some parts are careless, others straggling: it is only
where there is an opening for effect that the master-hand comes in, and
in general he leaves his work for others to get on with it. But in Don
Quixote there is not a single line that you may not swear belongs to
Cervantes.’—I inquired if he had read WOODSTOCK? He answered, No, he had
not been able to get it. I said, I had been obliged to pay five
shillings for the loan of it at a regular bookseller’s shop (I could not
procure it at the circulating libraries), and that from the understood
feeling about Sir Walter no objection was made to this proposal, which
would in ordinary cases have been construed into an affront. I had well
nigh repented my bargain, but there were one or two scenes that repaid
me (though none equal to his best,) and in general it was very
indifferent. The plot turned chiefly on English Ghost-scenes, a very
mechanical sort of phantoms who dealt in practical jokes and personal
annoyances, turning beds upside down and sousing you all over with
water, instead of supernatural and visionary horrors. It was very bad
indeed, but might be intended to contrast the literal, matter-of-fact
imagination of the _Southron_ with the loftier impulses of Highland
superstition. Charles II. was not spared, and was brought in admirably
(when in disguise) as a raw, awkward Scotch lad, Master Kerneguy.
Cromwell was made a fine, bluff, overbearing blackguard, who exercised a
personal superiority wherever he came, but was put in situations which I
thought wholly out of character, and for which I apprehended there was
no warrant in the history of the times. They were therefore so far
improper. A romance-writer might take an incident and work it out
according to his fancy or might build an imaginary superstructure on the
ground of history, but he had no right to transpose the facts. For
instance, he had made Cromwell act as his own tip-staff and go to
Woodstock to take Charles II. in person. To be sure, he had made him
display considerable firmness and courage in the execution of this
errand (as Lavender might in being the first to enter a window to secure
a desperate robber)—but the plan itself, to say nothing of the immediate
danger, was contrary to Cromwell’s dignity as well as policy. Instead of
wishing to seize Charles with his own hand, he would naturally keep as
far aloof from such a scene as he could, and be desirous to have it
understood that he was anxious to shed as little more blood as possible.
Besides, he had higher objects in view, and would, I should think, care
not much more about Charles than about Master Kerneguy. He would be glad
to let him get away. In another place, he had made Cromwell start back
in the utmost terror at seeing a picture of Charles I. and act all the
phrenzy of Macbeth over again at the sight of Banquo’s ghost. This I
should also suppose to be quite out of character in a person of
Cromwell’s prosaic, determined habits _to fear a painted devil_. ‘No,’
said N—, ‘that is not the way he would look at it; it is seeing only a
part: but Cromwell was a greater philosopher than to act so. The other
story is more probable of his visiting the dead body of Charles in a
mask, and exclaiming in great agitation as he left the room, _Cruel
necessity_! Yet even this is not sufficiently authenticated. No; he knew
that it was come to this, that it was gone too far for either party to
turn back, and that it must be final with one of them. The only question
was whether he should give himself up as the victim, and so render all
that had been done useless, or exact the penalty from what he thought
the offending party. It was like a battle which must end fatally either
way, and no one thought of lamenting, because he was not on the losing
side. In a great public quarrel there was no room for these domestic and
personal regards: all you had to do was to consider well the justice of
the cause, before you appealed to the sword. Would Charles I. if he had
been victorious, have started at the sight of a picture of Cromwell? Yet
Cromwell was as much of a man as he, and as firm as the other was
obstinate.’ Northcote said, he wished he could remember the subject of a
dispute he had with G— to see if I did not think he had the best of it.
I replied, I should be more curious to hear something in which G— was
right, for he generally made it a rule to be in the wrong when speaking
of any thing. I mentioned having once had a very smart debate with him
about a young lady, of whom I had been speaking as very much like her
aunt, a celebrated authoress, and as what the latter, I conceived, might
have been at her time of life. G— said, when Miss — did any thing like
Evelina or Cecilia, he should then believe she was as clever as Madame
d’Arblay. I asked him whether he did not think Miss Burney was as clever
before she wrote those novels as she was after; or whether in general an
author wrote a successful work for being clever, or was clever because
he had written a successful work! Northcote laughed and said, ‘That was
so like G—.’ I observed that it arose out of his bigoted admiration of
literature, so that he could see no merit in any thing else; nor trust
to any evidence of talent but what was printed. It was much the same
fallacy that had sometimes struck me in the divines, who deduced
original sin from Adam’s eating the apple, and not his eating the apple
from original sin or a previous inclination to do something, that he
should not. Northcote remarked, that speaking of Evelina put him in mind
of what Opie had once told him, that when Dr. Johnson sat to him for his
picture, on his first coming to town, he asked him if it was true that
he had sat up all night to read Miss Burney’s new novel, as it had been
reported? And he made answer, ‘I never read it through at all, though I
don’t wish this to be known.’ Sir Joshua also pretended to have read it
through at a sitting, though it appeared to him (Northcote) affectation
in them both, who were thorough-paced men of the world, and hackneyed in
literature, to pretend to be so delighted with the performance of a
girl, in which they could find neither instruction nor any great
amusement, except from the partiality of friendship. So Johnson cried up
Savage, because they had slept on bulks when they were young; and lest
he should be degraded into a vagabond by the association, had elevated
the other into a genius. Such prevarication or tampering with his own
convictions was not consistent with the strict and formal tone of
morality which he assumed on other and sometimes very trifling
occasions, such as correcting Mrs. Thrale for saying that a bird flew in
at the door, instead of the window. I said, Savage, in my mind, was one
of those writers (like Chatterton) whose vices and misfortunes the world
made a _set-off_ to their genius, because glad to connect these ideas
together. They were only severe upon those who attacked their prejudices
or their consequence. Northcote replied, ‘Savage the architect was here
the other day, and asked me why I had abused his name-sake, and called
him an impostor. I answered, I had heard that character of him from a
person in an obscure rank of life, who had known him a little before his
death.’ Northcote proceeded: ‘People in that class are better judges
than poets and moralists, who explain away every thing by fine words and
doubtful theories. The mob are generally right in their summary
judgments upon offenders. A man is seldom ducked or pumped upon or
roughly handled by them, unless he has deserved it. You see that in the
galleries at the play-house. They never let any thing pass that is
immoral; and they are even fastidious judges of wit. I remember there
was some gross expression in Goldsmith’s comedy the first night it came
out; and there was a great uproar in the gallery, and it was obliged to
be suppressed. Though rude and vulgar themselves, they do not like
vulgarity on the stage; they come there to be taught manners.’ I said,
they paid more attention than any body else; and after the curtain drew
up (though somewhat noisy before) were the best-behaved part of the
audience, unless something went wrong. As the common people sought for
refinement as a _treat_, people in high life were fond of grossness and
ribaldry as a relief to their overstrained affectation of gentility. I
could account in no other way for their being amused with the wretched
_slang_ in certain magazines and newspapers. I asked Northcote if he had
seen the third series of —? He had not. I said they were like the
composition of a footman, and I believed greatly admired in the upper
circles, who were glad to see an author arrange a side-board for them
over again with servile alacrity. He said, ‘They delight in low, coarse
buffoonery, because it sets off their own superiority: whereas the
rabble resent it when obtruded upon them, because they think it is meant
against themselves. They require the utmost elegance and propriety for
their money: as the showman says in Goldsmith’s comedy—“My bear dances
to none but the genteelest of tunes, _Water parted from the Sea_, or the
minuet in _Ariadne_!”’

Northcote then alluded to a new novel he had been reading. He said he
never read a book so full of words; which seemed ridiculous enough to
say, for a book was necessarily composed of words, but here there was
nothing else but words, to a degree that was surprising. Yet he believed
it was sought after, and indeed he could not get it at the common
library. ‘You are to consider, there must be books for all tastes and
all ages. You may despise it, but the world do not. There are books for
children till the time they are six years of age, such as
Jack-the-Giant-Killer, the Seven Champions of Christendom, Guy of
Warwick and others.[96] From that to twelve they like to read the
Pilgrim’s Progress and Robinson Crusoe, and then Fielding’s Novels and
Don Quixote: from twenty to thirty books of poetry, Milton, Pope,
Shakspeare: and from thirty history and philosophy—what suits us then
will serve us for the rest of our lives. For boarding-school girls
_Thomson’s Seasons_ has an immense attraction, though I never could read
it. Some people cannot get beyond a newspaper or a geographical
dictionary. What I mean to infer is that we ought not to condemn too
hastily, for a work may be approved by the public, though it does not
exactly hit our taste; nay, those may seem beauties to others which seem
faults to us. Why else do we pride ourselves on the superiority of our
judgment, if we are not more advanced in this respect than the majority
of readers? But our very fastidiousness should teach us toleration. You
have said very well of this novel, that it is a mixture of genteel and
romantic affectation. One objection to the excessive rhodomontade which
abounds in it is that you can learn nothing from such extravagant
fictions:—they are like nothing in the known world. I remember once
speaking to Richardson (Sheridan’s friend) about Shakspeare’s want of
morality, and he replied—“What! Shakspeare not moral? He is the most
moral of all writers, because he is the most natural!” And in this he
was right: for though Shakspeare did not intend to be moral, yet he
could not be otherwise as long as he adhered to the path of nature.
Morality only teaches us our duty by showing us the natural consequences
of our actions; and the poet does the same while he continues to give us
faithful and affecting pictures of human life—rewarding the good and
punishing the bad. So far truth and virtue are one. But that kind of
poetry which has not its foundation in nature, and is only calculated to
shock and surprise, tends to unhinge our notions of morality and of
every thing else in the ordinary course of Providence.’

Something being said of an artist who had attempted to revive the great
style in our times, and the question being put, whether Michael Angelo
and Raphael, had they lived now, would not have accommodated themselves
to the modern practice, I said, it appeared to me that (whether this was
the case or not) they could not have done what they did without the aid
of circumstances; that for an artist to raise himself above all
surrounding opinions, customs, and institutions by a mere effort of the
will, was affectation and folly, like attempting to fly in the air; and
that, though great genius might exist without the opportunities
favourable to its development, yet it must draw its nourishment from
circumstances, and suck in inspiration from its native air. There was
Hogarth—he was surely a genius; still the manners of his age were
necessary to him: teeming as his works were with life, character, and
spirit, they would have been poor and vapid without the night-cellars of
St. Giles’s, the drawing-rooms of St. James’s! Would he in any
circumstances have been a Raphael or a Phidias? I think not. But had he
been twenty times a Raphael or a Phidias, I am quite sure it would never
have appeared in the circumstances in which he was placed. Two things
are necessary to all great works and great excellence, the mind of the
individual and the mind of the age or country co-operating with his own
genius. The last brings out the first, but the first does not imply or
supersede the last. Pictures for Protestant churches are a contradiction
in terms, where they are not objects of worship but of idle
curiosity:—where there is not the adoration, the enthusiasm in the
spectator, how can it exist in the artist? The spark of genius is only
kindled into a flame by sympathy.—Northcote spoke highly of Vanbrugh and
of the calm superiority with which he bore the attacks of Swift, Pope,
and that set who made a point of decrying all who did not belong to
their party. He said Burke and Sir Joshua thought his architecture far
from contemptible; and his comedies were certainly first-rate. Richards
(the scene-painter) had told him, the players thought the Provoked
Husband the best acting play on the stage; and Godwin said the
City-Wives’ Confederacy (taken from an indifferent French play) was the
best written one. I ventured to add, that the Trip to Scarborough
(altered but not improved by Sheridan) was not inferior to either of the
others. I should doubt whether the direction given at Sir Tunbelly’s
castle on the arrival of Young Fashion—‘Let loose the grey-hound, and
lock up Miss Hoyden!’—would be in Sheridan’s version, who, like most of
his countrymen, had a prodigious ambition of elegance. Northcote
observed, that talking of this put him in mind of a droll speech that
was made when the officers got up a play on board the vessel that went
lately to find out the North-West passage:—one of the sailors, who was
admiring the performance, and saying how clever it was, was interrupted
by the boatswain, who exclaimed—‘Clever! did you say? I call it
_philosophy_, by G—d!’ He asked, if he had ever mentioned to me that
anecdote of Lord Mansfield, who, when an old woman was brought before
him as a witch, and was charged, among other improbable things, with
walking through the air, attended coolly to the evidence, and then
dismissed the complaint by saying, ‘My opinion is that this good woman
be suffered to return home, and whether she shall do this, walking on
the ground or riding through the air, must be left entirely to her own
pleasure, for there is nothing contrary to the laws of England in
either!’ I mentioned a very fine dancer at the Opera (Mademoiselle
Brocard) with whom I was much delighted; and Northcote observed that
where there was grace and beauty accompanying the bodily movements, it
was very hard to deny the mental refinement or the merit of this art. He
could not see why that which was so difficult to do, and which gave so
much pleasure to others, was to be despised. He remembered seeing some
young people at Parma (though merely in a country-dance) exhibit a
degree of perfection in their movements that seemed to be inspired by
the very genius of grace and gaiety. Miss Reynolds used to say that
perfection was much the same in everything—nobody could assign the
limits. I said authors alone were privileged to suppose that all
excellence was confined to words. Till I was twenty I thought there was
nothing in the world but books: when I began to paint I found there were
two things, both difficult to do and worth doing; and I concluded from
that time there might be fifty. At least I was willing to allow every
one his own choice. I recollect a certain poet saying ‘he should like to
_ham-string_ those fellows at the Opera’—I suppose because the Great
would rather see them dance than read _Kehama_. Whatever can be done in
such a manner that you can fancy a God to do it, must have something in
its nature divine. The ancients had assigned Gods to dancing as well as
to music and poetry, to the different attributes and perfections both of
body and mind; and perhaps the plurality of the heathen deities was
favourable to a liberality of taste and opinion. NORTHCOTE: ‘The most
wretched scribbler looks down upon the greatest painter as a mere
mechanic: but who would compare Lord Byron with Titian?’

                       CONVERSATION THE FIFTEENTH

I went to Northcote in the evening to consult about his _Fables_. He was
downstairs in the parlour, and talked much as usual: but the difference
of the accompaniments, the sitting down, the preparations for tea, the
carpet and furniture, and a little fat lap-dog interfered with old
associations and took something from the charm of his conversation. He
spoke of a Mr. Laird who had been employed to see his _Life of Sir
Joshua_ through the press, and whom he went to call upon in an upper
story in Peterborough-Court, Fleet-street, where he was surrounded by
his books, his implements of writing, a hand-organ, and his coffee-pots;
and he said he envied him this retreat more than any palace he had ever
happened to enter. Northcote was not very well, and repeated his
complaints. I said I thought the air (now summer was coming on) would do
him more good than physic. His apothecary had been describing the
dissection of the elephant, which had just been killed at Exeter
‘Change. It appeared that instead of the oil which usually is found in
the joints of animals, the interstices were in this case filled up with
a substance resembling a kind of white paint. This Northcote considered
as a curious instance of the wise contrivance of nature in the
adaptation of means to ends; for even in pieces of artificial mechanism,
though they use oil to lubricate the springs and wheels of clocks and
other common-sized instruments, yet in very large and heavy ones, such
as steam-engines, &c. they are obliged to use grease, pitch, and other
more solid substances, to prevent the friction. If they could dissect a
flea, what a fine, evanescent fluid would be found to lubricate its
slender joints and assist its light movements! Northcote said the
bookseller wished to keep the original copy of the _Fables_ to bind up
as a literary curiosity. I objected to this proceeding as unfair. There
were several slips of the pen and slovenlinesses of style (for which I
did not think him at all accountable, since an artist wrote with his
left hand, and painted with his right) and I did not see why these
accidental inadvertences, arising from diffidence and want of practice,
should be as it were enshrined and brought against him. He said, ‘Mr. P—
H— tasked me the hardest in what I wrote in the _Artist_. He pointed out
where I was wrong, and sent it back to me to correct it. After all, what
I did there was thought the best!’ I said Mr. H— was too fastidious, and
spoiled what he did from a wish to have it perfect. He dreaded that a
shadow of objection should be brought against any thing he advanced, so
that his opinions at last amounted to a kind of genteel truisms. One
must risk something in order to do any thing. I observed that this was
remarkable in so clever a man; but it seemed as if there were some
fatality by which the most lively and whimsical writers, if they went
out of their own eccentric path and attempted to be serious, became
exceedingly grave and even insipid. His farces were certainly very
spirited and original: NO SONG NO SUPPER was the first play I had ever
seen, and I felt grateful to him for this. Northcote agreed that it was
very delightful; and said there was a volume of it when he first read it
to them one night at Mrs. Rundle’s, and that the players cut it down a
good deal and supplied a number of things. There was a great piece of
work to alter the songs for Madame Storace, who played in it and who
could not pronounce half the English terminations. MY GRANDMOTHER, too,
was a laughable idea, very ingeniously executed; and some of the songs
in this had an equal portion of elegance and drollery, such as that in
particular—

                   For alas! long before I was born,
                   My fair one had died of old age!

Still some of his warmest admirers were hurt at their being farces—if
they had been comedies, they would have been satisfied, for nothing
could be greater than their success. They were the next to O’Keefe’s,
who in that line was the English Moliere.

Northcote asked if I remembered the bringing out of any of O’Keefe’s? I
answered, No. He said ‘It had the oddest effect imaginable—at one moment
they seemed on the point of being damned, and the next moment you were
convulsed with laughter. Edwin was inimitable in some of them. He was
one of those actors, it is true, who carried a great deal off the stage
with him, that he would willingly have left behind, and so far could not
help himself. But his awkward, shambling figure in Bowkitt the
dancing-master, was enough to make one die with laughing. He was also
unrivalled in _Lingo_, where he was admirably supported by Mrs. Wells in
Cowslip, when she prefers “a roast duck” to all the birds in the Heathen
Mythology—and in _Peeping Tom_, where he merely puts his head out, the
faces that he made threw the audience into a roar.’ I said, I remembered
no further back than B—, who used to delight me excessively in
_Lenitive_ in the Prize, when I was a boy. Northcote said, he was an
imitator of Edwin, but at a considerable distance. He was a
good-natured, agreeable man; and the audience were delighted with him,
because he was evidently delighted with them. In some respects he was a
caricaturist: for instance, in Lenitive he stuck his pigtail on end,
which he had no right to do, for no one had ever done it but himself. I
said Liston appeared to me to have more comic humour than any one in my
time, though he was not properly an actor. Northcote asked if he was not
low-spirited; and told the story (I suspect an old one) of his
consulting a physician on the state of his health, who recommended him
to go and see Liston. I said he was grave and prosing, but I did not
know there was any thing the matter with him, though I had seen him
walking along the street the other day with his face as fixed as if had
a lock-jaw, a book in his hand, looking neither to the right nor the
left, and very much like his own Lord Duberly. I did not see why he and
Matthews should both of them be so _hipped_, except from their having
_the player’s melancholy_, arising from their not seeing six hundred
faces on the broad grin before them at all other times as well as when
they were acting. He was, however, exceedingly unaffected, and
remarkably candid in judging of other actors. He always spoke in the
highest terms of Munden, whom I considered as overdoing his parts.[97]
Northcote said, ‘Munden was excellent but an artificial actor. You
should have seen Weston,’ he continued. ‘It was impossible, from looking
at him, for any one to say that he was acting. You would suppose they
had gone out and found the actual character they wanted, and brought him
upon the stage without his knowing it. Even when they interrupted him
with peals of laughter and applause, he looked about him as if he was
not at all conscious of having any thing to do with it, and then went on
as before. In Scrub, Dr. Last, and other parts of that kind, he was
perfection itself. Garrick would never attempt Abel Drugger after him.
There was something peculiar in his face; for I knew an old
school-fellow of his who told me he used to produce the same effect when
a boy, and when the master asked what was the matter, his companions
would make answer—‘Weston looked _at me_, Sir!’ Yet he came out in
tragedy, as indeed they all did! Northcote inquired if I had seen
Garrick? I answered, ‘No—I could not very well, as he died the same year
I was born!’ I mentioned having lately met with a striking instance of
genealogical taste in a family, the grandfather of which thought nothing
of Garrick, the father thought nothing of Mrs. Siddons, and the daughter
could make nothing of the Scotch Novels, but admired Mr. Theodore Hook’s
‘SAYINGS AND DOINGS!’

Northcote then returned to the subject of his book and said, ‘Sir
Richard Phillips once wished me to do a very magnificent work indeed on
the subject of art. He was like Curil, who had a number of fine
title-pages, if any one could have written books to answer them. He came
here once with Godwin to shew me a picture which they had just
discovered of Chaucer, and which was to embellish Godwin’s _Life_ of
him. I told them it was certainly no picture of Chaucer, nor was any
such picture painted at that time.’ I said, Godwin had got a portrait
about a year ago which he wished me to suppose was a likeness of
President Bradshaw: I saw no reason for his thinking so, but that in
that case it would be worth a hundred pounds to him! Northcote expressed
a curiosity to have seen it, as he knew the descendants of the family at
Plymouth. He remembered one of them, an old lady of the name of Wilcox,
who used to walk about in Gibson’s-Field near the town, so prim and
starched, holding up her fan spread out like a peacock’s tail with such
an air, on account of her supposed relationship to one of the Regicides!
They paid, however (in the vulgar opinion) for this distinction; for
others of them bled to death at the nose, or died of the bursting of a
blood-vessel, which their wise neighbours did not fail to consider as a
judgment upon them.

Speaking of Dr. M—, he said, he had such a feeling of beauty in his
heart, that it made angels of every one around him. To check a person
who was running on against another, he once said, ‘You should not speak
in that manner, for you lead me to suppose you have the bad qualities
you are so prone to dwell upon in others.’—A transition was here made to
Lord Byron, who used to tell a story of a little red-haired girl, who,
when countesses and ladies of fashion were leaving the room where he was
in crowds (to _cut_ him after his quarrel with his wife) stopped short
near a table against which he was leaning, gave him a familiar nod, and
said, ‘You should have married me, and then this would not have happened
to you!’ A question being started whether Dr. M— was handsome, Northcote
answered, ‘I could see no beauty in him as to his outward person, but
there was an angelic sweetness of disposition that spread its influence
over his whole conversation and manner. He had not wit, but a fine
romantic enthusiasm which deceived himself and enchanted others. I
remember once his describing a picture by Rosa de Tivoli (at Saltram) of
_Two Bulls fighting_, and he gave such an account of their rage and
manner of tearing up the ground that I could not rest till we went over
to see it—when we came there, it was nothing but a coarse daub like what
might be expected from the painter: but he had made the rest out of a
vivid imagination. So my father told him a story of a bull-bait he had
seen in which the bull had run so furiously at the dog that he broke the
chain and pitched upon his head and was killed. Soon after, he came and
told us the same story as an incident he himself had witnessed. He did
not mean to deceive, but the image had made such an impression on his
fancy, that he believed it to be one that he had himself been an
eye-witness of.’ I was much amused with this account and I offered to
get him a copy of a whimsical production, of which a new edition had
been printed. I also recommended to him the _Spanish Rogue_, as a fine
mixture of drollery and grave moralizing. He spoke of _Lazarillo de
Tormes_ and of the _Cheats of Scapin_, the last of which he rated rather
low. The work was written by Scarron, whose widow, the famous Madame de
Maintenon, afterwards became mistress to Louis XIV.

                            PART THE SECOND

                       CONVERSATION THE SIXTEENTH

N.—That is your diffidence, which I can’t help thinking you carry too
far. For any one of real strength, you are the humblest person I ever
knew.

H.—It is owing to pride.

N.—You deny you have invention too. But it is want of practice. Your
ideas run on before your executive power. It is a common case. There was
Ramsay, of whom Sir Joshua used to say that he was the most sensible
among all the painters of his time; but he has left little to show it.
His manner was dry and timid. He stopped short in the middle of his
work, because he knew exactly how much it wanted. Now and then we find
hints and sketches which show what he might have been, if his hand had
been equal to his conceptions. I have seen a picture of his of the
Queen, soon after she was married—a profile, and slightly done; but it
was a paragon of elegance. She had a fan in her hand: Lord! how she held
that fan! It was weak in execution and ordinary in features—all I can
say of it is, that it was the farthest possible removed from everything
like vulgarity. A professor might despise it; but in the mental part, I
have never seen any thing of Vandyke’s equal to it. I could have looked
at it forever. I showed it to J—n; and he, I believe, came into my
opinion of it. I don’t know where it is now; but I saw in it enough to
convince me that Sir Joshua was right in what he said of Ramsay’s great
superiority. His own picture of the King, which is at the Academy, is a
finer composition and shows greater boldness and mastery of hand; but I
should find it difficult to produce any thing of Sir Joshua’s that
conveys an idea of more grace and delicacy than the one I have
mentioned. Reynolds would have finished it better: the other was afraid
of spoiling what he had done, and so left it a mere outline. He was
frightened before he was hurt.

H.—Taste and even genius is but a misfortune, without a correspondent
degree of manual dexterity or power of language to make it manifest.

N.—W— was here the other day. I believe you met him going out. He came,
he said, to ask me about the famous people of the last age, Johnson,
Burke, &c. (as I was almost the only person left who remembered them),
and was curious to know what figure Sir Walter Scott would have made
among them.

H.—That is so like a North-Briton—‘to make assurance doubly sure,’ and
to procure a signature to an acknowledged reputation as if it were a
receipt for the delivery of a bale of goods.

N.—I told him it was not for me to pronounce upon such men as Sir Walter
Scott: they came before another tribunal. They were of that height that
they were seen by all the world, and must stand or fall by the verdict
of posterity. It signified little what any individual thought in such
cases, it being equally an impertinence to set one’s self against or to
add one’s testimony to the public voice; but as far as I could judge, I
told him, that Sir Walter would have stood his ground in any company:
neither Burke nor Johnson nor any of their admirers would have been
disposed or able to set aside his pretensions. These men were not looked
upon in their day as they are at present: Johnson had his _Lexiphanes_,
and Goldsmith was laughed at—their merits were to the full as much
called in question, nay, more so, than those of the Author of _Waverley_
have ever been, who has been singularly fortunate in himself or in
lighting upon a barren age: but because their names have since become
established, and as it were sacred, we think they were always so; and W—
wanted me, as a competent witness and as having seen both parties, to
affix the same seal to his countryman’s reputation, which it is not in
the power of the whole of the present generation to do, much less of any
single person in it. No, we must wait for this! Time alone can give the
final stamp: no living reputation can ever be of the same value or
quality as posthumous fame. We must throw lofty objects to a distance in
order to judge of them: if we are standing close under the Monument, it
looks higher than St. Paul’s. Posterity has this advantage over us-not
that they are really wiser, but they see the proportions better from
being placed further off. For instance, I liked Sir Walter, because he
had an easy, unaffected manner, and was ready to converse on all
subjects alike. He was not like your friends, the L— poets, who talk
about nothing but their own poetry. If, on the contrary, he had been
stiff and pedantic, I should, perhaps, have been inclined to think less
highly of the author from not liking the man; so that we can never judge
fairly of men’s abilities till we are no longer liable to come in
contact with their persons. Friends are as little to be trusted as
enemies: favour or prejudice makes the votes in either case more or less
suspected; though ‘the vital signs that a name shall live’ are in some
instances so strong, that we can hardly refuse to put faith in them, and
I think this is one. I was much pleased with Sir Walter, and I believe
he expressed a favourable opinion of me. I said to him, ‘I admire the
way in which you begin your novels. You set out so abruptly, that you
quite surprise me. I can’t at all tell what’s coming.’—‘No!’ says Sir
Walter, ‘nor I neither.’ I then told him, that when I first read
_Waverley_, I said it was no novel: nobody could invent like that.
Either he had heard the story related by one of the surviving parties,
or he had found the materials in a manuscript concealed in some old
chest: to which he replied, ‘You’re not so far out of the way in
thinking so.’ You don’t know him, do you? He’d be a pattern to you. Oh!
he has a very fine manner. You would learn to rub off some of your
asperities. But you admire him, I believe.

H.—Yes; on this side of idolatry and Toryism.

N.—That is your prejudice.

H.—Nay, it rather shows my liberality, if I am a devoted enthusiast,
notwithstanding. There are two things I admire in Sir Walter, his
capacity and his simplicity; which indeed I am apt to think are much the
same. The more ideas a man has of other things, the less he is taken up
with the idea of himself. Every one gives the same account of the author
of _Waverley_ in this respect. When he was in Paris, and went to
Galignani’s, he sat down in an outer room to look at some book he wanted
to see: none of the clerks had the least suspicion who it was: when it
was found out, the place was in a commotion. Cooper, the American, was
in Paris at the same time: his looks and manners seemed to announce a
much greater man. He strutted through the streets with a very
consequential air; and in company held up his head, screwed up his
features, and placed himself on a sort of pedestal to be observed and
admired, as if he never relaxed in the assumption nor wished it to be
forgotten by others, that he was the American Sir Walter Scott. The real
one never troubled himself about the matter. Why should he? He might
safely leave that question to others. Indeed, by what I am told, he
carries his indifference too far: it amounts to an implied contempt for
the public, and _misprision of treason_ against the commonwealth of
letters. He thinks nothing of his works, although ‘all Europe rings with
them from side to side.’—If so, he has been severely punished for his
infirmity.

N.—Though you do not know Sir Walter Scott, I think I have heard you say
you have seen him.

H.—Yes, he put me in mind of Cobbett, with his florid face and scarlet
gown, which were just like the other’s red face and scarlet waistcoat.
The one is like an English farmer, the other like a Scotch _laird_. Both
are large, robust men, with great strength and composure of features;
but I saw nothing of the _ideal_ character in the romance-writer, any
more than I looked for it in the politician.

N.—Indeed! But you have a vast opinion of Cobbett too, haven’t you? Oh!
he’s a giant! He has such prodigious strength; he tears up a subject by
the roots. Did you ever read his Grammar? Or see his attack on Mrs. —?
It was like a hawk pouncing on a wren. I should be terribly afraid to
get into his hands. And then his homely, familiar way of writing—it is
not from necessity or vulgarity, but to show his contempt for
aristocratic pride and arrogance. He only has a kitchen-garden; he could
have a flower-garden too if he chose. Peter Pindar said his style was
like the Horse-Guards, only one story above the ground, while Junius’s
had all the airy elegance of Whitehall: but he could raise his style
just as high as he pleased; though he does not want to sacrifice
strength to elegance. He knows better what he is about.

H.—I don’t think he’ll set up for a fine gentleman in a hurry, though he
has for a Member of Parliament; and I fancy he would make no better
figure in the one than the other. He appeared to me, when I once saw
him, exactly what I expected: in Sir Walter I looked in vain for a
million of fine things! I could only explain it to myself in this way,
that there was a degree of capacity in that huge double forehead of his,
that superseded all effort, made every thing come intuitively and almost
mechanically, as if it were merely transcribing what was already
written, and by the very facility with which the highest beauty and
excellence was produced, left few traces of it in the expression of the
countenance, and hardly any sense of it in the mind of the author.
Expression only comes into the face as we are at a loss for words, or
have a difficulty in bringing forward our ideas; but we may repeat the
finest things by rote without any change of look or manner. It is only
when the powers are tasked, when the moulds of thought are full, that
the effect or the _wear-and-tear_ of the mind appears on the surface.
So, in general, writers of the greatest imagination and range of ideas,
and who might be said to have all nature obedient to their call, seem to
have been most careless of their fame and regardless of their works.
They treat their productions not as children, but as ‘bastards of their
art;’ whereas those who are more confined in their scope of intellect
and wedded to some one theory or predominant fancy, have been found to
feel a proportionable fondness for the offspring of their brain, and
have thus excited a deeper interest in it in the minds of others. We set
a value on things as they have cost us dear: the very limitation of our
faculties or exclusiveness of our feelings compels us to concentrate all
our enthusiasm on a favourite subject; and strange as it may sound, in
order to inspire a perfect sympathy in others or to form a school, men
must themselves be _egotists_! Milton has had fewer readers and
admirers, but I suspect more devoted and bigotted ones, than ever
Shakspeare had: Sir Walter Scott has attracted more universal attention
than any writer of our time, but you may speak against him with less
danger of making personal enemies than if you attack Lord Byron. Even
Wordsworth has half a dozen followers, who set him up above everybody
else from a _common idiosyncrasy_ of feeling and the singleness of the
elements of which his excellence is composed. Before we can take an
author entirely to our bosoms, he must be another self; and he cannot be
this, if he is ‘not one, but all mankind’s epitome.’ It was this which
gave such an effect to Rousseau’s writings, that he stamped his own
character and the image of his self-love on the public mind—_there_ it
is, and there it will remain in spite of every thing. Had he possessed
more comprehension of thought or feeling, it would have only have
diverted him from his object. But it was the excess of his egotism and
his utter blindness to every thing else, that found a corresponding
sympathy in the conscious feelings of every human breast, and shattered
to pieces the pride of rank and circumstance by the pride of internal
worth or upstart pretension. When Rousseau stood behind the chair of the
master of the _château_ of —, and smiled to hear the company dispute
about the meaning of the motto of the arms of the family, which he alone
knew, and stumbled as he handed the glass of wine to his young mistress,
and fancied she coloured at being waited upon by so learned a young
footman—then was first kindled that spark which can never be quenched,
then was formed the germ of that strong conviction of the disparity
between the badge on his shoulder and the aspirations of his soul—the
determination, in short, that external situation and advantages are but
the mask, and that the mind is the man—armed with which, impenetrable,
incorrigible, he went forth conquering and to conquer, and overthrew the
monarchy of France and the hierarchies of the earth. Till then, birth
and wealth and power were all in all, though but the frame-work or crust
that envelopes the man; and what there was in the man himself was never
asked, or was scorned and forgot. And while all was dark and grovelling
within, while knowledge either did not exist or was confined to a few,
while material power and advantages were every thing, this was naturally
to be expected. But with the increase and diffusion of knowledge, this
state of things must sooner or later cease; and Rousseau was the first
who held the torch (lighted at the never-dying fire in his own bosom) to
the hidden chambers of the mind of man—like another Prometheus, breathed
into his nostrils the breath of a new and intellectual life, enraging
the Gods of the earth, and made him feel what is due to himself and his
fellows. Before, physical force was every thing: henceforward, mind,
thought, feeling was a new element—a fourth estate in society. What!
shall a man have read Dante and Ariosto, and be none the better for it?
Shall he be still judged of only by his coat, the number of his servants
in livery, the house over his head? While poverty meant ignorance, that
was necessarily the case; but the world of books overturns the world of
things, and establishes a new balance of power and scale of estimation.
Shall we think only rank and pedigree divine, when we have music,
poetry, and painting within us? Tut! we have read _Old Mortality_; and
shall it be asked whether we have done so in a garret or a palace, in a
carriage or on foot? Or knowing them, shall we not revere the mighty
heirs of fame, and respect ourselves for knowing and honouring them?
This is the true march of intellect, and not the erection of _Mechanics’
Institutions_, or the printing of _two-penny trash_, according to my
notion of the matter, though I have nothing to say against them neither.

N.—I thought you never would have done; however, you have come to the
ground at last. After this rhapsody, I must inform you that Rousseau is
a character more detestable to me than I have power of language to
express:—an aristocrat filled with all their worst vices, pride,
ambition, conceit and gross affectation: and though endowed with some
ability, yet not sufficient ever to make him know right from wrong:
witness his novel of _Eloisa_. His name brings to my mind all the gloomy
horrors of a mob-government, which attempted from their ignorance to
banish truth and justice from the world. I see you place Sir Walter
above Lord Byron. The question is not which keeps longest on the wing,
but which soars highest: and I cannot help thinking there are essences
in Lord Byron that are not to be surpassed. He is on a par with Dryden.
All the other modern poets appear to me vulgar in the comparison. As a
lady who comes here said, there is such an air of nobility in what he
writes. Then there is such a power in the style, expressions almost like
Shakspeare—‘And looked round on them with their _wolfish_ eyes.’

H.—The expression is in Shakspeare, somewhere in _Lear_.

N.—The line I repeated is in _Don Juan_. I do not mean to vindicate the
immorality or misanthropy in that poem—perhaps his lameness was to blame
for this defect—but surely no one can deny the force, the spirit of it;
and there is such a fund of drollery mixed up with the serious part.
Nobody understood the tragi-comedy of poetry so well. People find fault
with this mixture in general, because it is not well managed; there is a
comic story and a tragic story going on at the same time, without their
having any thing to do with one another. But in Lord Byron they are
brought together, just as they are in nature. In like manner, if you go
to an execution at the very moment when the criminal is going to be
turned off, and all eyes are fixed upon him, an old apple-woman and her
stall are overturned, and all the spectators fall a-laughing. In real
life the most ludicrous incidents border on the most affecting and
shocking. How fine that is of the cask of butter in the storm! Some
critics have objected to it as turning the whole into burlesque; on the
contrary, it is that which stamps the character of the scene more than
any thing else. What did the people in the boat care about the rainbow,
which he has described in such vivid colours; or even about their
fellow-passengers who were thrown overboard, when they only wanted to
eat them? No, it was the loss of the firkin of butter that affected them
more than all the rest; and it is the mention of this circumstance that
adds a hardened levity and a sort of ghastly horror to the scene. It
shows the master-hand—there is such a boldness and sagacity and
superiority to ordinary rules in it! I agree, however, in your
admiration of the Waverley Novels: they are very fine. As I told the
author, he and Cervantes have raised the idea of human nature, not as
Richardson has attempted, by affectation and a false varnish, but by
bringing out what there is really fine in it under a cloud of
disadvantages. Have you seen the last?

H.—No.

N.—There is a character of a common smith or armourer in it, which, in
spite of a number of weaknesses and in the most ludicrous situations, is
made quite heroical by the tenderness and humanity it displays. It is
his best, but I had not read it when I saw him. No; all that can be said
against Sir Walter is, that he has never made a _whole_. There is an
infinite number of delightful incidents and characters, but they are
disjointed and scattered. This is one of Fielding’s merits: his novels
are regular compositions, with what the ancients called a _beginning_, a
_middle_, and an _end_: every circumstance is foreseen and provided for,
and the conclusion of the story turns round as it were to meet the
beginning. _Gil Blas_ is very clever, but it is only a succession of
chapters. _Tom Jones_ is a masterpiece, as far as regards the conduct of
the fable.

H.—Do you know the reason? Fielding had a hooked nose, the long chin. It
is that introverted physiognomy that binds and concentrates.

N.—But Sir Walter has not a hooked nose, but one that denotes kindness
and ingenuity. Mrs. Abington had the pug-nose, who was the perfection of
comic archness and vivacity: a hooked nose is my aversion.

                      CONVERSATION THE SEVENTEENTH

N.—I sometimes get into scrapes that way by contradicting people before
I have well considered the subject, and I often wonder how I get out of
them so well as I do. I remember once meeting with Sir — —, who was
talking about Milton; and as I have a natural aversion to a coxcomb, I
differed from what he said, without being at all prepared with any
arguments in support of my opinion.

H.—But you had time enough to think of them afterwards.

N.—I got through with it somehow or other. It is the very risk you run
in such cases that puts you on the alert and gives you spirit to
extricate yourself from it. If you had full leisure to deliberate and to
make out your defence beforehand, you perhaps could not do it so well as
on the spur of the occasion. The surprise and flutter of the animal
spirits gives the alarm to any little wit we possess, and puts it into a
state of immediate requisition.

H.—Besides, it is always easiest to defend a paradox or an opinion you
don’t care seriously about. I would sooner (as a matter of choice) take
the wrong side than the right in any argument. If you have a thorough
conviction on any point and good grounds for it, you have studied it
long, and the real reasons have sunk into the mind; so that what you can
recal of them at a sudden _pinch_, seems unsatisfactory and
disproportionate to the confidence of your belief and to the magisterial
tone you are disposed to assume. Even truth is a matter of habit and
professorship. Reason and knowledge, when at their height, return into a
kind of instinct. We understand the grammar of a foreign language best,
though we do not speak it so well. But if you take up an opinion at a
venture, then you lay hold of whatever excuse comes within your reach,
instead of searching about for and bewildering yourself with the true
reasons; and the odds are that the arguments thus got up are as good as
those opposed to them. In fact, the more sophistical and superficial an
objection to a received or well-considered opinion is, the more we are
staggered and teazed by it; and the next thing is to lose our temper,
when we become an easy prey to a cool and disingenuous adversary. I
would much rather (as the safest side) insist on Milton’s pedantry than
on his sublimity, supposing I were not in the company of very good
judges. A single stiff or obscure line would outweigh a whole book of
solemn grandeur in the mere flippant encounter of the wits, and, in
general, the truth and justice of the cause you espouse is rather an
incumbrance than an assistance; or it is like heavy armour which few
have strength to wield. Any thing short of complete triumph on the right
side is defeat: any hole picked or flaw detected in an argument which we
are holding earnestly and conscientiously, is sufficient to raise the
laugh against us. This is the greatest advantage which folly and knavery
have. We are not satisfied to be right, unless we can prove others to be
quite wrong; and as all the world would be thought to have some reason
on their side, they are glad of any loop-hole or pretext to escape from
the dogmatism and tyranny we would set up over them. Absolute submission
requires absolute proofs. Without some such drawback, the world might
become too wise and too good, at least according to every man’s private
prescription. In this sense _ridicule is the test of truth_; that is,
the levity and indifference on one side balances the formality and
presumption on the other.

N.—Horne Tooke used to play with his antagonists in the way you speak
of. He constantly threw Fuseli into a rage and made him a
laughing-stock, by asking him to explain the commonest things, and often
what Fuseli understood much better than he did. But in general, I think
it is less an indifference to truth than the fear of finding yourself in
the wrong, that carries you through when you take up any opinion from
caprice or the spirit of contradiction. Danger almost always produces
courage and presence of mind. The faculties are called forth with the
occasion. You see men of very ordinary characters, placed in
extraordinary circumstances, act like men of capacity. The late King of
France was thought weak and imbecile, till he was thrown into the most
trying situations; and then he shewed sense and even eloquence which no
one had ever suspected. Events supplied the want of genius and energy;
the external impressions were so strong, that the dullest or most
indolent must have been roused by them. Indeed the wise man is perhaps
more liable to err in such extreme cases by setting up his own
preconceptions and self-will against circumstances, than the
_common-place_ character who yields to necessity and is passive under
existing exigencies. It is this which makes kings and ministers equal to
their situations. They may be very poor creatures in themselves; but the
importance of the part they have to act and the magnitude of their
responsibility inspire them with a factitious and _official_ elevation
of view. Few people are found totally unfit for high station, and it is
lucky that it is so. Perhaps men of genius and imagination are the least
adapted to get into the state go-cart; Buonaparte, we see, with all his
talent, only drove to the devil. When Richard II. was quite a youth, and
he went to suppress the rebellion of Wat Tyler in Smithfield, and the
latter was killed, his followers drew their bows and were about to take
vengeance on the young king, when he stepped forward and said that ‘now
as their leader was dead, he would be their leader.’ This instantly
disarmed their rage, and they received him with acclamations. He had no
other course left; the peril he was in made him see his place of safety.
Courage has a wonderful effect: this makes mad people so terrible, that
they have no fear. Even wild beasts or a mob (which is much the same
thing) will hardly dare to attack you if you show no fear of them. I
have heard Lord Exmouth (Sir Edward Pellew) say that once when he was
out with his ship at sea and there was a mutiny on board and no chance
of escape, he learned (from a spy he had among them) the moment when the
ring-leaders were assembled and about to execute their design of putting
the captain and all the officers to death, when taking a pistol in each
hand, he went down into the cock-pit into the midst of them; and
threatening to shoot the first man that stirred, took them every one
prisoners. If he had betrayed the least fear or any of them had raised a
hand, he must have been instantly sacrificed. But he was bolder than any
individual in the group, and by this circumstance had the ascendancy
over the whole put together. A similar act of courage is related of
Peter the Great, who singly entered the haunt of some conspirators, and
striking down the leader with a blow on the face, spread consternation
amongst the assassins, who were terrified by his fearlessness.

  (_A book of prints was brought in, containing Views of Edinburgh._)

N.—It is curious to what perfection these things are brought, and how
cheap they are. It is that which makes them sell and ensures the fortune
of those who publish them. Great fortunes are made out of small profits,
which allow all the world to become purchasers. That is the reason the
Colosseum will hardly answer. There never was an example of an
exhibition in England answering at a crown a-piece. People look twice at
their money before they will part with it, if it be more than they are
accustomed to pay. It becomes a question, and perhaps a few stragglers
go; whereas they ought to go in a stream and as a matter of course. If
people have to pay a little more than usual, though a mere trifle, they
consider it in the light of an imposition, and resent it as such; if the
price be a little under the mark, they think they have saved so much
money, and snap at it as a bargain. The publishers of the work on
Edinburgh are the same who brought out the _Views of London_; and it is
said, the success of that undertaking enabled them to buy up
Lackington’s business. E— the architect, I am told, suggested the plan,
but declined a share that was offered him in it, because he said nothing
that he had been engaged in had ever succeeded. The event would not
belie the notion of his own ill-luck. It is singular on what slight
turns good or ill fortune depends. Lackington (I understood from the
person who brought the _Edinburgh Views_ here) died worth near half a
million: nobody could tell how he had made it. At thirty he was not
worth a shilling. The great difficulty is in the first hundred pounds.

H.—It is sympathy with the mass of mankind, and finding out from
yourself what is they want and must have.

N.—It seems a good deal owing to the most minute circumstances. A
difference of sixpence in the price will make all the difference in the
sale of a book. Sometimes a work lies on the shelf for a time, and then
runs like wild-fire. There was _Drelincourt on Death_, which is a
fortune in itself; it hung on hand; _nobody_ read it, till Defoe put a
ghost-story into it, and it has been a stock-book ever since. It is the
same in prints. A catching subject or name will make one thing an
universal favourite, while another of ten times the merit is never
noticed. I have known this happen to myself in more than one instance.
This is the provoking part in W—l and some other painters, who, taking
advantage of the externals and accidents of their art, have run away
with nearly all the popularity of their time. Jack T— was here the other
day to say that W— and his friends complained bitterly of the things I
said about him. I replied that I had only spoken of him as an artist,
which I was at liberty to do; and that if he were offended, I would
recommend to him to read the story of Charles II. and the Duchess of
Cleveland, who came to the king with a complaint, that whenever she met
Nell Gwyn in the street, the latter put her head out of the coach and
made mouths at her. ‘Well then,’says Charles II. ‘the next time you meet
Nelly and she repeats the offence, do you make mouths at her again!’ So
if Mr. W—l is hurt at my saying things of him, all he has to do is to
say things of me in return.

H.—I confess, I never liked W—1. It was one of the errors of my youth
that I did not think him equal to Raphael and Rubens united, as Payne
Knight contended: and I have fought many a battle with numbers (if not
odds) against me on that point.

N.—Then you must have the satisfaction of seeing a change of opinion at
present.

H.—Pardon me, I have not that satisfaction; I have only a double
annoyance from it. It is no consolation to me that an individual was
overrated by the folly of the public formerly, and that he suffers from
their injustice and fickleness at present. It is no satisfaction to me
that poor I—g is reduced to his primitive congregation, and that the
stream of coronet-coaches no longer rolls down Holborn or Oxford-street
to his chapel. They ought never to have done so, or they ought to
continue to do so. The world (whatever in their petulance and profligacy
they may think) have no right to intoxicate poor human nature with the
full tide of popular applause, and then to drive it to despair for the
want of it. There are no words to express the cruelty, the weakness, the
shamelessness of such conduct, which resembles that of the little girl
who dresses up her doll in the most extravagant finery, and then in mere
wantonness strips it naked to its wool and bits of wood again—with this
difference that the doll has no feeling, whereas the world’s idols are
wholly sensitive.

        (_Of some one who preferred appearances to realities._)

N.—I can understand the character, because it is exactly the reverse of
what I should do and feel. It is like dressing out of one’s sphere, or
any other species of affectation and imposture. I cannot bear to be
taken for any thing but what I am. It is like what the country-people
call ‘having _a halfpenny head and a farthing tail_.’ That is what makes
me mad when people sometimes come and pay their court to me by
saying—‘Bless me! how sagacious you look! What a penetrating
countenance! ‘No, I say, that is but the title-page—what is there in the
book? Your dwelling so much on the exterior seems to imply that the
inside does not correspond to it. Don’t let me look wise and be foolish,
but let me be wise though I am taken for a fool! Any thing else is
quackery: it is as if there was no real excellence in the world, but in
opinion. I used to blame Sir Joshua for this: he sometimes wanted to get
_Collins’s earth_, but did not like to have it known. Then there were
certain oils that he made a great _fuss_ and mystery about. I have said
to myself, surely there is something deeper and nobler in the art that
does not depend on all this trick and handicraft. Give Titian and a
common painter the same materials and tools to work with, and then see
the difference between them. This is all that is worth contending for.
If Sir Joshua had had no other advantage than the using _Collins’s
earth_ and some particular sort of _megilp_, we should not now have been
talking about him. When W— was here the other day, he asked about Mengs
and his school; and when I told him what I thought, he said, ‘Is that
your own opinion, or did you take it from Sir Joshua?’ I answered, that
if I admired Sir Joshua, it was because there was something congenial in
our tastes, and not because I was his pupil. I saw his faults, and
differed with him often enough. If I have any bias, it is the other way,
to take fancies into my head and run into singularity and cavils. In
what I said to you about Ramsay’s picture of the Queen, for instance, I
don’t know that any one ever thought so before, or that any one else
would agree with me. It might be set down as mere whim and caprice; but
I can’t help it, if it is so. All I know is, that such is my feeling
about it, which I can no more part with than I can part with my own
existence. It is the same in other things, as in music. There was an
awkward composer at the Opera many years ago, of the name of Boccarelli;
what he did was stupid enough in general, but I remember he sung an air
one day at Cosway’s, which they said Shield had transferred into the
_Flitch of Bacon_. I cannot describe the effect it had upon me—it seemed
as if it wound into my very soul—I would give any thing to hear it sung
again. So I could have listened to Dignum’s singing the lines out of
Shakspeare—‘Come unto these yellow sands, and then take hands’—a hundred
times over. But I am not sure that others would be affected in the same
manner by it: there may be some quaint association of ideas in the case.
But at least, if I am wrong, the folly is my own.

H.—There is no danger of the sort, except from affectation, which I am
sure is not your case. All the real taste and feeling in the world is
made up of what people _take in their heads_ in this manner. Even if you
were right only once in five times in these hazardous experiments and
shrewd guesses, that would be a fifth part of the truth; whereas, if you
merely repeated after others by rote or waited to have all the world on
your side, there could be absolutely nothing gained at all. If any one
had come in and had expressed the same idea of Ramsay’s portrait of the
Queen, this would doubtless be a confirmation of your opinion, like two
persons finding out a likeness; but suppose W— had gone away with your
opinion in his pocket, and had spread it about everywhere what a fine
painter Ramsay was, I do not see how this would have strengthened your
conclusion; nay, perhaps the people whom he got as converts would
entirely mistake the meaning, and come to you with the very reverse of
what you had said as a prodigious discovery. This is the way in which
these unanimous verdicts are commonly obtained. You might say that
Ramsay was not a fine painter, but a man of real genius. The world, not
comprehending the distinction, would merely come to the gross
conclusion, that he was both one and the other. Thus even truth is
vulgarly debased into _common-place_ and nonsense. So that it is not
simply as Mr. Locke observed—‘That there are not so many wrong opinions
in the world as is generally imagined, for most people have no opinion
at all, but take up with those of others or with mere hearsay and
echoes;’ but these echoes are often false ones and no more like the
original idea than the rhyming echoes in Hudibras or than Slender’s Mum
and Budget.

N.—But don’t you think the contrary extreme would be just as bad, if
every one set up to judge for himself and every question was split into
an endless variety of opinions?

H.—I do not see that this would follow. If persons who are sincere and
free to inquire differ widely on any subject, it is because it is beyond
their reach, and there is no satisfactory evidence one way or the other.
Supposing a thing to be doubtful, why should it not be left so? But
men’s passions and interests, when brought into play, are most tenacious
on these points where their understandings afford them least light.
Those doctrines are _established_ which need propping up, as men place
beams against falling houses. It does not require an act of parliament
to persuade mathematicians to agree with Euclid, or painters to admire
Raphael.

N.—And don’t you think this the best rule for the rest of the world to
go by?

H.—Yes; but not if the doctors themselves differed: then it would be
necessary to _clench the nail_ with a few smart strokes of bigotry and
intolerance. What admits of proof, men agree in, if they have no
interest to the contrary; what they differ about in spite of all that
can be said, is matter of taste or conjecture.

                      CONVERSATION THE EIGHTEENTH

N.—Opie, I remember, used to argue, that there were as many different
sorts of taste as genius. He said, ‘If I am engaged in a picture, and
endeavour to do it according to the suggestions of my employers, I do
not understand exactly what they want, nor they what I can do, and I
please no one: but if I do it according to my own notions, I belong to a
class, and if I am able to satisfy myself, I please that class.’ You did
not know Opie? You would have admired him greatly. I do not speak of him
as an artist, but as a man of sense and observation. He paid me the
compliment of saying, ‘that we should have been the best friends in the
world, if we had not been rivals.’ I think he had more of this feeling
than I had; perhaps, because I had most vanity. We sometimes got into
foolish altercations. I recollect once in particular, at a banker’s in
the city, we took up the whole of dinner-time with a ridiculous
controversy about Milton and Shakspeare; I am sure we neither of us had
the least notion which was right—and when I was heartily ashamed of it,
a foolish citizen who was present, added to my confusion by
saying—‘Lord! What would I give to hear two such men as you talk every
day!’ This quite humbled me: I was ready to sink with vexation: I could
have resolved never to open my mouth again. But I can’t help thinking W—
was wrong in supposing I borrow every thing from others. It is not my
character. I never could learn my lesson at school. My copy was hardly
legible; but if there was a prize to be obtained or my father was to see
it, then I could write a very fine hand with all the usual flourishes.
What I know of history (and something about heraldry) has been gathered
up when I had to enquire into the subject for a picture: if it had been
set me as a task, I should have forgotten it immediately. In the same
way, when Boydell came and proposed a subject for a picture to me, and
pointed out the capabilities, I always said I could make nothing of it:
but as soon as he was gone and I was left to myself, the whole then
seemed to unfold itself naturally. I never could study the rules of
composition or make sketches and drawings beforehand; in this, probably
running into the opposite error to that of the modern Italian painters,
whom Fuseli reproaches with spending their whole lives in preparation. I
must begin at once or I can do nothing. When I set about the ‘Wat
Tyler,’ I was frightened at it: it was the largest work I had ever
undertaken: there were to be horses and armour and buildings and several
groups in it: when I looked at it, the canvas seemed ready to fall upon
me. But I had committed myself and could not escape; disgrace was behind
me—and every step I made in advance, was so much positively gained. If I
had staid to make a number of designs and try different experiments, I
never should have had the courage to go on. Half the things that people
do not succeed in, are through fear of making the attempt. Like the
recruit in Farquhar’s comedy, you grow wondrous bold, when you have once
taken ‘list-money.’ When you _must_ do a thing, you feel in some measure
that you _can_ do it. You have only to commit yourself beyond retreat.
It is like the soldier going into battle or a player first appearing on
the stage—the worst is over when they arrive upon the scene of action.

H.—I found nearly the same thing that you describe when I first began to
write for the newspapers. I had not till then been in the habit of
writing at all, or had been a long time about it; but I perceived that
with the necessity, the fluency came. Something I did, _took_; and I was
called upon to do a number of things all at once. I was in the middle of
the stream, and must sink or swim. I had, for instance, often a
theatrical criticism to write after midnight, which appeared the next
morning. There was no fault found with it—at least, it was as good as if
I had had to do it for a weekly paper. I only did it at once, and
recollected all I had to say on the spot, because I could not put it off
for three days, when perhaps I should have forgotten the best part of
it. Besides, when one is pressed for time, one saves it. I might set
down nearly all I had to say in my mind, while the play was going on. I
know I did not feel at a loss for matter—the difficulty was to compress
and write it out fast enough. When you are tied to time, you can come to
time. I conceive in like manner more wonder is expressed at _extempore_
speaking, than it is entitled to. Not to mention that the same
well-known topics continually recur, and that the speakers may con their
_extempore_ speeches over beforehand and merely watch their opportunity
to slide them in dexterously into the grand procession of the debate: a
man when once on his legs _must say something_, and this is the utmost
that a public speaker generally says. If he has any thing good to say,
he can recollect it just as well at once as in a week’s literary
leisure, as well standing up as sitting down, except from habit. We are
not surprised at a man’s telling us his thoughts across a table: why
should we be so at his doing the same thing, when mounted on one? But he
excites more attention: _that_ gives him a double motive. A man’s
getting up to make a speech in public will not give him a command of
words or thoughts if he is without them; but he may be delivered of all
the brilliancy or wisdom he actually possesses, in a longer or a shorter
space, according to the occasion. The circumstance of the time is
optional; necessity, if it be not the mother of invention, supplies us
with the memory of all we know.

N.—(_after a pause_)—There is no end of the bigotry and prejudice in the
world; one can only shrug one’s shoulders and submit to it. Have you
seen the copies they have got down at the club-house in Pall-mall of the
groups of horses from the Elgin marbles? Lord! how inferior they are to
Rubens’s! So stiff, and poor, and dry, compared to his magnificent
spirit and bold luxuriance! I should not know them to be horses; they
are as much like any thing else. I was at Somerset-house the other day.
They talk of the Dutch painters; why, there are pictures there of
interiors and other subjects of familiar life, that throw all the
boasted _chef-d’œuvres_ of the Dutch school to an immeasurable distance.
I do not speak of history, which has not been fairly tried; but in all
for which there has been encouragement, no nation can go beyond us. We
have resources and a richness of capacity equal to any undertaking.

H.—Do you recollect any in particular that you admired at the
Exhibition?

N.—No, I do not remember the names; but it was a general sense of
excellence and truth of imitation of natural objects. As to lofty
history, our religion scarcely allows it. The Italians had no more
genius for painting nor a greater love of pictures than we; but the
_church_ was the foster-mother of the fine arts; being the most politic
and powerful establishment in the world, they laid their hands on all
that could allure and impress the minds of the people—music, painting,
architecture, ceremonies; and this produced a succession of great
artists and noble works, till the churches were filled, and then they
ceased. The genius of Italian art was nothing but the genius of Popery.
God forbid we should purchase success at the same price! Every thing at
Rome is like a picture—is calculated for show. I remember walking
through one of the bye-streets near the Vatican, where I met some
procession in which the Pope was; and all at once I saw a number of the
most beautiful Arabian horses curvetting and throwing out their long
tails, like a vision or a part of a romance. We should here get one or
two at most. All our holiday pageants, even the Coronation, are low
Bartlemy-fair exhibitions compared with what you see at Rome. And then
to see the Pope give the benediction at St. Peter’s, raising himself up
and spreading out his hands in the form of a cross, with an energy and
dignity as if he was giving a blessing to the whole world! No, it is not
enough to _see_ Popery in order to hate it—it must be felt too. A poor
man going through one of the narrow streets where a similar procession
was passing, was fiercely attacked by a soldier of the Swiss Guards, and
ordered to stand back. The man said he could retire no further, for he
was close against the wall. ‘Get back, you and the wall too!’ was the
answer of haughty servility and mild despotism. It is this spirit
peeping out that makes one dread the fairest outside appearances; and
with this spirit, and the power and determination it implies to delude
and lead the multitude blindfold with every lure to their imagination
and their senses, I will answer for the production of finer historical
and scripture-pieces in this country (let us be as far north as we will)
than we have yet seen.

H.—You do not think, then, that we are naturally a dry, sour, Protestant
set? Is not the air of Ireland Popish, and that of Scotland
Presbyterian?