Chapter XXII: Front Matter (22)

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