Chapter 23

“Tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks,Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.”’

“Tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.”’

It was at this time that Mr. Northcote read to me the followingletter, addressed by him to a very young lady, who earnestly desired him to write a letter to her:—

‘MY DEAR MISS K—,

‘What in the world can make you desire a letter from me? Indeed, if I was a fine Dandy of one-and-twenty, with a pair of stays properly padded and also an iron busk, and whiskers under my nose, with my hair standing upright on my head, all in the present fashion, then it might be accounted for, as I might write you a fine answer in poetry about Cupids and burning hearts, and sighs and angels and darts, such a letter as Mr. —, the poet, might write. But it is long past the time for me to sing love-songs under your window, with a guitar, and catch my death in some cold night, and so die in your service.

‘But what has a poor gray-headed old man of eighty got to say to a blooming young lady of eighteen, but to relate to her his illness and pains, and tell her that past life is little better than a dream, and that he finds that all he has been doing is only vanity. Indeed, I may console myself with the pleasure of having gained the flattering attention of a young lady of such amiable qualities as yourself, and have the honour to assure you, that I am your grateful friend and most obliged humble servant,

‘James Northcote.’

‘Argyll Place, 1826.’

I said, the hardest lesson seemed to be to look beyond ourselves. ‘Yes,’ said Northcote, ‘I remember when we were young and were making remarks upon the neighbours, an old maiden aunt of ours used to say, “I wish to God you could see yourselves!” And yet, perhaps, after all, this was not very desirable. Many people pass their whole lives in a very comfortable dream, who, if they could see themselves in the glass, would start back with affright. I remember once being at the Academy, when Sir Joshua wished to propose a monument to Dr. Johnson in St. Paul’s, and West got up and said, that the King, he knew, was averse to any thing of the kind, for he had been proposing a similar monument in Westminster Abbey for a man of the greatest genius and celebrity—one whose works were in all the cabinets of the curious throughout Europe—one whose name they would all hear with the greatest respect—and then it came out, after a long preamble, that he meant Woollett, who had engraved his Death of Wolfe. I was provoked, and I could not help exclaiming—“My God! what, do you put him upon a footing with such a man asDr. Johnson—one of the greatest philosophers and moralists that ever lived? We have thousands of engravers at any time!”—and there was such a burst of laughter at this—Dance, who was a grave gentlemanly man, laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks; and Farington used afterwards to say to me, “Why don’t you speak in the Academy, and begin with ‘My God!’ as you do sometimes?”’ I said, I had seen in a certain painter something of this humour, who once very good-naturedly showed me a Rubens he had, and observed with greatnonchalance, ‘What a pity that this man wanted expression!’ I imagined Rubens to have looked round his gallery. ‘Yet,’ he continued, ‘it is the consciousness of defect, too, that often stimulates the utmost exertions. If Pope had been a fine, handsome man, would he have left those masterpieces that he has? But he knew and felt his own deformity, and therefore was determined to leave nothing undone to extend that corner of power that he possessed. He said to himself, They shall have no fault to find there. I have often thought when very good-looking young men have come here intending to draw, “What! are you going to bury yourselves in a garret?” And it has generally happened that they have given up the art before long, and married or otherwise disposed of themselves.’ I had heard an anecdote of Nelson, that, when appointed post-captain, and on going to take possession of his ship at Yarmouth, the crowd on the quay almost jostled him, and exclaimed—‘What! have they made that little insignificant fellow a captain? He will do much, to be sure!’ I thought this might have urged him to dare as he did, in order to get the better of their prejudices and his own sense of mortification. ‘No doubt,’ said Northcote, ‘personal defects or disgrace operate in this way. I knew an admiral who had got the nickname of “Dirty Dick” among the sailors, and, on his being congratulated on obtaining some desperate victory, all he said was, “I hope they’ll call me Dirty Dick no more!”—There was a Sir John Grenville or Greenfield formerly, who was appointed to convoy a fleet of merchant-ships, and had to defend them against a Spanish man-of-war, and did so with the utmost bravery and resolution, so that the convoy got safe off; but after that, he would not yield till he was struck senseless by a ball, and then the crew delivered up the vessel to the enemy, who, on coming on board and entering the cabin where he lay, were astonished to find a mere puny shrivelled spider of a man, instead of the Devil they had expected to see. He was taken on shore in Spain, and died of his wounds there; and the Spanish women afterwards used to frighten their children, by telling them “Don John of the Greenfield was coming!”’

CONVERSATION THE FIFTH

Northcote mentioned the death of poor —, who had been with him a few days before, laughing and in great spirits; and the next thing he heard was that he had put an end to himself. I asked if there was any particular reason? He said ‘No; that he had left a note upon the table, saying that his friends had forsaken him, that he knew no cause, and that he was tired of life. His patron, C—, of the Admiralty, had, it seems, set him to paint a picture of Louis the Eighteenth receiving the Order of the Garter. He had probably been teazed about that. These insipid court-subjects were destined to be fatal to artists. Poor Bird had been employed to paint a picture of Louis the Eighteenth landing at Calais, and had died of chagrin and disappointment at his failure. Who could make any thing of such a figure and such a subject? There was nothing to be done; and yet if the artist added any thing of his own, he was called to order by his would-be patrons, as falsifying what appeared to them an important event in history. It was only a person like Rubens who could succeed in such subjects by taking what licences he thought proper, and having authority enough to dictate to his advisers.’ A gentleman came in, who asked if — was likely to have succeeded in his art? Northcote answered, ‘There were several things against it. He was good-looking, good-natured, and a wit. He was accordingly asked out to dine, and caressed by those who knew him; and a young man after receiving these flattering marks of attention and enjoying the height of luxury and splendour, was not inclined to return to his painting-room, to brood over a design that would cost him infinite trouble, and the success of which was at last doubtful. Few young men of agreeable persons or conversation turned out great artists. It was easier to look in the glass than to make a dull canvas shine like a lucid mirror; and, as to talking, Sir Joshua used to say, a painter should sew up his mouth. It was only the love of distinction that produced eminence; and if a man was admired for one thing, that was enough. We only work out our way to excellence by being imprisoned in defects. It requires a long apprenticeship, great pains, and prodigious self-denial, which no man will submit to, except from necessity, or as the only chance he has of escaping from obscurity. I remember when Mr. Locke (of Norbury Park) first came over from Italy; and old Dr. Moore, who had a high opinion of him, was crying up his drawings and asked me, if I did not think he would make a great painter? I said, ‘No, never!’—‘Why not?’—‘Because he has six thousanda year.’ No one would throw away all the advantages and indulgences this ensured him, to shut himself up in a garret to pore over that which after all may expose him to contempt and ridicule. Artists, to be sure, have gone on painting after they have got rich, such as Rubens and Titian, and indeed Sir Joshua; but then it had by this time become a habit and a source of pleasure instead of a toil to them, and the honours and distinction they had acquired by it counter-balanced every other consideration. Their love of the art had become greater than their love of riches or of idleness: but at first this is not the case, and the repugnance to labour is only mastered by the absolute necessity for it. People apply to study only when they cannot help it. No one was ever known to succeed without this stimulus.’ I ventured to say that, generally speaking, no one, I believed, ever succeeded in a profession without great application; but that where there was a strong turn for any thing, a man in this sense could not help himself, and the application followed of course, and was, in fact, comparatively easy. Northcote turned short round upon me, and said, ‘Then you admit original genius? I cannot agree with you there.’ I said, ‘Waiving that, and not inquiring how the inclination comes, but early in life a fondness, a passion for a certain pursuit is imbibed; the mind is haunted by this object, it cannot rest without it (any more than the body without food), it becomes the strongest feeling we have, and then, I think, the most intense application follows naturally, just as in the case of a love of money or any other passion—the most unremitting application without this is forced and of no use; and where this original bias exists, no other motive is required.’—‘Oh! but,’ said Northcote, ‘if you had to labour on by yourself without competitors or admirers, you would soon lay down your pencil or your pen in disgust. It is the hope of shining, or the fear of being eclipsed, that urges you on. Do you think if nobody took any notice of what you did, this would not damp your ardour?’—‘Yes; after I had done anything that I thought worth notice, it might considerably: but how many minds (almost all the great ones) were formed in secresy and solitude, without knowing whether they should ever make a figure or not! All they knew was, that they liked what they were about, and gave their whole souls to it. There was Hogarth, there was Correggio: what enabled these artists to arrive at the perfection in their several ways, which afterwards gained them the attention of the world? Not the premature applause of the by-standers, but the vivid tingling delight with which the one seized upon a grotesque incident or expression—“the wrapt soul sitting in the eyes,” of the other, as he drew a saint or angel from the skies. If they had been brought forward very early, before they hadserved this thorough apprenticeship to their own minds (the opinion of the world apart), it might have damped or made coxcombs of them. It was the love and perception of excellence (or the favouring smile of the Muse) that in my view produced excellence and formed the man of genius. Some, like Milton, had gone on with a great work all their lives with little encouragement but the hope of posthumous fame.’—‘It is not that,’ said Northcote; ‘you cannot see so far. It is not those who have gone before you or those who are to come after you, but those who are by your side, running the same race, that make you look about you. What made Titian jealous of Tintoret? Because he stood immediately in his way, and their works were compared together. If there had been a hundred Tintorets a thousand miles off, he would not have cared about them. That is what takes off the edge and stimulus of exertion in old age: those who were our competitors in early life, whom we wished to excel or whose good opinion we were most anxious about, are gone, and have left us in a manner by ourselves, in a sort of new world, where we know and are as little known as on entering a strange country. Our ambition is cold with the ashes of those whom we feared or loved. I remember old Alderman Boydell using an expression which explained this. Once when I was in the coach with him, in reply to some compliment of mine on his success in life, he said, “Ah! there was one who would have been pleased at it; butherI have lost!” The fine coach and all the city-trappings were nothing to him without his wife, who remembered what he was and the gradations and anxious cares by which he rose to his present affluence, and was a kind of monitor to remind him of his former self and of the different vicissitudes of his fortune.’

Northcote then spoke of old Alderman Boydell with great regret, and said, ‘He was a man of sense and liberality, and a true patron of the art. His nephew, who came after him, had not the same capacity, and wanted to dictate to the artists what they were to do. N. mentioned some instance of his wanting him to paint a picture on a subject for which he was totally unfit, and figures of a size which he had never been accustomed to, and he told him “he must get somebody else to do it.”’ I said, ‘Booksellers and editors had the same infirmity, and always wanted you to express their ideas, not your own. Sir R. P— had once gone up to Coleridge, after hearing him talk in a large party, and offered him “nine guineas a sheet for his conversation!” He calculated that the “nine guineas a sheet” would be at least as strong a stimulus to his imagination as the wasting his words in a room full of company.’Northcote: ‘Ay, he came to me once, and wished me to do a work which was tocontain a history of art in all countries and from the beginning of the world. I said it would be an invaluable work if it could be done; but that there was no one alive who could do it.’

Northcote afterwards, by some transition, spoke of the characters of women, and asked my opinion. I said, ‘All my metaphysics leaned to the vulgar side of these questions: I thought there was a difference of original genius, a difference in the character of the sexes, &c. Women appeared to me to do some things better than men; and therefore I concluded they must do other things worse.’ Northcote mentioned Annibal Caracci, and said, ‘How odd it was, that in looking at any work of his, you could swear it was done by a man! Ludovico Caracci had a finer and more intellectual expression, but not the same bold and workmanlike character. There was Michael Angelo again—what woman would ever have thought of painting the figures in the Sistine chapel? There was Dryden too, what a thorough manly character there was in his style! And Pope’—[I interrupted, ‘seemed to me between a man and a woman.’]—‘It was not,’ he continued, ‘that women were not often very clever (cleverer than many men), but there was a point of excellence which they never reached. Yet the greatest pains had been taken with several. Angelica Kauffmann had been brought up from a child to the art, and had been taken by her father (in boy’s clothes) to the Academy to learn to draw; but there was an effeminate and feeble look in all her works, though not without merit. There was not the man’s hand, or what Fuseli used to call a “fist” in them; that is, something coarse and clumsy enough, perhaps, but still with strength and muscle. Even in common things, you would see a carpenter drive a nail in a way that a women never would; or if you had a suit of clothes made by a woman, they would hang quite loose about you and seem ready to fall off. Yet it is extraordinary too, said Northcote, that in what has sometimes been thought the peculiar province of men, courage and heroism, there have been women fully upon a par with any men, such as Joan of Arc and many others, who have never been surpassed as leaders in battle.’ I observed that of all the women I had ever seen or known any thing of, Mrs. Siddons struck me as the grandest. He said,—‘Oh! it is her outward form, which stamps her so completely for tragedy, no less than the mental part. Both she and her brother were cut out by Nature for a tragedy-king and queen. It is what Mrs. Hannah More has said of her, “Her’s is the afflicted!”’ I replied, that she seemed to me equally great in anger or in contempt or in any stately part as she was in grief, witness her Lady Macbeth. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that, to be sure, was a masterpiece.’ I asked what he thought of Mrs. Inchbald?He said, ‘Oh! very highly: there was no affectation in her. I once took up herSimple Story(which my sister had borrowed from the circulating library) and looking into it, I said, “My God! what have you got here?” and I never moved from the chair till I had finished it. HerNature and Artis equally fine—the very marrow of genius.’ She seems to me, I added, like Venus writing books. ‘Yes, women have certainly been successful in writing novels; and in plays too. I think Mrs. Centlivre’s are better than Congreve’s. Their letters, too, are admirable: it is only when they put on the breeches and try to write like men, that they become pedantic and tiresome. In giving advice, too, I have often found that they excelled; and when I have been irritated by any trifling circumstance and have laid more stress upon it than it was worth, they have seen the thing in a right point of view and tamed down my asperities.’ On this I remarked, that I thought, in general, it might be said that the faculties of women were of a passive character. They judged by the simple effect upon their feelings, without inquiring into causes. Men had to act; women had the coolness and the advantages of by-standers, and were neither implicated in the theories nor passions of men. While we were proving a thing to be wrong, they would feel it to be ridiculous. I said, I thought they had more of common sense, though less of acquired capacity than men. They were freer from the absurdities of creeds and dogmas, from the virulence of party in religion and politics (by which we strove to show our sense and superiority), nor were their heads so much filled with the lumber of learned folios. I mentioned as an illustration, that when old Baxter (the celebrated casuist and nonconformist divine) first went to Kidderminster to preach, he was almost pelted by the women for maintaining from the pulpit the then fashionable and orthodox doctrine, that ‘Hell was paved with infants’ skulls.’ The theory, which the learned divine had piled up on arguments and authorities, is now exploded: the common-sense feeling on the subject, which the women of that day took up in opposition to it as a dictate of humanity, would be now thought the philosophical one. ‘Yes,’ said Northcote, ‘but this exploded doctrine was knocked down by some man, as it had been set up by one: the women would let things remain as they are, without making any progress in error or wisdom. We do best together: our strength and our weakness mutually correct each other.’ Northcote then read me from a manuscript volume lying by him, a character drawn of his deceased wife by a Dissenting Minister (a Mr. Fox, of Plymouth) which is so beautiful that I shall transcribe it here.

‘Written by Mr. John Fox, on the death of his wife, who was the daughter of the Rev. Mr. Isaac Gelling.

‘My dear wife died to my unspeakable grief, Dec. 19th, 1762. With the loss of my dear companion died all the pleasure of my life; and no wonder: I had lived with her forty years, in which time nothing happened to abate the strictness of our Friendship, or to create a coolness or indifference so common and even unregarded by many in the world. I thank God I enjoyed my full liberty, my health, such pleasures and diversions as I liked, perfect peace and competence during the time; which were all seasoned and heightened every day more or less by constant marks of friendship, most inviolable affection, and a most cheerful endeavour to make my life agreeable. Nothing disturbed me but her many and constant disorders; under all which I could see how her faithful heart was strongly attached to me. And who could stand the shock of seeing the attacks of Death upon and then her final dissolution? The consequences to me were fatal. Old age rushed upon me like an armed man: my appetite failed, my strength was gone, every amusement became flat and dull; my countenance fell, and I have nothing to do but to drag on a heavy chain for the rest of my life; which I hope a good God will enable me to do without murmuring, and in conclusion, to say with all my soul—

Te Deum Laudamus.

‘This was written on a paper blotted by tears, and stuck with wafers into the first page of the family Bible.

‘Mr. John Fox died 22d of October, 1763. He was born May 10th, 1693.’

Northcote alluded to a printed story of his having hung an early picture of H—’s out of sight, and of Fuseli’s observing on the occasion—‘By G—d, you are sending him to heaven before his time!’ He said there was not the least foundation for this story; nor could there be, he not having beenhangerthat year. He read out of the same publication a letter from Burke to a young artist of the name of Barrow, full of excellent sense, advising him by no means to give up his profession as an engraver till he was sure he could succeed as a painter, out of idle ambition and an unfounded contempt for the humbler and more laborious walks of life. ‘I could not have thought it of him,’ said Northcote; ‘I confess he never appeared to me so great a man.’ I asked what kind of looking man he was? Northcote answered, ‘You have seen the picture? Therewas something I did not like; a thinness in the features, and an expression ofhauteur, though mixed with condescension and the manners of a gentleman. I can’t help thinking he had a hand in the Discourses; that he gave some of the fine, graceful turns; for Sir Joshua paid a greater deference to him than to any body else, and put up with freedoms that he would only have submitted to from some peculiar obligation. Indeed, Miss Reynolds used to complain that whenever any of Burke’s poor Irish relations came over, they were all poured in upon them to dinner; but Sir Joshua never took any notice, but bore it all with the greatest patience and tranquillity. To be sure, there was another reason: he expected Burke to write his Life, and for this he would have paid almost any price. This was what made him submit to the intrusions of Boswell, to the insipidity of Malone, and to the magisterial dictation of Burke: he made sure that out of these three one would certainly write his Life, and ensure him immortality that way. He thought no more of the person who actually did write it afterwards than he would have suspected his dog of writing it. Indeed, I wish he could have known; for it would have been of some advantage to me, and he might have left me something not to dwell on his defects; though he was as free from them as any man; but you can make any one ridiculous with whom you live on terms of intimacy.

‘I remember an instance of this that happened with respect to old Mr. M— whom you must have heard me speak of, and who was esteemed an idol by Burke, Dr. Johnson, and many others. Sir Joshua wanted to reprint his Sermons and prefix a Life to them, and asked me to get together any particulars I could learn of him. So I gave him a manuscript account of Mr. M—, written by an old school-fellow of his (Mr. Fox, a dissenting minister in the West of England); after which I heard no more of the Life. Mr. M— was in fact a man of extraordinary talents and great eloquence; and by representing in a manner the High-Church notions both of Dr. Johnson and Sir Joshua (for both were inclined the same way) they came to consider him as a sort of miracle of virtue and wisdom. There was, however, something in Mr. Fox’s plain account that would strike Sir Joshua, for he had an eye for nature; and he would at once perceive it was nearer the truth than Dr. Johnson’s pompous character of him, which was proper only for a tombstone—it was like one of Kneller’s portraits,—it would do for any body! That,’ said Northcote, ‘is old Mr. M—’s definition of beauty, which Sir Joshua has adopted in the Discourses—that it is themedium of form. For what is a handsome nose? A long nose is not a handsome nose; neither is a short nose a handsome one: it must then be one that isneither long nor short, but in the middle between both. Even Burke bowed to his authority; and Sir Joshua thought him the wisest man he ever knew. Once when Sir Joshua was expressing his impatience of some innovation, and I said, “At that rate, the Christian Religion could never have been established.” “Oh!” he said, “Mr. M— has answered that!” which seemed to satisfy him.’

I made some remark that I wondered he did not come up to London, though the same feeling seemed to belong to other clever men born in Devonshire (as Gandy) whose ambition was confined to their native county, so that there must be some charm in the place. ‘You are to consider,’ he replied, ‘it is almost a peninsula, so that there is no thorough-fare, and people are therefore more stationary in one spot. It is for this reason they necessarily intermarry among themselves, and you can trace the genealogies of families for centuries back; whereas in other places, and particularly here in London, where every thing of that kind is jumbled together, you never know who any man’s grandfather was. There are country-squires and plain gentry down in that part of the world, who have occupied the same estates long before the Conquest (as the Suckbitches in particular,—not a very sounding name) and who look down upon the Courtneys and others as upstarts. Certainly, Devonshire for its extent has produced a number of eminent men, Sir Joshua, the Mudges, Dunning, Gay, Lord Chancellor King, Raleigh, Drake, and Sir Richard Granville in Queen Elizabeth’s time, who made that gallant defence in an engagement with the Spanish fleet, and was the ancestor of Pope’s Lord Lansdowne, “What Muse for Granville will refuse to sing, &c.” Foster, the celebrated preacher, was also, I believe, from the West of England. He first became popular from the Lord Chancellor Hardwicke stopping in the porch of his chapel in the Old Jewry, out of a shower of rain; and thinking he might as well hear what was going on, he went in, and was so well pleased that he sent all the great folks to hear him, and he was run after as much as Irving has been in our time. An old fellow-student from the country, going to wait on him at his house in London, found a Shakspeare on the window-seat; and remarking the circumstance with some surprise as out of the usual course of clerical studies, the other apologised by saying that he wished to know something of the world, that his situation and habits precluded him from the common opportunities, and that he found no way of supplying the deficiency so agreeable or effectual as looking into a volume of Shakspeare. Pope has immortalised him in the well-known lines:—

‘Let modest Foster, if he will, excelTen Metropolitans in preaching well!’

‘Let modest Foster, if he will, excel

Ten Metropolitans in preaching well!’

Dr. Mudge, the son of Mr. Zachary Mudge, who was a physician, was an intimate friend of my father’s, and I remember him perfectly well. He was one of the most delightful persons I ever knew. Every one was enchanted with his society. It was not wit that he possessed, but such perfect cheerfulness and good-humour, that it was like health coming into the room. He was a most agreeable companion, quite natural and unaffected. His reading was the most beautiful I have ever heard. I remember his once reading Moore’s fable of theFemale Seducerswith such feeling and sweetness that every one was delighted, and Dr. Mudge himself was so much affected that he burst into tears in the middle of it. The family are still respectable, but derive their chief lustre from the first two founders, like clouds that reflect the sun’s rays, after he has sunk below the horizon, but in time turn grey and are lost in obscurity!’

I asked Northcote if he had ever happened to meet with a letter of Warburton’s in answer to one of Dr. Doddridge’s, complimenting the author of theDivine Legation of Moseson the evident zeal and earnestness with which he wrote—to which the latter candidly replied, that he wrote with great haste and unwillingness; that he never sat down to compose till the printer’s boy was waiting at the door for the manuscript, and that he should never write at all but as a relief to a morbid lowness of spirits, and to drive away uneasy thoughts that often assailed him.[91]‘That indeed,’ observed Northcote, ‘gives a different turn to the statement; I thought at first it was only the common coquetry both of authors and artists, to be supposed to do what excites the admiration of others with the greatest ease and indifference, and almost without knowing what they are about. If what surprisesyoucosts them nothing, the wonder is so much increased. When Michael Angelo proposed to fortify his native city, Florence, and he was desired to keep to his painting and sculpture, he answered, that those were his recreations, but what he really understood was architecture. That is what Sir Joshua considers as the praise of Rubens, that he seemed to make a play-thing of the art. In fact, the work is never complete unless it has this appearance: and therefore Sir Joshua has laid himself open to criticism, in saying that ‘a picture must not only be done well, it must seem to have been done easily.’ It cannot be said to be done well, unless it has this look. That is the fault of those laboured and timid productions of the modern French and Italian schools; they are the result of such a tedious, petty, mechanical process, that it is as difficult for you to admire as it has been for the artist to execute them. Whereas,when a work seems stamped on the canvas by a blow, you are taken by surprise; and your admiration is as instantaneous and electrical as the impulse of genius which has caused it. I have seen a whole-length portrait by Velasquez, that seemed done while the colours were yet wet; every thing was touched in, as it were, by a wish; there was such a power that it thrilled through your whole frame, and you felt as if you could take up the brush and do any thing. It is this sense of power and freedom which delights and communicates its own inspiration, just as the opposite drudgery and attention to details is painful and disheartening. There was a little picture of one of the Infants of Spain on horseback, also by Velasquez, which Mr. Agar had,[92]and with which Gainsborough was so transported, that he said in a fit of bravado to the servant who showed it, “Tell your master I will give him a thousand pounds for that picture.” Mr. Agar began to consider what pictures he could purchase with the money if he parted with this, and at last, having made up his mind, sent Gainsborough word he might have the picture; who not at all expecting this result, was a good deal confused, and declared, however he might admire it, he could not afford to give so large a sum for it.’

Northcote complained of being unwell, though he said he could hardly expect it to be otherwise at his age. He must think of making up the accounts of his life, such as it had been, though he added (checking himself) that he ought not to say that, for he had had his share of good as well as others. He had been reading in Boccaccio, where it was frequently observed, that ‘such a one departed thiswretchedlife at such a time;’—so that in Boccaccio’s time they complained of the wretchedness of life as much as we do. He alluded to an expression of Coleridge’s, which he had seen quoted in a newspaper, and which he thought very fine, ‘That an old Gothic cathedral always seemed to him like a petrified religion!’ Some one asked, Why does he not go and turn Black Monk? Because, I said, he never does anything that he should do. ‘There are some things,’ said N., ‘with respect to which I am in the same state that a blind man is as to colours. Homer is one of these. I am utterly in the dark about it. I can make nothing of his heroes or his Gods. Whether this is owing to my not knowing the languageor to a change of manners, I cannot say.’ He was here interrupted by the entrance of the beautiful Mrs. G—, beautiful even in years. She said she had brought him a book to look at. She could not stop, for she had a lady waiting for her below, but she would call in some morning and have a long chat. After she was gone, I remarked how handsome she still was; and he said, ‘I don’t know why she is so kind as to come, except that I am the last link in the chain that connects her with all those she most esteemed when she was young, Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith—and remind her of the most delightful period of her life.’ I said, Not only so, but you remember what she was at twenty; and you thus bring back to her the triumphs of her youth—that pride of beauty which must be the more fondly cherished as it has no external vouchers, and lives chiefly in the bosom of its once lovely possessor. In her, however, the Graces had triumphed over time; she was one of Ninon de l’Enclos’ people, of the list of the Immortals. I could almost fancy the shade of Goldsmith in the room, looking round with complacency. ‘Yes,’ said Northcote, ‘that is what Sir Joshua used to mention as the severest test of beauty—it was not thenskin-deeponly. She had gone through all the stages, and had lent a grace to each. There are beauties that are old in a year. Take away the bloom and freshness of youth, and there is no trace of what they were. Their beauty is not grounded in first principles. Good temper is one of the great preservers of the features.’ I observed, it was the same in the mind as in the body. There were persons of premature ability who soon ran to seed, and others who made no figure till they were advanced in life. I had known several who were very clever at seventeen or eighteen, but who had turned out nothing afterwards. ‘That is what my father used to say, that at that time of life the effervescence and intoxication of youth did a great deal, but that we must wait till the gaiety and dance of the animal spirits had subsided to see what people really were. It is wonderful’ (said Northcote, reverting to the former subject) ‘what a charm there is in those early associations, in whatever recals that first dawn and outset of life.Jack-the-Giant-Killeris the first book I ever read, and I cannot describe the pleasure it gives me even now. I cannot look into it without my eyes filling with tears. I do not know what it is (whether good or bad), but it is to me, from early impressions, the most heroic of performances. I remember once not having money to buy it, and I transcribed it all out with my own hand. This is what I was going to say about Homer. I cannot help thinking that one cause of the high admiration in which it is held is its being the first book that is put into the hands of young people at school: it is the first spell which opens to them theenchantments of the unreal world. Had I been bred a scholar, I dare say Homer would have been my Jack-the-Giant-Killer!—There is an innocence and simplicity in that early age which makes every thing relating to it delightful. It seems to me that it is the absence of all affectation or even ofconsciousness, that constitutes the perfection of nature or art. That is what makes it so interesting to see girls and boys dancing at school—there is such natural gaiety and freedom, such unaffected, unpretending, unknown grace. That is the true dancing, and not what you see at the Opera. And again, in the most ordinary actions of children, what an ease, what a playfulness, what flames of beauty do they throw out without being in the smallest degree aware of it! I have sometimes thought it a pity there should be such a precious essence, and that those who possess it should be quite ignorant of it: yet if they knew it, that alone would kill it! The whole depends on the utter absence of all egotism, of the remotest reflection upon self. It is the same in works of art—the simplest are the best. That is what makes me hate thosestuffedcharacters that are so full of themselves that I think they cannot have much else in them. A man who admires himself prevents me from admiring him, just as by praising himself he stops my mouth; though the vulgar take their cue from a man’s opinion of himself, and admire none but coxcombs and pedants. This is the best excuse for impudence and quackery, that the world will not be gained without it. The true favourites of Nature, however, have their eyes turned towards the Goddess, instead of looking at themselves in the glass. There is no pretence or assumption about them. It seems difficult indeed for any one who is the object of attention to others not to be thinking of himself: but the greatest men have always been the most free from this bias, the weakest have been the soonest puffed up by self-conceit. If you had asked Correggio why he painted as he did, he would have answered, “Because he could not help it.” Look at Dryden’s verses, which he wrote just like a school-boy who brings up his task without knowing whether he shall be rewarded or flogged for it. Do you suppose he wrote the description of Cymon for any other reason than because he could not help it, or that he had any more power to stop himself in his headlong career than the mountain-torrent? Or turn to Shakspeare, who evidently does not know the value, thedreadfulvalue (as I may say) of the expressions he uses. Genius gathers up its beauties, like the child, without knowing whether they are weeds or flowers: those productions that are destined to give forth an everlasting odour, grow up without labour or design.’

Mr. P— came in, and complimenting Northcote on a largepicture he was about, the latter said, It was his last great work: he was getting too old for such extensive undertakings. His friend replied, that Titian went on painting till near a hundred. ‘Aye,’ said Northcote, ‘but he had the Devil to help him, and I have never been able to retain him in my service. It is a dreadful thing to see an immense blank canvas spread out before you to commit sins upon.’ Something was said of the Academy, and P— made answer, ‘I know your admiration of corporate bodies.’ N. said, ‘They were no worse than others; they all began well and ended ill. When the Academy first began, one would suppose that the Members were so many angels sent from heaven to fill the different situations, and that was the reason why it began: now the difficulty was to find any body fit for them, and the deficiency was supplied by interest, intrigue, and cabal. Not that I object to the individuals neither. As Swift said, I like Jack, Tom, and Harry very well by themselves; but altogether, they are not to be endured. We see the effect of people acting in concert in animals (for men are only a more vicious sort of animals): a single dog will let you kick and cuff him as you please, and will submit to any treatment; but if you meet a pack of hounds, they will set upon you and tear you to pieces with the greatest impudence.’ P.: ‘The same complaint was made of the Academy in Barry’s time, which is now thirty or forty years ago.’[93]Northcote: ‘Oh! yes, they very soon degenerated. It is the same in all human institutions. The thing is, there has been no way found yet to keep the Devil out. It will be a curious thing to see whether that experiment of the American Government will last. If it does, it will be the first instance of the kind.’ P.: ‘I should think not. There is something very complicated and mysterious in the mode of their Elections, which I am given to understand are managed in an under-hand manner by the leaders of parties; and besides, in all governments the greatdesideratumis to combine activity with a freedom from selfish passions. But it unfortunately happens that in human life, the selfish passions are the strongest and most active; and on this rock society seems to split. There is a certain period in a man’s life when he is at his best (when he combines the activity of youth with the experience of manhood), after which he declines; and perhaps it may be the same with states. Things are not best in the beginning or at the end, but in the middle, which is but a point.’Northcote: ‘Nothing stands still; it therefore either grows better or worse. When a thing has reached its utmost perfection, it then borders on excess; and excess leads to ruin and decay.’

Lord G. had bought a picture of Northcote’s: an allusion was made to his enormous and increasing wealth. Northcote said he could be little the better for it. After a certain point, it became a mere nominal distinction. He only thought of that which passed through his hands and fell under his immediate notice. He knew no more of the rest than you or I did: he was merely perplexed by it. This was what often made persons in his situation tenacious of the most trifling sums, for this was the only positive or tangible wealth they had: the remote contingency was like a thing in the clouds, or mountains of silver and gold seen in the distant horizon. It was the same with Nollekens: he died worth £200,000: but the money he had accumulated at his banker’s was out of his reach and contemplation—out of sight, out of mind—he was only muddling about with what he had in his hands, and lived like a beggar in actual fear of want. P. said, he was an odd little man, but he believed clever in his profession. Northcote assented, and observed ‘he was an instance of what might be done by concentrating the attention on a single object. If you collect the rays of the sun in a focus, you could set any object on fire. Great talents were often dissipated to no purpose: but time and patience conquered every thing. Without them, you could do nothing. So Giardini, when asked how long it would take to learn to play on the fiddle, answered—“Twelve hours a-day for twenty years together.” A few great geniuses may trifle with the arts, like Rubens; but in general nothing can be more fatal than to suppose one’s-self a great genius.’ P. observed, that in common business those who gave up their whole time and thoughts to any pursuit generally succeeded in it, though far from bright men: and we often found those who had acquired a name for some one excellence, people of moderate capacity in other respects. After Mr. P. was gone, Northcote said he was one of the persons of the soundest judgment he had ever known, and like Mr. P. H. the least liable to be imposed upon by appearances. Northcote made the remark that he thought it improper in any one to refuse lending a favourite picture for public exhibition, as it seemed not exclusively to belong to one person. A jewel of this value belongs rather to the public than to the individual. Consider the multitudes you deprive of an advantage they cannot receive again: the idle of amusement, the studious of instruction and improvement. I said, this kind of indifference to the wishes of the public wassending the world to Coventry! We then spoke of a celebrated courtier, of whom I said I was willing to believe every thing that was amiable, though I had some difficulty, while thinking of him, to keep thevaletout of my head.Northcote: ‘He has certainly endeavoured to behavewell; but there is no altering character. I myself might have been a courtier if I could have cringed and held my tongue; but I could no more exist in that element than a fish out of water. At one time I knew Lord R. and Lord H. S—, who were intimate with the Prince and recommended my pictures to him. Sir Joshua once asked me, “What do you know of the Prince of —, that he so often speaks to me about you?” I remember I made him laugh by my answer, for I said, “Oh! he knows nothing of me, nor I of him—it’s only hisbragging!”—“Well,” said he, “that is spoken like a King!”‘... It was to-day I asked leave to write down one or two of these Conversations: he said ‘I might, if I thought it worth while; but I do assure you that you overrate them. You have not lived enough in society to be a judge. What is new to you, you think will seem so to others. To be sure, there is one thing, I have had the advantage of having lived in good society myself. I not only passed a great deal of my younger days in the company of Reynolds, Johnson, and that circle, but I was brought up among the Mudges, of whom Sir Joshua (who was certainly used to the most brilliant society of the metropolis) thought so highly, that he had them at his house for weeks, and even sometimes gave up his own bed-room to receive them. Yet they were not thought superior to several other persons at Plymouth, who were distinguished, some for their satirical wit, others for their delightful fancy, others for their information or sound sense, and with all of whom my father was familiar when I was a boy. Really after what I recollect of these, some of the present people appear to me mere wretched pretenders, muttering out their own emptiness.’ I said, We had a specimen of Lord Byron’sConversations.Northcote.—‘Yes; but he was a tyrant, and a person of that disposition never learns any thing, because he will only associate with inferiors. If, however, you think you can make any thing of it and can keep clear of personalities, I have no objection to your trying; only I think after the first attempt, you will give it up as turning out quite differently from what you expected.’

Northcote spoke again of Sir Joshua, and said, he was in some degree ignorant of what might be called thegrammaticalpart of the art, or scholarship of academic skill; but he made up for it by an eye for nature, or rather by a feeling of harmony and beauty. Dance (he that was afterwards Sir Nathaniel Holland) drew the figure well, gave a strong likeness and a certain studied air to his portraits;yet they were so stiff and forced that they seemed as if put into avice. Sir Joshua, with the defect of proportion and drawing, threw his figures into such natural and graceful attitudes, that they might be taken for the very people sitting or standing there. An arm might be too long or too short, but from the apparent ease of the position he had chosen, it looked like a real arm and neither too long nor too short. The mechanical measurements might be wrong: the general conception of nature and character was right; and this, which he felt most strongly himself, he conveyed in a corresponding degree to the spectator. Nature is not one thing, but a variety of things, considered under different points of view; and he who seizes forcibly and happily on any one of these, does enough for fame. He will be the most popular artist, who gives that view with which the world in general sympathise. A merely professional reputation is not very extensive, nor will it last long. W—, who prided himself on his drawing, had no idea of any thing but a certain rigidoutline, never considering the use of the limbs in moving, the effects of light and shade, &c. so that his figures, even the best of them, look as if cut out of wood. Therefore no one now goes to see them: while Sir Joshua’s are as much sought after as ever, from their answering to a feeling in the mind, though deficient as literal representations of external nature. Speaking of artists who were said, in the cant of connoisseurship, to be jealous of their outline, he said, ‘Rembrandt was not one of these. He took good care to lose it as fast as he could.’ Northcote then spoke of the breadth of Titian, and observed, that though particularly in his early pictures, he had finished highly and copied every thing from nature, this never interfered with the general effect, there was no confusion or littleness: he threw such a broad light on the objects, that every thing was seen in connection with the masses and in its place. He then mentioned some pictures of his own, some of them painted forty years ago, that had lately sold very well at a sale at Plymouth: he was much gratified at this, and said it was almost like looking out of the grave to see how one’s reputation got on.

Northcote told an anecdote of Sir George B—, to show the credulity of mankind. When a young man, he put an advertisement in the papers to say that a Mynheer —, just come over from Germany, had found out a method of taking a likeness much superior to any other by the person’s looking into a mirror and having the glass heated so as to bake the impression. He stated this wonderful artist to live at a perfumer’s shop in Bond-street, opposite to an hotel where he lodged, and amused himself the next day to see the numbers of people who flocked to have their likenesses taken in this surprisingmanner. At last, he went over himself to ask for Monsieur —, and was driven out of the shop by the perfumer in a rage, who said there was no Monsieur — nor MonsieurDevillived there. At another time Sir G. was going in a coach to a tavern with a party of gay young men. The waiter came to the coach-door with a light, and as he was holding this up to the others, those who had already got out went round, and getting in at the opposite coach-door came out again, so that there seemed to be no end of the procession, and the waiter ran into the house, frightened out of his wits. The same story is told of Swift and four clergymen dressed in canonicals.

Speaking of titles, Northcote said, ‘It was strange what blunders were often made in this way. R—, (the engraver) had stuck Lord John Boringdon under his print after Sir Joshua—it should be John Lord Boringdon—and he calls the Earl of Carlisle Lord Carlisle—Lord Carlisle denotes only a Baron. I was once dining at Sir John Leicester’s, and a gentleman who was there was expressing his wonder what connection a Prince of Denmark and a Duke of Gloucester could have with Queen Anne, that prints of them should be inserted in a history that he had just purchased of her reign. No other, I said, than that one of them was her son, and the other her husband. The boy died when he was eleven years old of a fever caught at a ball dancing, or he would have succeeded to the throne. He was a very promising youth, though that indeed is what is said of all princes. Queen Anne took his death greatly to heart, and that was the reason why she never would appoint a successor. She wished her brother to come in, rather than the present family. That makes me wonder, after thrones have been overturned and kingdoms torn asunder to keep the Catholics out, to see the pains that are now taken to bring them in. It was this that made the late King say it was inconsistent with his Coronation-oath. Not that I object to tolerate any religion (even the Jewish), but they are the only one that will not tolerate any other. They are such devils (what with their cunning, their numbers, and their zeal), that if they once get a footing, they will never rest till they get the whole power into their hands. It was but the other day that the Jesuits nearly overturned the empire of China; and if they were obliged to make laws and take the utmost precautions against their crafty encroachments, shall we open a door to them, who have only just escaped out of their hands?’ I said, I had thrown a radical reformer into a violent passion lately by maintaining that the Pope and Cardinals of Rome were a set of as good-looking men as so many Protestant Bishops or Methodist parsons, and that the Italians were the only people who seemed to have any faith in their religion as an object ofimagination or feeling. My opponent grew almost black in the face, while inveighing against the enormous absurdity of transubstantiation; it was in vain I pleaded the beauty, innocence, and cheerfulness of the peasant-girls near Rome, who believed in this dreadful superstition, and who thought medamnedand would probably have been glad to see me burnt at a stake as a heretic. At length I said, that I thought reason and truth very excellent things in themselves; and that when I saw the rest of the world grow as fond of them as they were of absurdity and superstition, I should be entirely of his way of thinking; but I liked an interest in something (a wafer or a crucifix) better than an interest in nothing. What have philosophers gained by unloosing their hold of theidealworld, but to be hooted at and pelted by the rabble, and envied and vilified by one another for want of a common bond of union and interest between them? I just now met the son of an old literary friend in the street, who seemed disposed tocutme for some hereditary pique, jealousy, or mistrust. Suppose his father and I had been Catholic priests (saving thebar-sinister) how different would have been my reception! He is short-sighted indeed; but had I been a Cardinal, he would have seen me fast enough: the costume alone would have assisted him. Where there is no frame-work of respectability founded on theesprit de corpsand on public opinion cemented into a prejudice, the jarring pretensions of individuals fall into a chaos of elementary particles, neutralising each other by mutual antipathy, and soon become the sport and laughter of the multitude. Where the whole is referred to intrinsic, real merit, this creates a standard of conceit, egotism, and envy in every one’s own mind, lowering the class, not raising the individual. A Catholic priest walking along the street is looked up to as a link in the chain let down from heaven: a poet or philosopher is looked down upon as a poor creature, deprived of certain advantages, and with very questionable pretensions in other respects. Abstract intellect requires the weight of the other world to be thrown into the scale, to make it a match for the prejudices, vulgarity, ignorance, and selfishness of this! ‘You are right,’ said Northcote. ‘It was Archimedes who said he could move the earth if he had a place to fix his levers on: the priests have always found thispurchasein the skies. After all, we have not much reason to complain, if they give us so splendid a reversion to look forward to. That is what I said to G— when he had been trying to unsettle the opinions of a young artist whom I knew. Why should you wish to turn him out of one house, till you have provided another for him? Besides, what do you know of the matter more than he does? His nonsense is as good as your nonsense, when both are equally in the dark. Asto what your friend said of the follies of the Catholics, I do not think that the Protestants can pretend to be quite free from them. So when a chaplain of Lord Bath’s was teazing a Popish clergyman to know how he could make up his mind to admit that absurdity of Transubstantiation, the other made answer, “Why, I’ll tell you: when I was young, I was taught to swallow Adam’s Apple; and since that, I have found no difficulty with any thing else!” We may say what we will of the Catholic religion; but it is more easy to abuse than to overturn it. I have for myself no objection to it but its insatiable ambition, and its being such a dreadful engine of power. It is its very perfection as a system of profound policy and moral influence, that renders it so formidable. Indeed, I have been sometimes suspected of a leaning to it myself; and when Godwin wrote hisLife of Chaucer, he was said to have turned Papist from his making use of something I had said to him about confession. I don’t know but unfair advantages may be taken of it for state-purposes; but I cannot help thinking it is of signal benefit in the regulation of private life. If servants have cheated or lied or done any thing wrong, they are obliged to tell it to the priest, which makes them bear it in mind, and then a certain penance is assigned which they must go through, though they do not like it. All this acts as a timely check, which is better than letting them go on till their vices get head, and then hanging them! The Great indeed may buy themselves off (as where are they not privileged?) but this certainly does not apply to the community at large. I remember our saying to that old man (a Dominican friar) whose picture you see there, that we wished he could be made a Royal Confessor; to which he replied, that he would not for the world be Confessor to a King, because it would prevent him from the conscientious discharge of his duty. In former times, in truth, the traffic in indulgences was carried to great lengths; and this it was that broke up the system and gave a handle to the Protestants. The excellence of the scheme produced the power, and then the power led to the abuse of it. Infidel Popes went the farthest in extending the privileges of the Church; and being held back by no scruples of faith or conscience, nearly ruined it. When some pious ecclesiastic was insisting to LeoX.on the necessity of reforming certain scandalous abuses, he pointed to a crucifix and said, “Behold the fate of a reformer! The system, as it is, is good enough for us!” They have taken the morality of the Gospel and engrafted upon it a system of superstition and priestcraft; but still perhaps the former prevails over the latter. Even that duty of humanity to animals is beautifully provided for; for on St. Antony’s day, the patron of animals, the horses, &c.pass under a certain arch, and the priest sprinkles the Holy Water over them, so that they are virtually taken under the protection of the church. We think we have a right to treat them any how, because they have no souls. The Roman Catholic is not a barbarous religion; and it is also much milder than it was. This is a necessary consequence of the state of things. When three Englishmen were presented to BenedictXIV.(Lambertini) who was a man of wit and letters, he observed to them smiling, “I know that you must look upon our religion as false and spurious, but I suppose you will have no objection to receive the blessing of an old man!” When Fuseli and I were there, an Englishman of the name of Brown had taken the pains to convert a Roman artist: the Englishman was sent from Rome, and the student was taken to the Inquisition, where he was shown the hooks in the wall and the instruments of torture used in former times, reprimanded, and soon after dismissed.’ I asked Northcote whereabouts the Inquisition was? He said, ‘In a street behind the Vatican.’ He and Mr. Prince Hoare once took shelter in the portico out of a violent shower of rain, and considered it a great piece of inhumanity to be turned out into the street. He then noticed a curious mistake in Mrs. Radcliffe’sItalian, where some one is brought from Naples to the Inquisition, and made to enter Rome through the Porta di Popolo, and then the other streets on the English side of Rome are described with great formality, which is as if any one was described as coming by the coach from Exeter, and after entering at Whitechapel, proceeding through Cheapside and the Strand to Charing Cross. Northcote related a story told him by Nollekens of a singular instance of the effects of passion that he saw in the Trastevere, the oldest and most disorderly part of Rome.[94]Two women were quarrelling, when having used the most opprobrious language, one of them drew a knife from her bosom, and tried to plunge it into her rival’s breast, but missing her blow and the other retiring to a short distance and laughing at her, in a fit of impotent rage she struck it into her own bosom. Her passion had been worked up to an uncontrolable pitch, and being disappointed of its first object, must find vent somewhere. I remarked it was what we did every day of our lives in a less degree, according to the vulgar proverb ofcutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face!

Northcote then returned to the subject of the sale of his pictures. He said it was a satisfaction, though a melancholy one, to think that one’s works might fetch more after one’s death than during one’s life-time. He had once shewn Farington a landscape of Wilson’s, for which agentleman had given three hundred guineas at the first word; and Farington said he remembered Wilson’s painting it, and how delighted he was when he got thirty pounds for it. Barrett rode in his coach, while Wilson nearly starved and was obliged to borrow ten pounds to go and die in Wales: yet he used to say that his pictures would be admired, when the name of Barrett was forgotten. Northcote said he also thought it a great hardship upon authors, that copyright should be restricted to a few years, instead of being continued for the benefit of the family, as in the case of Hudibras, Paradise Lost, and other works, by which booksellers made fortunes every year, though the descendants of the authors were still living in obscurity and distress. I said that in France a successful drama brought something to the author or his heirs every time it was acted. Northcote seemed to approve of this, and remarked that he always thought it very hard upon Richardson, just at the time he had brought out his Pamela or Clarissa, to have it pirated by an Irish bookseller through a treacherous servant whom he kept in his shop, and thus to lose all the profits of his immortal labours.

Northcote remarked to-day that artists were more particular than authors as to character—the latter did not seem to care whom they associated with. He, N—, was disposed to attribute this to greater refinement of moral perception in his own profession. I said I thought it was owing to authors being more upon the town than painters, who were dependent upon particular individuals and in a manner accountable to them for the persons they might be seen in company with or might occasionally bring into contact with them. For instance, I said I thought H— was wrong in asking me to hisPrivate Day, where I might meet with Lord M—, who was so loyal a man that he affected not to know that such a person as Admiral Blake had ever existed. On the same principle this Noble Critic was blind to the merit of Milton, in whom he could see nothing, though Mr. Pitt had been at the pains to repeat several fine passages to him. N— said, ‘It’s extraordinary how particular the world sometimes are, and what prejudices they take up against people, even where there is no objection to character, merely on the score of opinion. There is G—, who is a very good man; yet when Mr. H— and myself wished to introduce him at the house of a lady who lives in a round of society, and has a strong tinge of theblue-stocking, she would not hear of it. The sound of the name seemed to terrify her. It was hiswritingsshe was afraid of. Even Cosway made a difficulty too.’

I replied—‘I should not have expected this of him, who was as great a visionary and as violent a politician as any body could be.’

Northcote—‘It passed off in Cosway as whim. He was one of those butterfly characters that nobody minded: so that his opinion went for nothing: but it would not do to bring any one else there, whose opinion might be more regarded and equally unpalatable. G—’s case is particularly hard in this respect: he is a profligate in theory, and a bigot in conduct. He does not seem at all to practise what he preaches, though this does not appear to avail him any thing.’—‘Yes,’ I said, ‘he writes, against himself. He has written against matrimony, and has been twice married. He has scouted all the common-place duties, and yet is a good husband and a kind father. He is a strange composition of contrary qualities. He is a cold formalist, and full of ardour and enthusiasm of mind; dealing in magnificent projects and petty cavils; naturally dull, and brilliant by dint of study; pedantic and playful; a dry logician and a writer of romances.’

‘You describe him,’ said N—, ‘as I remember Baretti once did Sir Joshua Reynolds at his own table, saying to him, “You are extravagant and mean, generous and selfish, envious and candid, proud and humble, a genius and a mere ordinary mortal at the same time.” I may not remember his exact words, but that was their effect. The fact was, Sir Joshua was a mixed character, like the rest of mankind in that respect; but knew his own failings, and was on his guard to keep them back as much as possible, though the defects would break out sometimes.’ ‘G—, on the contrary,’ I said, ‘is aiming to let his out and to magnify them into virtues in a kind of hot-bed of speculation. He is shocking on paper and tame in reality.’

‘How is that?’ said Northcote.

‘Why, I think it is easy enough to be accounted for; he is naturally a cold speculative character, and indulges in certain metaphysical extravagances as an agreeable exercise for the imagination, which alarm persons of a grosser temperament, but to which he attaches no practical consequences whatever. So it has been asked how some very immoral or irreligious writers, such as Helveticus and others, have been remarked to be men of good moral character? and I think the answer is the same. Persons of a studious, phlegmatic disposition can with impunity give a license to their thoughts, which they are under no temptation to reduce into practice. The sting is taken out of evil by their constitutional indifference, and they look on virtue and vice as little more than words without meaning or the blackand white pieces of the chess-board, in combining which the same skill and ingenuity may be shewn. More depraved and combustible temperaments are warned of the danger of any latitude of opinion by their very proneness to mischief, and are forced by a secret consciousness to impose the utmost restraint both upon themselves and others. The greatest prudes are not always supposed to be the greatest enemies to pleasure. Besides, authors are very much confined by habit to a life of study and speculation, sow their wild oats in their books, and unless where their passions are very strong indeed, take their swing in theory and conform in practice to the ordinary rules and examples of the world.’

Northcote said, ‘Certainly people are tenacious of appearances in proportion to the depravity of manners, as we may see in the simplicity of country-places. To be sure, a rake like Hodge inLove in a Villagegets amongst them now and then; but in general they do many gross things without the least notion of impropriety, as if vice were a thing they had no more to do with than children.’ He then mentioned an instance of some young country-people who had to sleep on the floor in the same room and they parted the men from the women by some sacks of corn, which served for a line of demarcation and an inviolable partition between them. I told N— a story of a countrywoman who coming to an inn in the West of England wanted a bed; and being told they had none to spare, still persisted till the landlady said in a joke, ‘I tell you, good woman, I have none, unless you can prevail with the ostler to give you half of his.’—‘Well,’ said she, ‘if he is a sober, prudent man, I should not mind.’

Something was then said of the manners of people abroad, who sometimes managed to unite an absence ofmauvaise hontewith what could hardly be construed into an ignorance of vice. The Princess Borghese (Buonaparte’s sister) who was no saint, sat to Canova for a model, and being asked, ‘If she did not feel a little uncomfortable,’ answered, ‘No, there was a fire in the room.’

‘Custom,’ said N—, ‘makes a wonderful difference in taking off the sharpness of the first inflammable impression. People for instance were mightily shocked when they first heard that the boys at the Academy drew from a living model. But the effect almost immediately wears off with them. It is exactly like copying from a statue. The stillness, the artificial light, the attention to what they are about, the publicity even, draws off any idle thoughts, and they regard the figure and point out its defects or beauties, precisely as if it were of clay or marble.’ I said I had perceived this effect myself, that the anxiety to copy the object before one deadened every otherfeeling; but as this drew to a close, the figure seemed almost like something coming to life again, and that this was a very critical minute. He said, he found the students sometimes watched the women out, though they were not of a very attractive appearance, as none but those who were past their prime would sit in this way: they looked upon it as an additional disgrace to what their profession imposed upon them, and as something unnatural. One in particular (he remembered) always came in a mask. Several of the young men in his time had however been lured into a course of dissipation and ruined by such connexions; one in particular, a young fellow of great promise but affected, and who thought that profligacy was a part of genius. I said, It was the easiest part. This was an advantage foreign art had over ours. A battered courtesan sat for Sir Joshua’s Iphigene; innocent girls sat for Canova’s Graces, as I had been informed.

Northcote asked, if I had sent my son to school? I said, I thought of the Charter-House, if I could compass it. I liked those old established places where learning grew for hundreds of years, better than any new-fangled experiments or modern seminaries. He inquired if I had ever thought of putting him to school on the Continent; to which I answered, No, for I wished him to have an idea of home, before I took him abroad; by beginning in the contrary method, I thought I deprived him both of the habitual attachment to the one and of the romantic pleasure in the other. N— observed there were very fine schools at Rome in his time, one was an Italian, and another a Spanish College, at the last of which they acted plays of Voltaire’s, such as Zara, Mahomet, &c. at some of which he had been present. The hall that served for the theatre was beautifully decorated; and just as the curtain was about to draw up, a hatch-way was opened and showered down play-bills on their heads with the names of the actors; such a part being by a Spanish Grandee of the first class, another by a Spanish Grandee of the second class, and they were covered with jewels of the highest value. Several Cardinals were also present (who did not attend the public theatres) and it was easy to gain admittance from the attention always shewn to strangers. N— then spoke of the courtesy and decorum of the Roman clergy in terms of warm praise, and said he thought it in a great measure owing to the conclave being composed of dignitaries of all nations, Spanish, German, Italian, which merged individual asperities and national prejudices in a spirit of general philanthropy and mutual forbearance. I said I had never met with a look from a Catholic priest (from the highest to the lowest) that seemed to reproach me with being atramontane. This absence of all impertinence was tome the first of virtues. He repeated, I have no fault to find with Italy. There may be vice in Rome, as in all great capitals (though I did not see it)—but in Parma and the remoter towns, they seem all like one great and exemplary family. Their kindness to strangers was remarkable. He said he had himself travelled all the way from Lyons to Genoa, and from Genoa to Rome without speaking a word of the language and in the power of a single person without meeting with the smallest indignity; and everywhere, both at the inns and on the road, every attention was paid to his feelings, and pains taken to alleviate the uncomfortableness of his situation. Set a Frenchman down in England to go from London to York in the same circumstances, and see what treatment he will be exposed to. He recollected a person of the name of Gogain who had been educated in France and could not speak English—on landing, he held out half-a-guinea to pay the boatman who had rowed him only about twenty yards from the vessel, which the fellow put in his pocket and left him without a single farthing. Abroad, he would have been had before the magistrate for such a thing, and probably sent to the galleys. There is a qualifying property in nature that makes most things equal. In England they cannot drag you out of your bed to a scaffold, or take an estate from you without some reason assigned: but as the law prevents any flagrant acts of injustice, so it makes it more difficult to obtain redress. ‘We pay,’ continued Northcote, ‘for every advantage we possess by the loss of some other. Poor Goblet, the other day, after making himself a drudge to Nollekens all his life, with difficulty recovered eight hundred pounds compensation; and though he was clearly entitled, by the will, to the models which the sculptor left behind him, he was afraid to risk the law expenses, and gave it up.’ Some person had been remarking, that every one had a right to leave his property to whom he pleased. ‘Not,’ said N—, ‘when he has promised it to another.’ I asked if Mr. — was not the same person I had once seen come into his painting-room, in a rusty black coat and brown worsted stockings, very much with the air of a man who carries a pistol in an inside pocket? He said, ‘It might be: he was a dull man, but a great scholar—one of those described in the epigram:—

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