Note 25 — TURNER AND RUSKIN.
Reading edition
'What can I say of the Napoleon of Mr. Turner? called (with frightful satire) "The Exile and the Rock Limpet." He stands in the midst of a scarlet tornado looking at least forty feet high. "Ah!" says the mysterious poet from whom Mr. Turner loves to quote—
"Ah! thy tent-formed shell is like The soldier's nightly bivouac, alone Amidst a sea of blood....... ......but you can join your comrades!"
FALLACIES OF HOPE.
'These remarkable lines entirely explain the meaning of the picture; another piece is described by lines from the same poem, in a metre more regular—
"The midnight torch gleamed o'er the steamer's side, And merit's corse was yielded to the tide."
(This was the burial of Wilkie at sea: now in the National Gallery.)
'When the pictures are re-hung, as sometimes I believe is the case, it might, perhaps, be as well to turn these upside down and see how they would look then. The Campo Santo of Venice, when examined closely, is scarcely less mysterious; at a little distance, however, it is a most brilliant, airy, and beautiful picture. O for the old days before Mr. Turner had lighted on "The Fallacies" and could see like other people!'—An Exhibition Gossip, by Michael Angelo Titmarsh, Ainsworth's Magazine,1843.