DISCOURSE XV Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, on the Distribution of the Prizes, December 10, 1790.

The President takes Leave of the Academy.—A Review of the Discourses.—The Study of the Works of Michael Angelo recommended.

Gentlemen,

The intimate connection which I have had with the Royal Academy ever since its establishment, the social duties in which we have all mutually engaged for so many years, make any profession of attachment to this Institution, on my part, altogether superfluous; the influence of habit alone in such a connection would naturally have produced it.

Among men united in the same body, and engaged in the same pursuit, along with permanent friendship occasional differences will arise. In these disputes men are naturally too favourable to themselves, and think perhaps too hardly of their antagonists. But composed and constituted as we are, those little contentions will be lost to others, and they ought certainly to be lost amongst ourselves, in mutual esteem for talents and acquirements: every controversy ought to be, and I am persuaded will be, sunk in our zeal for the perfection of our common art.

In parting with the Academy, I shall remember with pride, affection, and gratitude, the support with which I have almost uniformly been honoured from the commencement of our intercourse. I shall leave you, gentlemen, with unaffected cordial wishes for your future concord, and with a well-founded hope, that in that concord the auspicious and not obscure origin of our Academy may be forgotten in the splendour of your succeeding prospects.

My age, and my infirmities still more than my age, make it probable that this will be the last time I shall have the honour of addressing you from this place. Excluded as I am, spatiis iniquis, from indulging my imagination with a distant and forward perspective of life, I may be excused if I turn my eyes back on the way which I have passed.

We may assume to ourselves, I should hope, the credit of having endeavoured, at least, to fill with propriety that middle station which we hold in the general connection of things. Our predecessors have laboured for our advantage, we labour for our successors; and though we have done no more in this mutual intercourse and reciprocation of benefits, than has been effected by other societies formed in this nation for the advancement of useful and ornamental knowledge, yet there is one circumstance which appears to give us a higher claim than the credit of merely doing our duty. What I at present allude to, is the honour of having been, some of us the first contrivers, and all of us the promoters and supporters, of the annual exhibition. This scheme could only have originated from artists already in possession of the favour of the public, as it would not have been so much in the power of others to have excited curiosity. It must be remembered, that for the sake of bringing forward into notice concealed merit, they incurred the risk of producing rivals to themselves; they voluntarily entered the lists, and ran the race a second time for the prize which they had already won.

When we take a review of the several departments of the Institution, I think we may safely congratulate ourselves on our good fortune in having hitherto seen the chairs of our professors filled with men of distinguished abilities, and who have so well acquitted themselves of their duty in their several departments. I look upon it to be of importance, that none of them should be ever left unfilled: a neglect to provide for qualified persons is to produce a neglect of qualifications.

In this honourable rank of professors, I have not presumed to class myself; though in the discourses which I have had the honour of delivering from this place, while in one respect I may be considered as a volunteer, in another view it seems as if I was involuntarily pressed into this service. If prizes were to be given, it appeared not only proper, but almost indispensably necessary, that something should be said by the President on the delivery of those prizes: and the President for his own credit would wish to say something more than mere words of compliment, which, by being frequently repeated, would soon become flat and uninteresting, and by being uttered to many, would at last become a distinction to none: I thought, therefore, if I were to preface this compliment with some instructive observations on the art, when we crowned merit in the artists whom we rewarded, I might do something to animate and guide them in their future attempts.

I am truly sensible how unequal I have been to the expression of my own ideas. To develop the latent excellences, and draw out the interior principles, of our art, requires more skill and practice in writing, than is likely to be possessed by a man perpetually occupied in the use of the pencil and the palette. It is for that reason, perhaps, that the sister art has had the advantage of better criticism. Poets are naturally writers of prose. They may be said to be practising only an inferior department of their own art, when they are explaining and expatiating upon its most refined principles. But still such difficulties ought not to deter artists who are not prevented by other engagements from putting their thoughts in order as well as they can, and from giving to the public the result of their experience. The knowledge which an artist has of his subject will more than compensate for any want of elegance in the manner of treating it, or even of perspicuity, which is still more essential; and I am convinced that one short essay written by a painter will contribute more to advance the theory of our art, than a thousand volumes such as we sometimes see; the purpose of which appears to be rather to display the refinement of the author’s own conceptions of impossible practice, than to convey useful knowledge or instruction of any kind whatever. An artist knows what is, and what is not, within the province of his art to perform; and is not likely to be for ever teasing the poor student with the beauties of mixed passions, or to perplex him with an imaginary union of excellences incompatible with each other.

To this work, however, I could not be said to come totally unprovided with materials. I had seen much, and I had thought much upon what I had seen; I had something of a habit of investigation, and a disposition to reduce all that I observed and felt in my own mind to method and system; but never having seen what I myself knew, distinctly placed before me on paper, I knew nothing correctly. To put those ideas into something like order was, to my inexperience, no easy task. The composition, the ponere totum even of a single discourse, as well as of a single statue, was the most difficult part, as perhaps it is of every other art, and most requires the hand of a master.

For the manner, whatever deficiency there was, I might reasonably expect indulgence; but I thought it indispensably necessary well to consider the opinions which were to be given out from this place, and under the sanction of a Royal Academy. I therefore examined not only my own opinions, but likewise the opinions of others. I found in the course of this research many precepts and rules established in our art, which did not seem to me altogether reconcilable with each other, yet each seemed in itself to have the same claim of being supported by truth and nature; and this claim, irreconcilable as they may be thought, they do in reality alike possess.

To clear away those difficulties, and reconcile those contrary opinions, it became necessary to distinguish the greater truth, as it may be called, from the lesser truth; the larger and more liberal idea of nature from the more narrow and confined; that which addresses itself to the imagination, from that which is solely addressed to the eye. In consequence of this discrimination, the different branches of our art, to which those different truths were referred, were perceived to make so wide a separation, and put on so new an appearance, that they seemed scarcely to have proceeded from the same general stock. The different rules and regulations, which presided over each department of art, followed of course: every mode of excellence, from the grand style of the Roman and Florentine schools down to the lowest rank of still-life, had its due weight and value,—fitted some class or other; and nothing was thrown away. By this disposition of our art into classes, that perplexity and confusion, which I apprehend every artist has at some time experienced from the variety of styles, and the variety of excellence with which he is surrounded, is, I should hope, in some measure removed, and the student better enabled to judge for himself, what peculiarly belongs to his own particular pursuit.

In reviewing my discourses, it is no small satisfaction to be assured that I have, in no part of them, lent my assistance to foster newly-hatched unfledged opinions, or endeavoured to support paradoxes, however tempting may have been their novelty; or however ingenious I might, for the minute, fancy them to be; nor shall I, I hope, anywhere be found to have imposed on the minds of young students declamation for argument, a smooth period for a sound precept. I have pursued a plain and honest method; I have taken up the art simply as I found it exemplified in the practice of the most approved painters. That approbation which the world has uniformly given, I have endeavoured to justify by such proofs as questions of this kind will admit; by the analogy which painting holds with the sister arts, and consequently by the common congeniality which they all bear to our nature. And though in what has been done no new discovery is pretended, I may still flatter myself, that from the discoveries which others have made by their own intuitive good sense and native rectitude of judgment, I have succeeded in establishing the rules and principles of our art on a more firm and lasting foundation than that on which they had formerly been placed.

Without wishing to divert the student from the practice of his art to speculative theory, to make him a mere connoisseur instead of a painter, I cannot but remark, that he will certainly find an account in considering once for all, on what ground the fabric of our art is built. Uncertain, confused, or erroneous opinions are not only detrimental to an artist in their immediate operation, but may possibly have very serious consequences; affect his conduct, and give a peculiar character (as it may be called) to his taste, and to his pursuits, through his whole life.

I was acquainted at Rome, in the early part of my life, with a student of the French Academy, who appeared to me to possess all the qualities requisite to make a great artist, if he had suffered his taste and feelings, and I may add even his prejudices, to have fair play. He saw and felt the excellences of the great works of art with which we were surrounded, but lamented that there was not to be found that nature which is so admirable in the inferior schools; and he supposed with Felibien, Du Piles, and other Theorists, that such a union of different excellences would be the perfection of art. He was not aware, that the narrow idea of nature, of which he lamented the absence in the works of those great artists, would have destroyed the grandeur of the general ideas which he admired, and which was indeed the cause of his admiration. My opinions being then confused and unsettled, I was in danger of being borne down by this kind of plausible reasoning, though I remember I then had a dawning of suspicion that it was not sound doctrine; and at the same time I was unwilling obstinately to refuse assent to what I was unable to confute.

That the young artist may not be seduced from the right path, by following what, at first view, he may think the light of reason and which is indeed reason in part, but not in the whole, has been much the object of these discourses.

I have taken every opportunity of recommending a rational method of study, as of the last importance. The great, I may say the sole, use of an academy is, to put, and for some time to keep, the students in that course, that too much indulgence may not be given to peculiarity, and that a young man may not be taught to believe that what is generally good for others is not good for him.

I have strongly inculcated in my former discourses, as I do in this my last, the wisdom and necessity of previously obtaining the appropriated instruments of the art, in a first correct design and a plain manly colouring, before anything more is attempted. But by this I would not wish to cramp and fetter the mind, or discourage those who follow (as most of us may at one time have followed) the suggestion of a strong inclination: something must be conceded to great and irresistible impulses: perhaps every student must not be strictly bound to general methods, if they strongly thwart the peculiar turn of his own mind. I must confess that it is not absolutely of much consequence, whether he proceeds in the general method of seeking first to acquire mechanical accuracy, before he attempts poetical flights, provided he diligently studies to attain the full perfection of the style he pursues; whether, like Parmeggiano, he endeavours at grace and grandeur of manner before he has learned correctness of drawing, if, like him, he feels his own wants, and will labour, as that eminent artist did, to supply those wants; whether he starts from the east or from the west, if he relaxes in no exertion to arrive ultimately at the same goal. The first public work of Parmeggiano is the St. Eustachius, in the Church of St. Petronius in Bologna, and was done when he was a boy; and one of the last of his works is the Moses breaking the Tables, in Parma. In the former there is certainly something of grandeur in the outline, or in the conception of the figure, which discovers the dawnings of future greatness; of a young mind impregnated with the sublimity of Michael Angelo, whose style he here attempts to imitate, though he could not then draw the human figure with any common degree of correctness. But this same Parmeggiano, when in his more mature age he painted the Moses, had so completely supplied his first defects, that we are here at a loss which to admire most, the correctness of drawing, or the grandeur of the conception. As a confirmation of its great excellence, and of the impression which it leaves on the minds of elegant spectators, I may observe, that our great lyric poet, when he conceived his sublime idea of the indignant Welsh bard, acknowledged, that though many years had intervened, he had warmed his imagination with the remembrance of this noble figure of Parmeggiano.

When we consider that Michael Angelo was the great archetype to whom Parmeggiano was indebted for that grandeur which we find in his works, and from whom all his contemporaries and successors have derived whatever they have possessed of the dignified and the majestic; that he was the bright luminary, from whom painting has borrowed a new lustre; that under his hands it assumed a new appearance, and is become another and superior art; I may be excused if I take this opportunity, as I have hitherto taken every occasion, to turn your attention to this exalted founder and father of modern art, of which he was not only the inventor, but which, by the divine energy of his own mind, he carried at once to its highest point of possible perfection.

The sudden maturity to which Michael Angelo brought our art, and the comparative feebleness of his followers and imitators, might perhaps be reasonably, at least plausibly explained, if we had time for such an examination. At present I shall only observe, that the subordinate parts of our art, and perhaps of other arts, expand themselves by a slow and progressive growth; but those which depend on a native vigour of imagination generally burst forth at once in fulness of beauty. Of this Homer probably, and Shakespeare most assuredly, are signal examples. Michael Angelo possessed the poetical part of our art in a most eminent degree: and the same daring spirit, which urged him first to explore the unknown regions of the imagination, delighted with the novelty, and animated by the success of his discoveries, could not have failed to stimulate and impel him forward in his career beyond those limits which his followers, destitute of the same incentives, had not strength to pass.

To distinguish between correctness of drawing, and that part which respects the imagination, we may say the one approaches to the mechanical (which in its way too may make just pretensions to genius) and the other to the poetical. To encourage a solid and vigorous course of study, it may not be amiss to suggest, that perhaps a confidence in the mechanic produces a boldness in the poetic. He that is sure of the goodness of his ship and tackle, puts out fearlessly from the shore; and he who knows that his hand can execute whatever his fancy can suggest, sports with more freedom in embodying the visionary forms of his own creation. I will not say Michael Angelo was eminently poetical, only because he was greatly mechanical; but I am sure that mechanic excellence invigorated and emboldened his mind to carry painting into the regions of poetry, and to emulate that art in its most adventurous flights. Michael Angelo equally possessed both qualifications. Yet of mechanic excellence there were certainly great examples to be found in ancient sculpture, and particularly in the fragment known by the name of the Torso of Michael Angelo; but of that grandeur of character, air, and attitude, which he threw into all his figures, and which so well corresponds with the grandeur of his outline, there was no example; it could therefore proceed only from the most poetical and sublime imagination.

It is impossible not to express some surprise, that the race of painters who preceded Michael Angelo, men of acknowledged great abilities, should never have thought of transferring a little of that grandeur of outline which they could not but see and admire in ancient sculpture, into their own works; but they appear to have considered sculpture as the later schools of artists look at the inventions of Michael Angelo,—as something to be admired, but with which they have nothing to do: quod super nos, nihil ad nos.—The artists of that age, even Raffaelle himself, seemed to be going on very contentedly in the dry manner of Pietro Perugino; and if Michael Angelo had never appeared, the art might still have continued in the same style.

Besides Rome and Florence, where the grandeur of this style was first displayed, it was on this foundation that the Caracci built the truly great academical Bolognian school, of which the first stone was laid by Pellegrino Tibaldi. He first introduced this style amongst them; and many instances might be given in which he appears to have possessed, as by inheritance, the true, genuine, noble, and elevated mind of Michael Angelo. Though we cannot venture to speak of him with the same fondness as his countrymen, and call him, as the Caracci did, Nostro Michael Angelo riformato, yet he has a right to be considered amongst the first and greatest of his followers: there are certainly many drawings and inventions of his, of which Michael Angelo himself might not disdain to be supposed the author, or that they should be, as in fact they often are, mistaken for his. I will mention one particular instance, because it is found in a book which is in every young artist’s hands—Bishop’s Ancient Statues. He there has introduced a print, representing Polyphemus, from a drawing of Tibaldi, and has inscribed it with the name of Michael Angelo, to whom he has also in the same book attributed a Sibyl of Raffaelle. Both these figures, it is true, are professedly in Michael Angelo’s style and spirit, and even worthy of his hand. But we know that the former is painted in the Institute a Bologna by Tibaldi, and the other in the Pace by Raffaelle.

The Caracci, it is acknowledged, adopted the mechanical part with sufficient success. But the divine part which addresses itself to the imagination, as possessed by Michael Angelo or Tibaldi, was beyond their grasp: they formed, however, a most respectable school, a style more on the level, and calculated to please a greater number; and if excellence of this kind is to be valued according to the number rather than the weight and quality of admirers, it would assume even a higher rank in art. The same, in some sort, may be said of Tintoret, Paolo Veronese, and others of the Venetian painters. They certainly much advanced the dignity of their style by adding to their fascinating powers of colouring something of the strength of Michael Angelo; at the same time it may still be a doubt, how far their ornamental elegance would be an advantageous addition to his grandeur. But if there is any manner of painting which may be said to unite kindly with his style, it is that of Titian. His handling, the manner in which his colours are left on the canvas, appears to proceed (as far as that goes) from a congenial mind, equally disdainful of vulgar criticism.

Michael Angelo’s strength thus qualified, and made more palatable to the general taste, reminds me of an observation which I heard a learned critic[26] make, when it was incidentally remarked that our translation of Homer, however excellent, did not convey the character, nor had the grand air of the original. He replied that if Pope had not clothed the naked majesty of Homer with the graces and elegances of modern fashions—though the real dignity of Homer was degraded by such a dress—his translation would not have met with such a favourable reception, and he must have been contented with fewer readers.

Many of the Flemish painters, who studied at Rome in that great era of our art, such as Francis Floris, Hemskerk, Michael Coxis, Jerom Cock, and others, returned to their own country with as much of this grandeur as they could carry. But, like seeds falling on a soil not prepared or adapted to their nature, the manner of Michael Angelo thrived but little with them; perhaps, however, they contributed to prepare the way for that free, unconstrained, and liberal outline, which was afterwards introduced by Rubens, through the medium of the Venetian painters.

This grandeur of style has been in different degrees disseminated over all Europe. Some caught it by living at the time, and coming into contact with the original author, whilst others received it at second hand; and being everywhere adopted, it has totally changed the whole taste and style of design, if there could be said to be any style before his time. Our art, in consequence, now assumes a rank to which it could never have dared to aspire, if Michael Angelo had not discovered to the world the hidden powers which it possessed. Without his assistance we never could have been convinced that painting was capable of producing an adequate representation of the persons and actions of the heroes of the Iliad.

I would ask any man qualified to judge of such works, whether he can look with indifference at the personification of the Supreme Being in the centre of the Capella Sestina, or the figures of the Sibyls which surround that chapel, to which we may add the statue of Moses; and whether the same sensations are not excited by those works, as what he may remember to have felt from the most sublime passages of Homer? I mention those figures more particularly, as they come nearer to a comparison with his Jupiter, his demi-gods, and heroes; those Sibyls and prophets being a kind of intermediate beings between men and angels. Though instances may be produced in the works of other painters, which may justly stand in competition with those I have mentioned, such as the Isaiah and the vision of Ezekiel, by Raffaelle, the St. Mark of Frate Bartolommeo, and many others; yet these, it must be allowed, are inventions so much in Michael Angelo’s manner of thinking, that they may be truly considered as so many rays, which discover manifestly the centre from whence they emanated.

The sublime in painting, as in poetry, so overpowers, and takes such a possession of the whole mind, that no room is left for attention to minute criticism. The little elegances of art, in the presence of these great ideas thus greatly expressed, lose all their value, and are, for the instant at least, felt to be unworthy of our notice. The correct judgment, the purity of taste, which characterise Raffaelle, the exquisite grace of Correggio and Parmeggiano, all disappear before them.

That Michael Angelo was capricious in his inventions cannot be denied; and this may make some circumspection necessary in studying his works; for though they appear to become him, an imitation of them is always dangerous, and will prove sometimes ridiculous. “Within that circle none durst walk but he.” To me, I confess, his caprice does not lower the estimation of his genius, even though it is sometimes, I acknowledge, carried to the extreme: and however those eccentric excursions are considered, we must at the same time recollect, that those faults, if they are faults, are such as never could occur to a mean and vulgar mind: that they flowed from the same source which produced his greatest beauties, and were therefore such as none but himself was capable of committing: they were the powerful impulses of a mind unused to subjection of any kind, and too high to be controlled by cold criticism.

Many see his daring extravagance who can see nothing else. A young artist finds the works of Michael Angelo so totally different from those of his own master, or of those with whom he is surrounded, that he may be easily persuaded to abandon and neglect studying a style which appears to him wild, mysterious, and above his comprehension, and which he therefore feels no disposition to admire; a good disposition, which he concludes that he should naturally have, if the style deserved it. It is necessary therefore that students should be prepared for the disappointment which they may experience at their first setting out; and they must be cautioned, that probably they will not, at first sight, approve.

It must be remembered that this great style itself is artificial in the highest degree; it presupposes in the spectator a cultivated and prepared artificial state of mind. It is an absurdity therefore to suppose that we are born with this taste, though we are with the seeds of it, which, by the heat and kindly influence of his genius, may be ripened in us.

A late philosopher and critic[27] has observed, speaking of taste, that we are on no account to expect that fine things should descend to us—our taste, if possible, must be made to ascend to them. The same learned writer recommends to us even to feign a relish, till we find a relish come; and feel, that what began in fiction, terminates in reality. If there be in our art anything of that agreement or compact, such as I apprehend there is in music, with which the critic is necessarily required previously to be acquainted, in order to form a correct judgment: the comparison with this art will illustrate what I have said on these points, and tend to show the probability, we may say the certainty, that men are not born with a relish for those arts in their most refined state, which as they cannot understand, they cannot be impressed with their effects. This great style of Michael Angelo is as far removed from the simple representation of the common objects of nature, as the most refined Italian music is from the inartificial notes of nature, from whence they both profess to originate. But without such a supposed compact, we may be very confident that the highest state of refinement in either of those arts will not be relished without a long and industrious attention.

In pursuing this great art, it must be acknowledged that we labour under greater difficulties than those who were born in the age of its discovery, and whose minds from their infancy were habituated to this style; who learned it as language, as their mother tongue. They had no mean taste to unlearn; they needed no persuasive discourse to allure them to a favourable reception of it, no abstruse investigation of its principles to convince them of the great latent truths on which it is founded. We are constrained, in these latter days, to have recourse to a sort of grammar and dictionary, as the only means of recovering a dead language. It was by them learned by rote, and perhaps better learned that way than by precept.

The style of Michael Angelo, which I have compared to language, and which may, poetically speaking, be called the language of the gods, now no longer exists, as it did in the fifteenth century; yet, with the aid of diligence, we may in a great measure supply the deficiency which I mentioned—of not having his works so perpetually before our eyes—by having recourse to casts from his models and designs in sculpture; to drawings or even copies of those drawings; to prints, which, however ill executed, still convey something by which this taste may be formed, and a relish may be fixed and established in our minds for this grand style of invention. Some examples of this kind we have in the Academy; and I sincerely wish there were more, that the younger students might in their first nourishment imbibe this taste; whilst others, though settled in the practice of the commonplace style of painters, might infuse, by this means, a grandeur into their works.

I shall now make some remarks on the course which I think most proper to be pursued in such a study. I wish you not to go so much to the derivative streams, as to the fountain-head; though the copies are not to be neglected; because they may give you hints in what manner you may copy, and how the genius of one man may be made to fit the peculiar manner of another.

To recover this lost taste, I would recommend young artists to study the works of Michael Angelo, as he himself did the works of the ancient sculptors; he began, when a child, a copy of a mutilated Satyr’s head, and finished in his model what was wanting in the original. In the same manner, the first exercise that I would recommend to the young artist when he first attempts invention is to select every figure, if possible, from the inventions of Michael Angelo. If such borrowed figures will not bend to his purpose, and he is constrained to make a change to supply a figure himself, that figure will necessarily be in the same style with the rest; and his taste will by this means be naturally initiated, and nursed in the lap of grandeur. He will sooner perceive what constitutes this grand style by one practical trial than by a thousand speculations, and he will in some sort procure to himself that advantage which in these later ages has been denied him, the advantage of having the greatest of artists for his master and instructor.

The next lesson should be, to change the purpose of the figures without changing the attitude, as Tintoret has done with the Samson of Michael Angelo. Instead of the figure which Samson bestrides, he has placed an eagle under him; and instead of the jaw-bone, thunder and lightning in his right hand; and thus it becomes a Jupiter. Titian, in the same manner, has taken the figure which represents God dividing the light from the darkness in the vault of the Capella Sestina, and has introduced it in the famous Battle of Cadore, so much celebrated by Vasari; and, extraordinary as it may seem, it is here converted to a general falling from his horse. A real judge who should look at this picture would immediately pronounce the attitude of that figure to be in a greater style than any other figure of the composition. These two instances may be sufficient, though many more might be given in their works, as well as in those of other great artists.

When the student has been habituated to this grand conception of the art, when the relish for this style is established, makes a part of himself, and is woven into his mind, he will, by this time, have got a power of selecting from whatever occurs in nature that is grand, and corresponds with that taste which he has now acquired; and will pass over whatever is commonplace and insipid. He may then bring to the mart such works of his own proper invention as may enrich and increase the general stock of invention in our art.

I am confident of the truth and propriety of the advice which I have recommended; at the same time I am aware, how much by this advice I have laid myself open to the sarcasms of those critics who imagine our art to be a matter of inspiration. But I should be sorry it should appear even to myself that I wanted that courage which I have recommended to the students in another way: equal courage perhaps is required in the adviser and the advised; they both must equally dare and bid defiance to narrow criticism and vulgar opinion.

That the art has been in a gradual state of decline, from the age of Michael Angelo to the present, must be acknowledged; and we may reasonably impute this declension to the same cause to which the ancient critics and philosophers have imputed the corruption of eloquence. Indeed the same causes are likely at all times and in all ages to produce the same effects: indolence,—not taking the same pains as our great predecessors took,—desiring to find a shorter way,—are the general imputed causes. The words of Petronius[28] are very remarkable. After opposing the natural chaste beauty of the eloquence of former ages to the strained inflated style then in fashion, “Neither,” says he, “has the art in painting had a better fate, after the boldness of the Egyptians had found out a compendious way to execute so great an art.”

By compendious, I understand him to mean a mode of painting, such as has infected the style of the later painters of Italy and France; commonplace, without thought, and with as little trouble, working as by a receipt; in contradistinction to that style for which even a relish cannot be acquired without care and long attention, and most certainly the power of executing cannot be obtained without the most laborious application.

I have endeavoured to stimulate the ambition of artists to tread in this great path of glory, and, as well as I can, have pointed out the track which leads to it, and have at the same time told them the price at which it may be obtained. It is an ancient saying that labour is the price which the gods have set upon everything valuable.

The great artist who has been so much the subject of the present discourse was distinguished even from his infancy for his indefatigable diligence; and this was continued through his whole life, till prevented by extreme old age. The poorest of men, as he observed himself, did not labour from necessity, more than he did from choice. Indeed, from all the circumstances related of his life, he appears not to have had the least conception that his art was to be acquired by any other means than great labour; and yet he, of all men that ever lived, might make the greatest pretensions to the efficacy of native genius and inspiration. I have no doubt that he would have thought it no disgrace, that it should be said of him, as he himself said of Raffaelle, that he did not possess his art from nature, but by long study.[29] He was conscious that the great excellence to which he arrived was gained by dint of labour, and was unwilling to have it thought that any transcendent skill, however natural its effects might seem, could be purchased at a cheaper price than he had paid for it. This seems to have been the true drift of his observation. We cannot suppose it made with any intention of depreciating the genius of Raffaelle, of whom he always spoke, as Condivi says, with the greatest respect: though they were rivals, no such illiberality existed between them; and Raffaelle on his part entertained the greatest veneration for Michael Angelo, as appears from the speech which is recorded of him, that he congratulated himself, and thanked God, that he was born in the same age with that painter.

If the high esteem and veneration, in which Michael Angelo has been held by all nations and in all ages, should be put to the account of prejudice, it must still be granted that those prejudices could not have been entertained without a cause: the ground of our prejudice then becomes the source of our admiration. But from whatever it proceeds, or whatever it is called, it will not, I hope, be thought presumptuous in me to appear in the train, I cannot say of his imitators, but of his admirers. I have taken another course, one more suited to my abilities, and to the taste of the times in which I live. Yet however unequal I feel myself to that attempt, were I now to begin the world again, I would tread in the steps of that great master: to kiss the hem of his garment, to catch the slightest of his perfections, would be glory and distinction enough for an ambitious man.

I feel a self-congratulation in knowing myself capable of such sensations as he intended to excite. I reflect, not without vanity, that these discourses bear testimony of my admiration of that truly divine man; and I should desire that the last words which I should pronounce in this Academy, and from this place, might be the name of—Michael Angelo.[30]

THE END OF THE DISCOURSES.

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Abbott’s Rollo at Work, etc., 275 Addison’s Spectator, 164-167 Æschylus’ Lyrical Dramas, 62 Æsop’s and Other Fables, 657 Aimard’s The Indian Scout, 428 Ainsworth’s Tower of London, 400 ” Old St. Paul’s, 522 ” Windsor Castle, 709 ” The Admirable Crichton, 804 A’Kempis’ Imitation of Christ, 484 Alcott’s Little Women, and Good Wives, 248 ”Little Men, 512 Alpine Club. Peaks, Passes and Glaciers, 778 Andersen’s Fairy Tales, 4 Anglo-Saxon Poetry, 794 Anson’s Voyages, 510 Aristophanes’ The Acharnians, etc., 344 ”The Frogs, etc., 516 Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, 547 ” Politics, 605 Arnold’s (Matthew) Essays, 115 ”Poems, 334 ”Study of Celtic Literature, etc., 458 Augustine’s (Saint) Confessions, 200 Aurelius’ (Marcus) Golden Book, 9 Austen’s (Jane) Sense and Sensibility, 21 ”Pride and Prejudice, 22 ”Mansfield Park, 23 ”Emma, 24 ”Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion, 25 Bacon’s Essays, 10 ” Advancement of Learning, 719 Bagehot’s Literary Studies, 520, 521 Baker’s (Sir S. W.) Cast up by the Sea, 539 Ballantyne’s Coral Island, 245 ”Martin Rattler, 246 ”Ungava, 276 Balzac’s Wild Ass’s Skin, 26 ”Eugénie Grandet, 169 ”Old Goriot, 170 ”Atheist’s Mass, etc., 229 ”Christ in Flanders, etc., 284 ”The Chouans, 285 ”Quest of the Absolute, 286 ”Cat and Racket, etc., 349 ”Catherine de Medici, 419 ”Cousin Pons, 463 ”The Country Doctor, 530 ”Rise and Fall of César Birotteau, 596 ”Lost Illusions, 656 ”The Country Parson, 686 ”Ursule Mirouët, 733 Barbusse’s Under Fire, 798 Barca’s (Mme. C. de la) Life in Mexico, 664 Bates’ Naturalist on the Amazons, 446 Beaumont and Fletcher’s Select Plays, 506 Beaumont’s (Mary) Joan Seaton, 597 Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, etc., 479 Belt’s The Naturalist in Nicaragua, 561 Berkeley’s (Bishop) Principles of Human Knowledge, New Theory of Vision, etc., 483 Berlioz (Hector), Life of, 602 Binns’ Life of Abraham Lincoln, 783 Björnson’s Plays, 625, 696 Blackmore’s Lorna Doone, 304 ”Springhaven, 350 Blackwell’s Pioneer Work for Women, 667 Blake’s Poems and Prophecies, 792 Boehme’s The Signature of All Things, etc., 569 Bonaventura’s The Little Flowers, The Life of St. Francis, etc., 485 Borrow’s Wild Wales, 49 ”Lavengro, 119 ”Romany Rye, 120 ”Bible in Spain, 151 ”Gypsies in Spain, 697 Boswell’s Life of Johnson, 1, 2 ” Tour in the Hebrides, etc., 387 Boult’s Asgard and Norse Heroes, 689 Boyle’s The Sceptical Chymist, 559 Bright’s (John) Speeches, 252 Brontë’s (A.) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, 685 Brontë’s (C.) Jane Eyre, 287 ”Shirley, 288 ”Villette, 351 ”The Professor, 417 Brontë’s (E.) Wuthering Heights, 243 Brooke’s (Stopford A.) Theology in the English Poets, 493 Brown’s (Dr. John) Rab and His Friends, etc., 116 Browne’s (Frances) Grannie’s Wonderful Chair, 112 Browne’s (Sir Thos.) Religio Medici, etc., 92 Browning’s Poems, 1833-1844, 41 ” “ 1844-1864, 42 ”The Ring and the Book, 502 Buchanan’s Life and Adventures of Audubon, 601 Bulfinch’s The Age of Fable, 472 ”Legends of Charlemagne, 556 Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, 204 Burke’s American Speeches and Letters, 340 ”Reflections on the French Revolution, etc., 460 Burnet’s History of His Own Times, 85 Burney’s Evelina, 352 Burns’ Poems and Songs, 94 Burrell’s Volume of Heroic Verse, 574 Burton’s East Africa, 500 Butler’s Analogy of Religion, 90 Buxton’s Memoirs, 773 Byron’s Complete Poetical and Dramatic Works, 486-488 Cæsar’s Gallic War, etc., 702 Canton’s Child’s Book of Saints, 61 Canton’s Invisible Playmate, etc., 566 Carlyle’s French Revolution, 31, 32 ” Letters, etc., of Cromwell, 266-268 ” Sartor Resartus, 278 ” Past and Present, 608 ” Essays, 703, 704 Cellini’s Autobiography, 51 Cervantes’ Don Quixote, 385, 386 Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, 307 Chrétien de Troyes’ Eric and Enid, 698 Cibber’s Apology for his Life, 668 Cicero’s Select Letters and Orations, 345 Clarke’s Tales from Chaucer, 537 ”Shakespeare’s Heroines, 109-111 Cobbett’s Rural Rides, 638, 639 Coleridge’s Biographia, 11 ” Golden Book, 43 ” Lectures on Shakespeare, 162 Collins’ Woman in White, 464 Collodi’s Pinocchio, 538 Converse’s Long Will, 328 Cook’s Voyages, 99 Cooper’s The Deerslayer, 77 ”The Pathfinder, 78 ”Last of the Mohicans, 79 ”The Pioneer, 171 ”The Prairie, 172 Cousin’s Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 449 Cowper’s Letters, 774 Cox’s Tales of Ancient Greece, 721 Craik’s Manual of English Literature, 346 Craik (Mrs.). See Mulock. Creasy’s Fifteen Decisive Battles, 300 Crèvecœur’s Letters from an American Farmer, 640 Curtis’s Prue and I, and Lotus, 418 Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast, 588 Dante’s Divine Comedy, 308 Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle, 104 Dasent’s The Story of Burnt Njal, 558 Daudet’s Tartarin of Tarascon, 423 Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, 59 ”Captain Singleton, 74 ”Memoirs of a Cavalier, 283 ”Journal of Plague, 289 De Joinville’s Memoirs of the Crusades, 333 Demosthenes’ Select Orations, 546 Dennis’ Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, 183, 184 De Quincey’s Lake Poets, 163 ”Opium-Eater, 223 ”English Mail Coach, etc., 609 De Retz (Cardinal), Memoirs of, 735, 736 Descartes’ Discourse on Method, 570 Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge, 76 ”Tale of Two Cities, 102 ”Old Curiosity Shop, 173 ”Oliver Twist, 233 ”Great Expectations, 234 ”Pickwick Papers, 235 ”Bleak House, 236 ”Sketches by Boz, 237 ”Nicholas Nickleby, 238 ”Christmas Books, 239 ”Dombey & Son, 240 ”Martin Chuzzlewit, 241 ”David Copperfield, 242 ”American Notes, 290 ”Child’s History of England, 291 ”Hard Times, 292 ”Little Dorrit, 293 ”Our Mutual Friend, 294 ”Christmas Stories, 414 ”Uncommercial Traveller, 536 ”Edwin Drood, 725 ”Reprinted Pieces, 744 Disraeli’s Coningsby, 535 Dixon’s Fairy Tales from Arabian Nights, 249 Dodge’s Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates, 620 Dostoieffsky’s Crime and Punishment, 501 ”The House of the Dead, or Prison Life in Siberia, 533 ”Letters from the Underworld, etc., 654 ”The Idiot, 682 ”Poor Folk, and The Gambler, 711 ”The Brothers Karamazov, 802, 803 Dowden’s Life of R. Browning, 701 Dryden’s Dramatic Essays, 568 Dufferin’s Letters from High Latitudes, 499 Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, 81 ”The Black Tulip, 174 ”Twenty Years After, 175 ”Marguerite de Valois, 326 ”The Count of Monte Cristo, 393, 394 ”The Forty-Five, 420 ”Chicot the Jester, 421 ”Vicomte de Bragelonne, 593-595 ”Le Chevalier de Maison Rouge, 614 Duruy’s History of France, 737, 738 Edgar’s Cressy and Poictiers, 17 ” Runnymede and Lincoln Fair, 320 ” Heroes of England, 471 Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent, etc., 410 Edwardes’ Dictionary of Non-Classical Mythology, 632 Eliot’s Adam Bede, 27 ” Silas Marner, 121 ” Romola, 231 ” Mill on the Floss, 325 ” Felix Holt, 353 ” Scenes of Clerical Life, 468 Elyot’s Gouernour, 227 Emerson’s Essays, 12 ” Representative Men, 279 ” Nature, Conduct of Life, etc., 322 ” Society and Solitude, etc., 567 ” Poems, 715 Epictetus’ Moral Discourses, etc., 404 Erckmann-Chatrian’s The Conscript and Waterloo, 354 ” Story of a Peasant, 706, 707 Euripides’ Plays, 63, 271 Evelyn’s Diary, 220, 221 Ewing’s (Mrs.) Mrs. Overtheway’s Remembrances, and other Stories, 730 ”Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin’s Dovecot, and The Story of a Short Life, 731 Faraday’s Experimental Researches in Electricity, 576 Fielding’s Tom Jones, 355, 356 ”Joseph Andrews, 467 Finlay’s Byzantine Empire, 33 ”Greece under the Romans, 185 Fletcher’s (Beaumont and) Select Plays, 506 Ford’s Gatherings from Spain, 152 Forster’s Life of Dickens, 781, 782 Fox’s Journal, 754 Fox’s Selected Speeches, 759 Franklin’s Journey to Polar Sea, 447 Freeman’s Old English History for Children, 540 Froissart’s Chronicles, 57 Froude’s Short Studies, 13, 705 ”Henry VIII., 372-374 ”Edward VI., 375 ”Mary Tudor, 477 ”History of Queen Elizabeth’s Reign, 583-587 ”Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, 666 Galt’s Annals of the Parish, 427 Galton’s Inquiries into Human Faculty, 263 Gaskell’s Cranford, 83 ” Charlotte Brontë, 318 ” Sylvia’s Lovers, 524 ” Mary Barton, 598 ” Cousin Phillis, etc., 615 ” North and South, 680 Gatty’s Parables from Nature, 158 Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Histories of the Kings of Britain, 577 George’s Progress and Poverty, 560 Gibbon’s Roman Empire, 434-436, 474-476 ”Autobiography, 511 Gilfillan’s Literary Portraits, 348 Giraldus Cambrensis, 272 Gleig’s Life of Wellington, 341 ”The Subaltern, 708 Goethe’s Faust (Parts I. and II.), 335 ”Wilhelm Meister, 599, 600 Gogol’s Dead Souls, 726 ”Taras Bulba, 740 Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield, 295 ”Poems and Plays, 415 Gorki’s Through Russia, 741 Gosse’s Restoration Plays, 604 Gotthelf’s Ulric the Farm Servant, 228 Gray’s Poems and Letters, 628 Green’s Short History of the English People, 727, 728 The cloth edition is in 2 vols. or 1 vol. All other editions are in 1 vol. Grimms’ Fairy Tales, 56 Grote’s History of Greece, 186-197 Guest’s (Lady) Mabinogion, 97 Hahnemann’s The Organon of the Rational Art of Healing, 663 Hakluyt’s Voyages, 264, 265, 313, 314, 338, 339, 388, 389 Hallam’s Constitutional History, 621-623 Hamilton’s The Federalist, 519 Harte’s Luck of Roaring Camp, 681 Harvey’s Circulation of Blood, 262 Hawthorne’s Wonder Book, 5 ”The Scarlet Letter, 122 ”House of Seven Gables, 176 ”The Marble Faun, 424 ”Twice Told Tales, 531 ”Blithedale Romance, 592 Hazlitt’s Shakespeare’s Characters, 65 ” Table Talk, 321 ” Lectures, 411 ” Spirit of the Age and Lectures on English Poets, 459 Hebbel’s Plays, 694 Helps’ (Sir Arthur) Life of Columbus, 332 Herbert’s Temple, 309 Herodotus (Rawlinson’s), 405, 406 Herrick’s Hesperides, 310 Hobbes’ Leviathan, 691 Holinshed’s Chronicle, 800 Holmes’ Life of Mozart, 564 Holmes’ (O. W.) Autocrat, 66 ” Professor, 67 ” Poet, 68 Homer’s Iliad, 453 ” Odyssey, 454 Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity, 201, 202 Horace’s Complete Poetical Works, 515 Houghton’s Life and Letters of Keats, 801 Hughes’ Tom Brown’s Schooldays, 58 Hugo’s (Victor) Les Misérables, 363, 364 ” Notre Dame, 422 ” Toilers of the Sea, 509 Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, etc., 548, 549 Hutchinson’s (Col.) Memoirs, 317 Hutchinson’s (W. M. L.) Muses’ Pageant, 581, 606, 671 Huxley’s Man’s Place in Nature, 47 ”Select Lectures and Lay Sermons, 498 Ibsen’s The Doll’s House, etc., 494 ” Ghosts, etc., 552 ” Pretenders, Pillars of Society, etc., 659 ” Brand, 716 ” Lady Inger, etc., 729 ” Peer Gynt, 747 Ingelow’s Mopsa the Fairy, 619 Ingram’s Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 624 Irving’s Sketch Book, 117 ”Conquest of Granada, 478 ”Life of Mahomet, 513 James’ (G. P. R.) Richelieu, 357 James (Wm.), Selections from, 739 Johnson’s (Dr.) Lives of the Poets, 770-771 Johnson’s (R. B.) Book of English Ballads, 572 Jonson’s (Ben) Plays, 489, 490 Josephus’ Wars of the Jews, 712 Kalidasa’s Shakuntala, 629 Keats’ Poems, 101 Keble’s Christian Year, 690 King’s Life of Mazzini, 562 Kinglake’s Eothen, 337 Kingsley’s (Chas.) Westward Ho! 20 ”Heroes, 113 ”Hypatia, 230 ”Water Babies and Glaucus, 277 ”Hereward the Wake, 296 ”Alton Locke, 462 ”Yeast, 611 ”Madam How and Lady Why, 777 ”Poems, 793 Kingsley’s (Henry) Ravenshoe, 28 ”Geoffrey Hamlyn, 416 Kingston’s Peter the Whaler, 6 ”Three Midshipmen, 7 Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare, 8 ”Essays of Elia, 14 ”Letters, 342, 343 Lane’s Modern Egyptians, 315 Langland’s Piers Plowman, 571 Latimer’s Sermons, 40 Law’s Serious Call, 91 Layamon’s (Wace and) Arthurian Chronicles, 578 Lear (and others), A Book of Nonsense, 806 Le Sage’s Gil Blas, 437, 438 Leslie’s Memoirs of John Constable, 563 Lever’s Harry Lorrequer, 177 Lewes’ Life of Goethe, 269 Lincoln’s Speeches, etc., 206 Livy’s History of Rome, 603, 669, 670, 749, 755, 756 Locke’s Civil Government, 751 Lockhart’s Life of Napoleon, 3 ”Life of Scott, 55 ”Burns, 156 Longfellow’s Poems, 382 Lönnrott’s Kalevala, 259, 260 Lover’s Handy Andy, 178 Lowell’s Among My Books, 607 Lucretius: Of the Nature of Things, 750 Lützow’s History of Bohemia, 432 Lyell’s Antiquity of Man, 700 Lytton’s Harold, 15 ”Last of the Barons, 18 ”Last Days of Pompeii, 80 ”Pilgrims of the Rhine, 390 ”Rienzi, 532 Macaulay’s England, 34-36 ”Essays, 225, 226 ”Speeches on Politics, etc., 399 ”Miscellaneous Essays, 439 MacDonald’s Sir Gibbie, 678 ”Phantastes, 732 Machiavelli’s Prince, 280 ”Florence, 376 Maine’s Ancient Law, 734 Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, 45, 46 Malthus on the Principles of Population, 692, 693 Manning’s Sir Thomas More, 19 ” Mary Powell, and Deborah’s Diary, 324 Marcus Aurelius’ Golden Book, 9 Marlowe’s Plays and Poems, 383 Marryat’s Mr. Midshipman Easy, 82 ” Little Savage, 159 ” Masterman Ready, 160 ” Peter Simple, 232 ” Children of New Forest, 247 ” Percival Keene, 358 ” Settlers in Canada, 370 ” King’s Own, 580 Marryat’s Jacob Faithful, 618 Martineau’s Feats on the Fjords, 429 Martinengo-Cesaresco’s Folk-Lore and Other Essays, 673 Maurice’s Kingdom of Christ, 146, 147 Mazzini’s Duties of Man, etc., 224 Melville’s Moby Dick, 178 ”Typee, 180 ”Omoo, 297 Merivale’s History of Rome, 433 Mignet’s French Revolution, 713 Mill’s Utilitarianism, Liberty, Representative Government, 482 Miller’s Old Red Sandstone, 103 Milman’s History of the Jews, 377, 378 Milton’s Areopagitica and other Prose Works, 795 Milton’s Poems, 384 Mommsen’s History of Rome, 542-545 Montagu’s (Lady) Letters, 69 Montaigne, Florio’s, 440-442 More’s Utopia, and Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, 461 Morier’s Hajji Baba, 679 Morris’ (Wm.) Early Romances, 261 ”Life and Death of Jason, 575 Motley’s Dutch Republic, 86-88 Mulock’s John Halifax, 123 Neale’s Fall of Constantinople, 655 Newcastle’s (Margaret, Duchess of) Life of the First Duke of Newcastle, etc., 722 Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua, 636 ” On the Scope and Nature of University Education, and a Paper on Christianity and Scientific Investigation, 723 Oliphant’s Salem Chapel, 244 Osborne (Dorothy), Letters of, 674 Owen’s A New View of Society, etc., 799 Paine’s Rights of Man, 718 Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, 96 Paltock’s Peter Wilkins, 676 Park (Mungo), Travels of, 205 Parkman’s Conspiracy of Pontiac, 302, 303 Parry’s Letters of Dorothy Osborne, 674 Paston’s Letters, 752, 753 Paton’s Two Morte D’Arthur Romances, 634 Peacock’s Headlong Hall, 327 Penn’s The Peace of Europe, Some Fruits of Solitude, etc., 724 Pepys’ Diary, 53, 54 Percy’s Reliques, 148, 149 Pitt’s Orations, 145 Plato’s Republic, 64 ” Dialogues, 456, 457 Plutarch’s Lives, 407-409 ”Moralia, 565 Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination, 336 Poe’s Poems and Essays, 791 Polo’s (Marco) Travels, 306 Pope’s Complete Poetical Works, 760 Prelude to Poetry, 789 Prescott’s Conquest of Peru, 301 ”Conquest of Mexico, 397, 398 Procter’s Legends and Lyrics, 150 Rawlinson’s Herodotus, 405, 406 Reade’s The Cloister and the Hearth, 29 ” Peg Woffington, 299 Reid’s (Mayne) Boy Hunters of the Mississippi, 582 Reid’s (Mayne) The Boy Slaves, 797 Renan’s Life of Jesus, 805 Reynolds’ Discourses, 118 Rhys’ Fairy Gold, 157 ”New Golden Treasury, 695 ”Anthology of British Historical Speeches and Orations, 714 ”Political Liberty, 745 ”Golden Treasury of Longer Poems, 746 Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 590 Richardson’s Pamela, 683, 684 Roberts’ (Morley) Western Avernus, 762 Robertson’s Religion and Life, 37 ” Christian Doctrine, 38 ” Bible Subjects, 39 Robinson’s (Wade) Sermons, 637 Roget’s Thesaurus, 630, 631 Rossetti’s (D. G.) Poems, 627 Rousseau’s Emile, on Education, 518 ”Social Contract and Other Essays, 660 Ruskin’s Seven Lamps of Architecture, 207 ” Modern Painters, 208-212 ” Stones of Venice, 213-215 ” Unto this Last, etc., 216 ” Elements of Drawing, etc., 217 ” Pre-Raphaelitism, etc., 218 ” Sesame and Lilies, 219 ” Ethics of the Dust, 282 ” Crown of Wild Olive, and Cestus of Aglaia, 323 ” Time and Tide, with other Essays, 450 ” The Two Boyhoods, 688 Russell’s Life of Gladstone, 661 Russian Short Stories, 758 Sand’s (George) The Devil’s Pool, and François the Waif, 534 Scheffel’s Ekkehard: A Tale of the 10th Century, 529 Scott’s (M.) Tom Cringle’s Log, 710 Scott’s (Sir W.) Ivanhoe, 16 ”Fortunes of Nigel, 71 ”Woodstock, 72 ”Waverley, 75 ”The Abbot, 124 ”Anne of Geierstein, 125 ”The Antiquary, 126 ”Highland Widow, and Betrothed, 127 ”Black Dwarf, Legend of Montrose, 128 ”Bride of Lammermoor, 129 ”Castle Dangerous, Surgeon’s Daughter, 130 ”Robert of Paris, 131 ”Fair Maid of Perth, 132 ”Guy Mannering, 133 ”Heart of Midlothian, 134 ”Kenilworth, 135 ”The Monastery, 136 ”Old Mortality, 137 ”Peveril of the Peak, 138 ”The Pirate, 139 ”Quentin Durward, 140 ”Redgauntlet, 141 ”Rob Roy, 142 ”St. Ronan’s Well, 143 ”The Talisman, 144 ”Lives of the Novelists, 331 ”Poems and Plays, 550, 551 Seebohm’s Oxford Reformers, 665 Seeley’s Ecce Homo, 305 Sewell’s (Anna) Black Beauty, 748 Shakespeare’s Comedies, 153 ”Histories, etc., 154 ”Tragedies, 155 Shelley’s Poetical Works, 257, 258 Shelley’s (Mrs.) Frankenstein, 616 Sheppard’s Charles Auchester, 505 Sheridan’s Plays, 95 Sismondi’s Italian Republics, 250 Smeaton’s Life of Shakespeare, 514 Smith’s A Dictionary of Dates, 554 Smith’s Wealth of Nations, 412, 413 Smith’s (George) Life of Wm. Carey, 395 Smith’s (Sir Wm.) Smaller Classical Dictionary, 495 Smollett’s Roderick Random, 790 Sophocles, Young’s, 114 Southey’s Life of Nelson, 52 Speke’s Source of the Nile, 50 Spence’s Dictionary of Non-Classical Mythology, 632 Spencer’s (Herbert) Essays on Education, 504 Spenser’s Faerie Queene, 443, 444 Spinoza’s Ethics, etc., 481 Spyri’s Heidi, 431 Stanley’s Memorials of Canterbury, 89 ” Eastern Church, 251 Steele’s The Spectator, 164-167 Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, 617 Sterne’s Sentimental Journey and Journal to Eliza, 796 Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Kidnapped, 763 ”Master of Ballantrae and the Black Arrow, 764 ”Virginibus Puerisque and Familiar Studies of Men and Books, 765 ”An Inland Voyage, Travels with a Donkey, and Silverado Squatters, 766 ”Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Merry Men, etc., 767 ”Poems, 768 ”In the South Seas and Island Nights’ Entertainments, 769 St. Francis, The Little Flowers of, etc., 485 Stopford Brooke’s Theology in the English Poets, 493 Stow’s Survey of London, 589 Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 371 Strickland’s Queen Elizabeth, 100 Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell, 379 ”Divine Love and Wisdom, 635 ”Divine Providence, 658 Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, 60 ”Journal to Stella, 757 ”Tale of a Tub, etc., 347 Tacitus’ Annals, 273 ”Agricola and Germania, 274 Taylor’s Words and Places, 517 Tennyson’s Poems, 44, 626 Thackeray’s Esmond, 73 ” Vanity Fair, 298 ” Christmas Books, 359 ” Pendennis, 425, 426 ” Newcomes, 465, 466 ” The Virginians, 507, 508 ” English Humorists, and The Four Georges, 610 ” Roundabout Papers, 687 Thierry’s Norman Conquest, 198, 199 Thoreau’s Walden, 281 Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War, 455 Tolstoy’s Master and Man, and Other Parables and Tales, 469 ” War and Peace, 525-527 ” Childhood, Boyhood and Youth, 591 ” Anna Karenina, 612, 613 Trench’s On the Study of Words and English Past and Present, 788 Trollope’s Barchester Towers, 30 ”Framley Parsonage, 181 ”Golden Lion of Granpere, 761 ”The Warden, 182 ”Dr. Thorne, 360 ”Small House at Allington, 361 ”Last Chronicles of Barset, 391, 392 Trotter’s The Bayard of India, 396 ” Hodson, of Hodson’s Horse, 401 ” Warren Hastings, 452 Turgeniev’s Virgin Soil, 528 ”Liza, 677 ”Fathers and Sons, 742 Tyndall’s Glaciers of the Alps, 98 Tytler’s Principles of Translation, 168 Vasari’s Lives of the Painters, 784-7 Verne’s (Jules) Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, 319 ” Dropped from the Clouds, 367 ” Abandoned, 368 ” The Secret of the Island, 369 ” Five Weeks in a Balloon and Around the World in Eighty Days, 779 Virgil’s Æneid, 161 ” Eclogues and Georgics, 222 Voltaire’s Life of Charles XII., 270 ”Age of Louis XIV., 780 Wace and Layamon’s Arthurian Chronicles, 578 Walpole’s Letters, 775 Walton’s Compleat Angler, 70 Waterton’s Wanderings in South America, 772 Wesley’s Journal, 105-108 White’s Selborne, 48 Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (I.) and Democratic Vistas, etc., 573 Whyte-Melville’s Gladiators, 523 Wood’s (Mrs. Henry) The Channings, 84 Woolman’s Journal, etc., 402 Wordsworth’s Shorter Poems, 203 ”Longer Poems, 311 Wright’s An Encyclopædia of Gardening, 555 Xenophon’s Cyropædia, 672 Yonge’s The Dove in the Eagle’s Nest, 329 ” The Book of Golden Deeds, 330 ” The Heir of Redclyffe, 362 ” The Little Duke, 470 ” The Lances of Lynwood, 579 Young’s (Arthur) Travels in France and Italy, 720 Young’s (Sir George) Sophocles, 114 The New Testament, 93. Ancient Hebrew Literature, 4 vols., 253-256. English Short Stories. An Anthology, 743. Everyman’s English Dictionary, 776

Note.—The following numbers are at present out of print: 110, 111, 118, 146, 324, 331, 348, 390, 505, 529, 581, 597, 641-52

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