ARTS AND ARTISTS.

I never raise my head from my writing-desk and look around me, without being struck by the conviction, that though our inferiors may admire, and our superiors notice us, for some quality of intellect which has contributed to their ease, or their amusement, it is by our equals only, or those who have pursued the same objects by the same efforts, (in various degrees) that we are truly appreciated. The apartment in which I usually scribble, is a little repository of precious objects, offered by those, who, like myself (but in a far more eminent and successful career) have owed their celebrity to their own efforts and genius. There are few eminent artists in Europe whom I have numbered on the list of my personal friends, to whom I do not stand indebted for some gracious and generous offering of good will and esteem: and who in return for the idle hour’s amusement afforded them by some trifling production of mine, have not repaid me twenty times over, by works of art or literature, which mark their feeling to merit (real or supposed), and are monuments of their own superior abilities: Canova, Denon, Gerard, Robert Le Fevre, David, Lawrence, Cosway, Berthon, Bartolini, Raphael Morghen, Mayer, Stroeling, Davis, Turnerelli, Bate, Behnes, and many other younger friends,⁠[91] who have already given their promise to posterity, though yet unknown to that fame, which can only come through time and industry, the true and best friends of even the highest genius.

Such are the great, to whom alone talent should stand indebted; and these are glorious times, when patronage is reduced to a party given and returned by the man of rank to the man of letters; and when the mutually exchanged rites of hospitality, replace the literary dependance of the Spencers and the Savages, or the insolent protection of the Medici and D’Este.