MR. NORTHCOTE’S CONVERSATIONS (continued 4)

H.—It is sympathy with the mass of mankind, and finding out from yourself what is they want and must have.

N.—It seems a good deal owing to the most minute circumstances. A difference of sixpence in the price will make all the difference in the sale of a book. Sometimes a work lies on the shelf for a time, and then runs like wild-fire. There was Drelincourt on Death, which is a fortune in itself; it hung on hand; nobody read it, till Defoe put a ghost-story into it, and it has been a stock-book ever since. It is the same in prints. A catching subject or name will make one thing an universal favourite, while another of ten times the merit is never noticed. I have known this happen to myself in more than one instance. This is the provoking part in W—l and some other painters, who, taking advantage of the externals and accidents of their art, have run away with nearly all the popularity of their time. Jack T— was here the other day to say that W— and his friends complained bitterly of the things I said about him. I replied that I had only spoken of him as an artist, which I was at liberty to do; and that if he were offended, I would recommend to him to read the story of Charles II. and the Duchess of Cleveland, who came to the king with a complaint, that whenever she met Nell Gwyn in the street, the latter put her head out of the coach and made mouths at her. ‘Well then,’says Charles II. ‘the next time you meet Nelly and she repeats the offence, do you make mouths at her again!’ So if Mr. W—l is hurt at my saying things of him, all he has to do is to say things of me in return.

H.—I confess, I never liked W—1. It was one of the errors of my youth that I did not think him equal to Raphael and Rubens united, as Payne Knight contended: and I have fought many a battle with numbers (if not odds) against me on that point.

N.—Then you must have the satisfaction of seeing a change of opinion at present.

H.—Pardon me, I have not that satisfaction; I have only a double annoyance from it. It is no consolation to me that an individual was overrated by the folly of the public formerly, and that he suffers from their injustice and fickleness at present. It is no 430satisfaction to me that poor I—g is reduced to his primitive congregation, and that the stream of coronet-coaches no longer rolls down Holborn or Oxford-street to his chapel. They ought never to have done so, or they ought to continue to do so. The world (whatever in their petulance and profligacy they may think) have no right to intoxicate poor human nature with the full tide of popular applause, and then to drive it to despair for the want of it. There are no words to express the cruelty, the weakness, the shamelessness of such conduct, which resembles that of the little girl who dresses up her doll in the most extravagant finery, and then in mere wantonness strips it naked to its wool and bits of wood again—with this difference that the doll has no feeling, whereas the world’s idols are wholly sensitive.

(Of some one who preferred appearances to realities.)

N.—I can understand the character, because it is exactly the reverse of what I should do and feel. It is like dressing out of one’s sphere, or any other species of affectation and imposture. I cannot bear to be taken for any thing but what I am. It is like what the country-people call ‘having a halfpenny head and a farthing tail.’ That is what makes me mad when people sometimes come and pay their court to me by saying—‘Bless me! how sagacious you look! What a penetrating countenance! ‘No, I say, that is but the title-page—what is there in the book? Your dwelling so much on the exterior seems to imply that the inside does not correspond to it. Don’t let me look wise and be foolish, but let me be wise though I am taken for a fool! Any thing else is quackery: it is as if there was no real excellence in the world, but in opinion. I used to blame Sir Joshua for this: he sometimes wanted to get Collins’s earth, but did not like to have it known. Then there were certain oils that he made a great fuss and mystery about. I have said to myself, surely there is something deeper and nobler in the art that does not depend on all this trick and handicraft. Give Titian and a common painter the same materials and tools to work with, and then see the difference between them. This is all that is worth contending for. If Sir Joshua had had no other advantage than the using Collins’s earth and some particular sort of megilp, we should not now have been talking about him. When W— was here the other day, he asked about Mengs and his school; and when I told him what I thought, he said, ‘Is that your own opinion, or did you take it from Sir Joshua?’ I answered, that if I admired Sir Joshua, it was because there was something congenial in our tastes, and not because I was his pupil. I saw his faults, and differed with him often enough. If I have any 431bias, it is the other way, to take fancies into my head and run into singularity and cavils. In what I said to you about Ramsay’s picture of the Queen, for instance, I don’t know that any one ever thought so before, or that any one else would agree with me. It might be set down as mere whim and caprice; but I can’t help it, if it is so. All I know is, that such is my feeling about it, which I can no more part with than I can part with my own existence. It is the same in other things, as in music. There was an awkward composer at the Opera many years ago, of the name of Boccarelli; what he did was stupid enough in general, but I remember he sung an air one day at Cosway’s, which they said Shield had transferred into the Flitch of Bacon. I cannot describe the effect it had upon me—it seemed as if it wound into my very soul—I would give any thing to hear it sung again. So I could have listened to Dignum’s singing the lines out of Shakspeare—‘Come unto these yellow sands, and then take hands’—a hundred times over. But I am not sure that others would be affected in the same manner by it: there may be some quaint association of ideas in the case. But at least, if I am wrong, the folly is my own.

H.—There is no danger of the sort, except from affectation, which I am sure is not your case. All the real taste and feeling in the world is made up of what people take in their heads in this manner. Even if you were right only once in five times in these hazardous experiments and shrewd guesses, that would be a fifth part of the truth; whereas, if you merely repeated after others by rote or waited to have all the world on your side, there could be absolutely nothing gained at all. If any one had come in and had expressed the same idea of Ramsay’s portrait of the Queen, this would doubtless be a confirmation of your opinion, like two persons finding out a likeness; but suppose W— had gone away with your opinion in his pocket, and had spread it about everywhere what a fine painter Ramsay was, I do not see how this would have strengthened your conclusion; nay, perhaps the people whom he got as converts would entirely mistake the meaning, and come to you with the very reverse of what you had said as a prodigious discovery. This is the way in which these unanimous verdicts are commonly obtained. You might say that Ramsay was not a fine painter, but a man of real genius. The world, not comprehending the distinction, would merely come to the gross conclusion, that he was both one and the other. Thus even truth is vulgarly debased into common-place and nonsense. So that it is not simply as Mr. Locke observed—‘That there are not so many wrong opinions in the world as is generally imagined, for most people have no opinion at all, but take 432up with those of others or with mere hearsay and echoes;’ but these echoes are often false ones and no more like the original idea than the rhyming echoes in Hudibras or than Slender’s Mum and Budget.

N.—But don’t you think the contrary extreme would be just as bad, if every one set up to judge for himself and every question was split into an endless variety of opinions?

H.—I do not see that this would follow. If persons who are sincere and free to inquire differ widely on any subject, it is because it is beyond their reach, and there is no satisfactory evidence one way or the other. Supposing a thing to be doubtful, why should it not be left so? But men’s passions and interests, when brought into play, are most tenacious on these points where their understandings afford them least light. Those doctrines are established which need propping up, as men place beams against falling houses. It does not require an act of parliament to persuade mathematicians to agree with Euclid, or painters to admire Raphael.

N.—And don’t you think this the best rule for the rest of the world to go by?

H.—Yes; but not if the doctors themselves differed: then it would be necessary to clench the nail with a few smart strokes of bigotry and intolerance. What admits of proof, men agree in, if they have no interest to the contrary; what they differ about in spite of all that can be said, is matter of taste or conjecture.

CONVERSATION THE EIGHTEENTH

N.—Opie, I remember, used to argue, that there were as many different sorts of taste as genius. He said, ‘If I am engaged in a picture, and endeavour to do it according to the suggestions of my employers, I do not understand exactly what they want, nor they what I can do, and I please no one: but if I do it according to my own notions, I belong to a class, and if I am able to satisfy myself, I please that class.’ You did not know Opie? You would have admired him greatly. I do not speak of him as an artist, but as a man of sense and observation. He paid me the compliment of saying, ‘that we should have been the best friends in the world, if we had not been rivals.’ I think he had more of this feeling than I had; perhaps, because I had most vanity. We sometimes got into foolish altercations. I recollect once in particular, at a banker’s in the city, we took up the whole of dinner-time with a ridiculous controversy about Milton and Shakspeare; I am sure we neither of us had the 433least notion which was right—and when I was heartily ashamed of it, a foolish citizen who was present, added to my confusion by saying—‘Lord! What would I give to hear two such men as you talk every day!’ This quite humbled me: I was ready to sink with vexation: I could have resolved never to open my mouth again. But I can’t help thinking W— was wrong in supposing I borrow every thing from others. It is not my character. I never could learn my lesson at school. My copy was hardly legible; but if there was a prize to be obtained or my father was to see it, then I could write a very fine hand with all the usual flourishes. What I know of history (and something about heraldry) has been gathered up when I had to enquire into the subject for a picture: if it had been set me as a task, I should have forgotten it immediately. In the same way, when Boydell came and proposed a subject for a picture to me, and pointed out the capabilities, I always said I could make nothing of it: but as soon as he was gone and I was left to myself, the whole then seemed to unfold itself naturally. I never could study the rules of composition or make sketches and drawings beforehand; in this, probably running into the opposite error to that of the modern Italian painters, whom Fuseli reproaches with spending their whole lives in preparation. I must begin at once or I can do nothing. When I set about the ‘Wat Tyler,’ I was frightened at it: it was the largest work I had ever undertaken: there were to be horses and armour and buildings and several groups in it: when I looked at it, the canvas seemed ready to fall upon me. But I had committed myself and could not escape; disgrace was behind me—and every step I made in advance, was so much positively gained. If I had staid to make a number of designs and try different experiments, I never should have had the courage to go on. Half the things that people do not succeed in, are through fear of making the attempt. Like the recruit in Farquhar’s comedy, you grow wondrous bold, when you have once taken ‘list-money.’ When you must do a thing, you feel in some measure that you can do it. You have only to commit yourself beyond retreat. It is like the soldier going into battle or a player first appearing on the stage—the worst is over when they arrive upon the scene of action.

H.—I found nearly the same thing that you describe when I first began to write for the newspapers. I had not till then been in the habit of writing at all, or had been a long time about it; but I perceived that with the necessity, the fluency came. Something I did, took; and I was called upon to do a number of things all at once. I was in the middle of the stream, and must sink or swim. I had, for instance, often a theatrical criticism to write after midnight, which 434appeared the next morning. There was no fault found with it—at least, it was as good as if I had had to do it for a weekly paper. I only did it at once, and recollected all I had to say on the spot, because I could not put it off for three days, when perhaps I should have forgotten the best part of it. Besides, when one is pressed for time, one saves it. I might set down nearly all I had to say in my mind, while the play was going on. I know I did not feel at a loss for matter—the difficulty was to compress and write it out fast enough. When you are tied to time, you can come to time. I conceive in like manner more wonder is expressed at extempore speaking, than it is entitled to. Not to mention that the same well-known topics continually recur, and that the speakers may con their extempore speeches over beforehand and merely watch their opportunity to slide them in dexterously into the grand procession of the debate: a man when once on his legs must say something, and this is the utmost that a public speaker generally says. If he has any thing good to say, he can recollect it just as well at once as in a week’s literary leisure, as well standing up as sitting down, except from habit. We are not surprised at a man’s telling us his thoughts across a table: why should we be so at his doing the same thing, when mounted on one? But he excites more attention: that gives him a double motive. A man’s getting up to make a speech in public will not give him a command of words or thoughts if he is without them; but he may be delivered of all the brilliancy or wisdom he actually possesses, in a longer or a shorter space, according to the occasion. The circumstance of the time is optional; necessity, if it be not the mother of invention, supplies us with the memory of all we know.

N.—(after a pause)—There is no end of the bigotry and prejudice in the world; one can only shrug one’s shoulders and submit to it. Have you seen the copies they have got down at the club-house in Pall-mall of the groups of horses from the Elgin marbles? Lord! how inferior they are to Rubens’s! So stiff, and poor, and dry, compared to his magnificent spirit and bold luxuriance! I should not know them to be horses; they are as much like any thing else. I was at Somerset-house the other day. They talk of the Dutch painters; why, there are pictures there of interiors and other subjects of familiar life, that throw all the boasted chef-d’œuvres of the Dutch school to an immeasurable distance. I do not speak of history, which has not been fairly tried; but in all for which there has been encouragement, no nation can go beyond us. We have resources and a richness of capacity equal to any undertaking.

H.—Do you recollect any in particular that you admired at the Exhibition?

435N.—No, I do not remember the names; but it was a general sense of excellence and truth of imitation of natural objects. As to lofty history, our religion scarcely allows it. The Italians had no more genius for painting nor a greater love of pictures than we; but the church was the foster-mother of the fine arts; being the most politic and powerful establishment in the world, they laid their hands on all that could allure and impress the minds of the people—music, painting, architecture, ceremonies; and this produced a succession of great artists and noble works, till the churches were filled, and then they ceased. The genius of Italian art was nothing but the genius of Popery. God forbid we should purchase success at the same price! Every thing at Rome is like a picture—is calculated for show. I remember walking through one of the bye-streets near the Vatican, where I met some procession in which the Pope was; and all at once I saw a number of the most beautiful Arabian horses curvetting and throwing out their long tails, like a vision or a part of a romance. We should here get one or two at most. All our holiday pageants, even the Coronation, are low Bartlemy-fair exhibitions compared with what you see at Rome. And then to see the Pope give the benediction at St. Peter’s, raising himself up and spreading out his hands in the form of a cross, with an energy and dignity as if he was giving a blessing to the whole world! No, it is not enough to see Popery in order to hate it—it must be felt too. A poor man going through one of the narrow streets where a similar procession was passing, was fiercely attacked by a soldier of the Swiss Guards, and ordered to stand back. The man said he could retire no further, for he was close against the wall. ‘Get back, you and the wall too!’ was the answer of haughty servility and mild despotism. It is this spirit peeping out that makes one dread the fairest outside appearances; and with this spirit, and the power and determination it implies to delude and lead the multitude blindfold with every lure to their imagination and their senses, I will answer for the production of finer historical and scripture-pieces in this country (let us be as far north as we will) than we have yet seen.

H.—You do not think, then, that we are naturally a dry, sour, Protestant set? Is not the air of Ireland Popish, and that of Scotland Presbyterian?

N.—No: though you may have it so if you please. K— has been wanting my two copies of —, though I do not think he will bid high enough to induce me to part with them. I am in this respect like Opie, who had an original by Sir Joshua that he much valued, and he used to say, ‘I don’t know what I should do in that case, but I hope to G—d nobody will offer me 500l. for it!’ It is curious, 436this very picture sold for 500l. the other day. So it is that real merit creeps on, and is sure to find its level. The ‘Holy Family’ sold among Lord Gwydir’s pictures for 1,900l.

H.—Is that fine?

N.—Oh yes! it’s certainly fine. It wants the air of history, but it has a rich colour and great simplicity and innocence. It is not equal to the ‘Snake in the Grass,’ which Mr. Peel gave 1,600 guineas for. That was his forte: nothing is wanting there.

A Stranger.—I thought Sir Joshua’s colours did not stand?

N.—That is true of some of them: he tried experiments, and had no knowledge of chemistry, and bought colours of Jews: but I speak of them as they came from the easel. As he left them and intended them to be, no pictures in the world would stand by the side of them. Colour seemed to exist substantively in his mind. You see this still in those that have not faded—in his latter works especially, which were also his best; and this, with character and a certain sweetness, must always make his works invaluable. You come to this at last—what you find in any one that you can get nowhere else. If you have this about you, you need not be afraid of time. Gainsborough had the saving grace of originality; and you cannot put him down for that reason. With all their faults, and the evident want of an early study and knowledge of the art, his pictures fetch more every time they are brought to the hammer. I don’t know what it was that his ‘View of the Mall in St. James’s Park’ sold for not long ago. I remember Mr. P. H. coming to me, and saying what an exquisite picture Gainsborough had painted of the Park. You would suppose it would be stiff and formal with the straight rows of trees and people sitting on benches—it is all in motion, and in a flutter like a lady’s fan. Watteau is not half so airy. His picture of young lord — was a masterpiece—there was such a look of natural gentility. You must recollect his ‘Girl feeding pigs:’ the expression and truth of nature were never surpassed. Sir Joshua was struck with it, though he said he ought to have made her a beauty.

H.—Perhaps it was as well to make sure of one thing at a time. I remember being once driven by a shower of rain for shelter into a picture dealer’s shop in Oxford-street, where there stood on the floor a copy of Gainsborough’s ‘Shepherd-boy’ with the thunder-storm coming on. What a truth and beauty was there! He stands with his hands clasped, looking up with a mixture of timidity and resignation, eying a magpie chattering over his head, while the wind is rustling in the branches. It was like a vision breathed on the canvas. I have been fond of Gainsborough ever since.

437N.—Oh! that was an essence: but it was only a copy you saw? The picture was finer than his ‘Woodman,’ which has a little false glitter and attempt at theatrical effect; but the other is innocence itself. Gainsborough was a natural gentleman; and with all his simplicity he had wit too. An eminent counsellor once attempted to puzzle him on some trial about the originality of a picture by saying, ‘I observe you lay great stress on the phrase, the painter’s eye; what do you mean by that?’ ‘The painter’s eye,’ answered Gainsborough, ‘is to him what the lawyer’s tongue is to you.’ Sir Joshua was not fond of Wilson, and said at one of the Academy dinners, ‘Yes, Gainsborough is certainly the best landscape-painter of the day.’ ‘No,’ replied Wilson, who overheard him, ‘but he is the best portrait-painter.’ This was a sufficient testimony in Gainsborough’s favour.

H.—He did not make himself agreeable at Buckingham-house, any more than Sir Joshua, who kept a certain distance and wished to appear as a gentleman; they wanted a buffoon whom they might be familiar with at first, and insult the moment he overstepped the mark, or as soon as they grew tired of him. Their favourites must be like pet lap-dogs or monkeys.

N.—C— went to court the other day after a long absence. He was very graciously received, notwithstanding. The K— held out his hand for him to kiss; he recollected himself in time to perceive the object. He was struck with the manner in which the great people looked towards the King, and the utter insignificance of every thing else; ‘and then,’ said C—, ‘as soon as they are out of the palace, they get into their carriages, and ride over you with all the fierceness and insolence imaginable.’ West used to say you could tell the highest nobility at court by their being the most abject. This was policy, for the most powerful would be most apt to excite jealousy in the sovereign; and by showing an extreme respect, they thought to prevent the possibility of encroachment or insult. Garrick complained that when he went to read before the court, not a look or a murmur testified approbation; there was a profound stillness—every one only watched to see what the King thought. It was like reading to a set of wax-work figures: he who had been accustomed to the applause of thousands, could not bear this assembly of mutes. Marchant went to the late King about a cameo, who was offended at his saying the face must be done in full and not as a profile; ‘then,’ said the patron, ‘I’ll get somebody else to do it.’ Coming out at the door, one of the pages asked the artist, ‘Why do you contradict the K—? He is not used to be contradicted!’ This is intelligible in an absolute despotism, where the will of the sovereign is law, and where 438he can cut off your head if he pleases; but is it not strange in a free country?

H.—It is placing an ordinary mortal on the top of a pyramid, and kneeling at the bottom of it to the ‘highest and mightiest.’ It is a trick of human reason surpassing the grossness of the brute.

CONVERSATION THE NINETEENTH

H.—Fashion is gentility running away from vulgarity, and afraid of being overtaken by it. It is a sign the two things are not very far asunder.

N.—Yes; Mr. — used to say, that just before the women in his time left off hoops, they looked like bats. Going on from one affectation to another, they at last wore them close under their arms, so that they resembled wings growing out from their shoulders; and having reached the top of the absurdity, they then threw them aside all at once. If long waists are the fashion one season, they are exploded the next; as soon as the court adopts any particular mode, the city follows the example, and as soon as the city takes it up, the court lays it down. The whole is caricature and masquerade. Nature only is left out; for that is either common, or what is fine in it would not always be found on the fashionable side of the question. It may be the fashion to paint or not to paint; but if it were the fashion to have a fine complexion, many fashionable people must go without one, and many unfashionable ones would be at the height of it. Deformity is as often the fashion as beauty, yet the world in general see no other beauty than fashion, and their vanity or interest or complaisance bribes their understanding to disbelieve even their senses. If cleanliness is the fashion, then cleanliness is admired; if dirt, hair-powder, and pomatum are the fashion, then dirt, hair-powder, and pomatum are admired just as much, if not more, from their being disagreeable.

H.—The secret is, that fashion is imitating in certain things that are in our power and that are nearly indifferent in themselves, those who possess certain other advantages that are not in our power, and which the possessors are as little disposed to part with as they are eager to obtrude them upon the notice of others by every external symbol at their immediate controul. We think the cut of a coat fine, because it is worn by a man with ten thousand a-year, with a fine house, and a fine carriage: as we cannot get the ten thousand a-year, the house, or the carriage, we get what we can—the cut of the fine gentleman’s coat, and thus are in the fashion. But as we get it, he 439gets rid of it, which shows that he cares nothing about it; but he keeps his ten thousand a-year, his fine house, and his fine carriage. A rich man wears gold-buckles to show that he is rich: a coxcomb gets gilt ones to look like the rich man, and as soon as the gold ones prove nothing, the rich man leaves them off. So it is with all the real advantages that fashionable people possess. Say that they have more grace, good manners, and refinement than the rabble; but these do not change every moment at the nod of fashion. Speaking correctly is not proper to one class more than another: if the fashionable, to distinguish themselves from the vulgar, affect a peculiar tone or set of phrases, this is mere slang. The difference between grace and awkwardness is the same one year after another. This is the meaning of natural politeness. It is a perception of and attention to the feelings of others, which is the same thing, whether it is neglected by the Great or practised by the vulgar. The barrier between refinement and grossness cannot be arbitrarily effaced. Nothing changes but what depends on the shallow affectation and assumption of superiority: real excellence can never become vulgar. So Pope says in his elegant way—

Virtue may choose the high or low degree,

’Tis just the same to virtue and to me;

Dwell in a monk or light upon a king,

She’s still the same belov’d, contented thing.

Vice is undone if she forgets her birth,

And stoops from angels to the dregs of earth.

Pope’s verse is not admired, because it was once the fashion: it will be admired, let the fashion change how it will.

N.—When Sir Joshua Reynolds wanted to learn what real grace was, he studied it in the attitudes of children, not in the school of the dancing-master, or in the empty strut or mawkish languor of fashion. A young painter asked me the other day whether I thought that Guido was not chargeable with affectation? I told him that I thought not, or in a very trifling degree. I could not deny that Guido sometimes bordered on and reminded me of it; or that there was that which in any body else might be really so, but that in him it seemed only an extreme natural gentility. He puts his figures into attitudes that are a little too courtly and studied, but he probably could not help it.

H.—It was rather the excess of a quality or feeling in his mind, than the aiming to supply the defect of one.

N.—Yes; there is no suspicion of what he is doing. The odious part of affectation is when there is an evident design to impose on 440you with counterfeit pretensions. So in another point that might be objected to him, the impropriety of his naked figures, no mortal can steer clearer of it than he does. They may be strictly said to be clothed with their own delicacy and beauty. There is the ‘Venus attired by the Graces:’ what other painter durst attempt it? They are to be all beauties, all naked; yet he has escaped as if by miracle—none but the most vicious can find fault with it—the very beauty, elegance, and grace keep down instead of exciting improper ideas. And then again, the ‘Andromeda chained to the rock’—both are, I believe, in the drawing-room at Windsor: but there is no possible offence to be taken at them, nothing to shock the most timid or innocent, because there was no particle of grossness in the painter’s mind. I have seen pictures by others muffled up to the chin, that had twenty times as much vice in them. It is wonderful how the cause is seen in the effect. So we find it in Richardson. Clarissa is a story in the midst of temptation; but he comes clear and triumphant out of that ordeal, because his own imagination is not contaminated by it. If there had been the least hint of an immoral tendency, the slightest indication of a wish to inflame the passions, it would have been all over with him. The intention always will peep out—you do not communicate a disease if you are not infected with it yourself. Albano’s nymphs and goddesses seem waiting for admirers: Guido’s are protected with a veil of innocence and modesty. Titian would have given them an air of Venetian courtesans: Raphael would have made them look something more than mortal: neither would have done what Guido has effected, who has conquered the difficulty by the pure force of feminine softness and delicacy.

H.—I am glad to hear you speak so of Guido. I was beginning, before I went abroad, to have a ‘sneaking contempt’ for him as insipid and monotonous, from seeing the same everlasting repetitions of Cleopatras and Madonnas: but I returned a convert to his merits. I saw many indifferent pictures attributed to great masters; but wherever I saw a Guido, I found elegance and beauty that answered to the ‘silver’ sound of his name. The mind lives on a round of names; and it is a great point gained not to have one of these snatched from us by a sight of their works. As to the display of the naked figure in works of art, the case to me seems clear: it is only when there is nothing but the naked figure that it is offensive. In proportion as the beauty or perfection of the imitation rises, the indecency vanishes. You look at it then with an eye to art, just as the anatomist examines the human figure with a view to science. Other ideas are introduced. J. —, of Edinburgh, had a large, 441sprawling Danae hanging over the chimney-piece of his office, where he received Scotch parsons and their wives on law-business: he thought it a triumph over Presbyterian prudery and prejudice, and a sort of chivalrous answer to the imputed barbarism of the North. It was certainly a paradox in taste, a breach of manners. He asked me if I objected to it because it was naked? ‘No,’ I said, ‘but because it is ugly: you can only have put it there because it is naked, and that alone shows a felonious intent. Had there been either beauty or expression, it would have conducted off the objectionable part. As it is, I don’t see how you can answer it to the kirk-sessions.’

N.—I remember Sir W. W— employed Sir Joshua and Dance, who was a very eminent designer, to ornament a music-room which he had built. Sir Joshua on this occasion painted his St. Cecilia, which he made very fine at first, but afterwards spoiled it; and Dance chose the subject of Orpheus. When I asked Miss Reynolds what she thought of it, she said she had no doubt of its being clever and well done, but that it looked ‘like a naked man.’ This answer was conclusive against it; for if the inspiration of the character had been given, you would have overlooked the want of clothes. The nakedness only strikes and offends the eye in the barrenness of other matter. It is the same in the drama. Mere grossness or ribaldry is intolerable; but you often find in the old comedy that the wit and ingenuity (as well as custom) carry off what otherwise could not be borne. The laughter prevents the blush. So an expression seems gross in one person’s mouth, which in another passes off with perfect innocence. The reason is, there is something in the manner that gives a quite different construction to what is said. Have you seen the Alcides, the two foreigners who perform such prodigious feats of strength at the theatre, but with very little clothing on? They say the people hardly know what to make of it. They should not be too sure that this is any proof of their taste or virtue.

H.—I recollect a remark of Coleridge’s on the conclusion of the story of Paul and Virginia by Bernardin St. Pierre. Just before the shipwreck, and when nothing else can save the heroine from perishing, an athletic figure comes forward stripped, but with perfect respect, and offers to swim with her to the shore; but instead of accepting his proposal, she turns away with affected alarm. This, Coleridge said, was a proof of the prevailing tone of French depravity, and not of virgin innocence. A really modest girl in such circumstances would not have thought of any scruple.

N.—It is the want of imagination or of an insight into nature in ordinary writers; they do not know how to place themselves in the 442situations they describe. Whatever feeling or passion is uppermost, fills the mind and drives out every other. If you were confined in a vault, and thought you saw a ghost, you would rush out, though a lion was at the entrance. On the other hand, if you were pursued by a lion, you would take refuge in a charnel-house, though it was full of spirits, and would disregard the dead bones and putrid relics about you. Both passions may be equally strong; the question is, which is roused first. But it is few who can get to the fountain-head, the secret springs of Nature. Shakspeare did it always; and Sir Walter Scott frequently. G— says he always was pleased with my conversation, before you broached that opinion; but I do not see how that can be, for he always contradicts and thwarts me. When two people are constantly crossing one another on the road, they cannot be very good company. You agree to what I say, and often explain or add to it, which encourages me to go on.

H.—I believe G— is sincere in what he says, for he has frequently expressed the same opinion to me.

N.—That might be so, though he took great care not to let me know it. People would often more willingly speak well of you behind your back than to your face; they are afraid either of shocking your modesty or gratifying your vanity. That was the case with —. If he ever was struck with any thing I did, he made a point not to let me see it: he treated it lightly, and said it was very well.

H.—I do not think G—’s differing with you was any proof of his opinion. Like most authors, he has something of the schoolmaster about him, and wishes to keep up an air of authority. What you say may be very well for a learner; but he is the oracle. You must not set up for yourself; and to keep you in due subordination, he catechises and contradicts from mere habit.

N.—Human nature is always the same. It was so with Johnson and Goldsmith. They would allow no one to have any merit but themselves. The very attempt was a piece of presumption, and a trespass upon their privileged rights. I remember a poem that came out, and that was sent to Sir Joshua: his servant, Ralph, had instructions to bring it in just after dinner. Goldsmith presently got hold of it, and seemed thrown into a rage before he had read a line of it. He then said, ‘What wretched stuff is here! what c—rsed nonsense that is!’ and kept all the while marking the passages with his thumb-nail, as if he would cut them in pieces. At last, Sir Joshua, who was provoked, interfered, and said, ‘Nay, don’t spoil my book, however.’ Dr. Johnson looked down on the rest of the world as pigmies; he smiled at the very idea that any one should set up for a fine writer but himself. They never admitted C— as one of the 443set; Sir Joshua did not invite him to dinner. If he had been in the room, Goldsmith would have flown out of it as if a dragon had been there. I remember Garrick once saying, ‘D—n his dishclout face; his plays would never do if it were not for my patching them up and acting in them.’ Another time, he took a poem of C—’s, and read it backwards to turn it into ridicule. Yet some of his pieces keep possession of the stage, so that there must be something in them.

H.—Perhaps he was later than they, and they considered him as an interloper on that account.

N.—No; there was a prejudice against him: he did not somehow fall into the train. It was the same with Vanbrugh in Pope’s time. They made a jest of him, and endeavoured to annoy him in every possible way; he was a black sheep for no reason in the world, except that he was cleverer than they; that is, could build houses and write verses at the same time. They laughed at his architecture; yet it is certain that it is quite original, and at least a question whether it is not beautiful as well as new. He was the first who sunk the window-frames within the walls of houses—they projected before: he did it as a beauty, but it has been since adopted by act of parliament to prevent fire. Some gentleman was asking me about the imposing style of architecture with which Vanbrugh had decorated the top of Blenheim-house; he had mistaken the chimneys for an order of architecture, so that what is an eye-sore in all other buildings, Vanbrugh has had the art to convert into an ornament. And then his wit! Think what a comedy is the Provoked Husband! What a scope and comprehension in the display of manners from the highest to the lowest! It was easier to write an epigram on Brother Van than such a play as this. I once asked Richards, the scene-painter, who was perfectly used to the stage, and acquainted with all the actors, what he considered as the best play in the language? And he answered, without hesitation, The Journey to London.

H.—Lord Foppington is also his, if he wanted supporters. He was in the same situation as Rousseau with respect to the wits of his time, who traces all his misfortunes and the jealousy that pursued him through life to the success of the Devin du Village. He said Diderot and the rest could have forgiven his popularity as an author, but they could not bear his writing an opera.

N.—If you belong to a set, you must either lead or follow; you cannot maintain your independence. Beattie did very well with the great folks in my time, because he looked up to them, and he excited no uneasy sense of competition. Indeed, he managed so well that Sir Joshua flattered him and his book in return in the most effectual manner. In his allegorical portrait of the doctor, he introduced the 444angel of truth chasing away the demons of falsehood and impiety, who bore an obvious resemblance to Hume and Voltaire. This brought out Goldsmith’s fine reproof of his friend, who said that ‘Sir Joshua might be ashamed of debasing a genius like Voltaire before a man like Beattie, whose works would be forgotten in a few years, while Voltaire’s fame would last for ever!’ Sir J. R. took the design of this picture from one of a similar subject by Tintoret, now in the Royal Collection in Kensington Palace. He said he had no intention of the sort: Hume was a broad-backed clumsy figure, not very like; but I know he meant Voltaire, for I saw a French medal of him lying about in the room. Mrs. Beattie also came up with her husband to London. I recollect her asking for ‘a little paurter’ in her broad Scotch way. It is like Cibber’s seeing Queen Anne at Nottingham when he was a boy, and all he could remember about her was her asking him to give her ‘a glass of wine and water.’ She was an ordinary character, and belonged to the class of good sort of people. So the Margravine of Bareuth describes the Duchess of Kendal, who was mistress to George I. to be a quiet inoffensive character, who would do neither good nor harm to any body. Did you ever read her Memoirs? Lord! what an account she gives of the state of manners at the old court of Prussia, and of the brutal despotism and cruelty of the king! She was his daughter, and he used to strike her, and drag her by the hair of her head, and leave her with her face bleeding, and often senseless, on the floor for the smallest trifles; and he treated her brother, afterwards Frederic II. (and to whom she was much attached) no better. That might in part account for the hardness of his character at a later period.

H.—I suppose Prussia was at that time a mere petty state or sort of bye-court, so that what they did was pretty much done in a corner, and they were not afraid of being talked of by the rest of Europe.

N.—No; it was quite an absolute monarchy with all the pomp and pretensions of sovereignty. Frederick (the father) was going, on some occasion when he was displeased with him, to strike our ambassador; but this conduct was resented and put a stop to. The Queen (sister to George II. and who was imprisoned so long on a suspicion of conjugal infidelity) appears to have been a violent-spirited woman, and also weak. George I. could never learn to speak English, and his successor, George II., spoke it badly, and neither ever felt themselves at home in this country; and they were always going over to Hanover, where they found themselves lords and masters, while here, though they had been raised so much higher, their dignity never sat easy upon them. They did not know what to make of their new situation.

445[Northcote here read me a letter I had heard him speak of relative to a distinguished character mentioned in a former Conversation.]

‘A Letter to Mr. Northcote in London from his Brother at Plymouth, giving an account of a Shipwreck.

‘Plymouth, Jan. 28, 1796.

‘We have had a terrible succession of stormy weather of late. Tuesday, immediately after dinner, I went to the Hoe to see the Dutton East Indiaman, full of troops, upon the rocks, directly under the flag-staff of the citadel. She had been out seven weeks on her passage to the West Indies as a transport, with 400 troops on board, besides women and the ship’s-crew; and had been just driven back by distress of weather, with a great number of sick on board. You cannot conceive any thing so horrible as the appearance of things altogether, which I beheld when I first arrived on the spot. The ship was stuck on sunken rocks, somewhat inclining to one side, and without a mast or the bowsprit standing; and her decks covered with the soldiers as thick as they could possibly stand by one another, with the sea breaking in a most horrible manner all around them; and what still added to the melancholy grandeur of the scene was the distress-guns which were fired now and then directly over our head from the Citadel.

‘When I first came to the spot, I found that they had by some means got a rope with one end of it fixed to the ship, and the other was held by the people on shore, by which means they could yield as the ship swung. Upon this rope they had got a ring, which they could by means of two smaller ropes draw forwards and backwards from the ship to the shore: to this ring they had fixed a loop, which each man put under his arm; and by this means, and holding by the ring with his hands, he supported himself, hanging to the ring, while he was drawn to the shore by the people there; and in this manner I saw a great many drawn on shore. But this proved a tedious work; and though I looked at them for a long time, yet the numbers on the deck were not apparently diminished; besides, from the motion which the ship had by rolling on the rocks, it was not possible to keep the rope equally stretched, and from this cause, as well as from the sudden rising of the waves, you would at one moment see a poor wretch hanging ten or twenty feet above the water, and the next you would lose sight of him in the foam of a wave, though some escaped better.

‘But this was not a scheme which the women and many of the sick could avail themselves of.

‘I observed with some admiration the behaviour of a Captain of a man-of-war, who seemed interested in the highest degree for the 446safety of these poor wretches. He exerted himself uncommonly, and directed others what to do on shore, and endeavoured in vain with a large speaking-trumpet to make himself heard by those on board: but finding that nothing could be heard but the roaring of the wind and sea, he offered any body five guineas instantly who would suffer himself to be drawn on board with instructions to them what to do. And when he found that nobody would accept his offer, he gave an instance of the highest heroism: for he fixed the rope about himself and gave the signal to be drawn on board. He had his uniform coat on and his sword hanging at his side. I have not room to describe the particulars; but there was something grand and interesting in the thing: for as soon as they had pulled him into the wreck, he was received with three vast shouts by the people on board; and these were immediately echoed by those who lined the shore, the garrison-walls and lower batteries. The first thing he did was to rig out two other ropes like the first: which I saw him most active in doing with his own hands. This quickened the matter a good deal, and by this time two large open row-boats were arrived from the Dock-yard, and a sloop had with difficulty worked out from Plymouth-pool. He then became active in getting out the women and the sick, who were with difficulty got into the open boats, and by them carried off to the sloop, which kept off for fear of being stove against the ship or thrown upon the rocks. He suffered but one boat to approach the ship at a time, and stood with his drawn sword to prevent too many rushing into the boat. After he had seen all the people out of the ship to about ten or fifteen, he fixed himself to the rope as before and was drawn ashore, where he was again received with shouts. Upon my enquiry who this gallant officer was, I was informed that it was Sir Edward Pellew, whom I had heard the highest character of before, both for bravery and mercy.

‘The soldiers were falling into disorder when Sir Edward went on board. Many of them were drunk, having broke into the cabin and got at the liquor. I saw him beating one with the flat of his broad-sword, in order to make him give up a bundle he had made up of plunder. They had but just time to save the men, before the ship was nearly under water. I observed a poor goat and a dog amongst the crowd, when the people were somewhat thinned away. I saw the goat marching about with much unconcern; but the dog showed evident anxiety, for I saw him stretching himself out at one of the port-holes, standing partly upon the port and partly upon a gun, and looking earnestly towards the shore, where I suppose he knew his master was. All these perished soon after, as the ship was washed all over as the sea rose—she is now in pieces.’

447

CONVERSATION THE TWENTIETH

N.—Have you seen the Life of Sir Joshua just published?

H.—No.

N.—It is all, or nearly all, taken from my account, and yet the author misrepresents or contradicts every thing I say, I suppose to show that he is under no obligation to me. I cannot understand the drift of his work; nor who it is he means to please. He finds fault with Sir Joshua, among a number of other things, for not noticing Hogarth. Why, it was not his business to notice Hogarth any more than it was to notice Fielding. Both of them were great wits and describers of manners in common life, but neither of them came under the article of painting. What Hogarth had was his own, and nobody will ever have it again in the same degree. But all that did not depend on his own genius was detestable, both as to his subjects and his execution. Was Sir Joshua to recommend these as models to the student? No, we are to imitate only what is best, and that in which even failure is honourable; not that where only originality and the highest point of success can at all excuse the attempt. Cunningham (the writer of the Life), pretends to cry up Hogarth as a painter; but this is not true. He moulded little figures and placed them to see how the lights fell and how the drapery came in, which gave a certain look of reality and relief; but this was not enough to give breadth or grace, and his figures look like puppets after all, or like dolls dressed up. Who would compare any of these little, miserable, deformed caricatures of men and women, to the figure of St. Paul preaching at Athens? What we justly admire and emulate is that which raises human nature, not that which degrades and holds it up to scorn. We may laugh to see a person rolled in the kennel, but we are ashamed of ourselves for doing so. We are amused with Tom Jones; but we rise from the perusal of Clarissa with higher feelings and better resolutions than we had before. St. Giles’s is not the only school of art. It is nature, to be sure; but we must select nature. Ask the meanest person in the gallery at a play-house which he likes best, the tragedy or the farce? And he will tell you, without hesitation, the tragedy—and will prefer Mrs. Siddons to the most exquisite buffoon. He feels an ambition to be placed in the situations, and to be associated with the characters, described in tragedy, and none to be connected with those in a farce; because he feels a greater sense of power and dignity in contemplating the one, and only sees his own weakness and littleness reflected and ridiculed in the other. Even the poetry, the blank verse, pleases the most 448illiterate, which it would not do if it were not natural. The world do not receive monsters. This was what I used to contest with Sir Joshua. He insisted that the blank verse in tragedy was purely artificial—a thing got up for the occasion. But surely every one must feel that he delivers an important piece of information, or asks a common question in a different tone of voice. If it were not for this, the audience would laugh at the measured speech or step of a tragic actor as burlesque, just as they are inclined to do at an Opera. Old Mr. Tolcher used to say of the famous Pulteney—‘My Lord Bath always speaks in blank verse!’ The stately march of his ideas, no doubt, made it natural to him. Mr. Cunningham will never persuade the world that Hogarth is superior to Raphael or Reynolds. Common sense is against it. I don’t know where he picked up the notion.

H.—Probably from Mr. Lamb, who endeavours to set up Hogarth as a great tragic as well as comic genius, not inferior in either respect to Shakspeare.

N.—I can’t tell where he got such an opinion; but I know it is great nonsense. Cunningham gives a wrong account of an anecdote which he has taken from me. Dr. Tucker, Dean of Gloucester, had said at a meeting of the Society of Arts, that ‘a pin-maker was a more important member of society than Raphael.’ Sir Joshua had written some remark on this assertion in an old copy-book which fell into my hands and which nobody probably ever saw but myself. Cunningham states that Sir Joshua was present when Dean Tucker made the speech at the Society, and that he immediately rose up, and with great irritation answered him on the spot, which is contrary both to the fact and to Sir Joshua’s character. He would never have thought of rising to contradict any one in a public assembly for not agreeing with him on the importance of his own profession. In one part of the new Life, it is said that Sir Joshua, seeing the ill-effects that Hogarth’s honesty and bluntness had had upon his prospects as a portrait-painter, had learnt the art to make himself agreeable to his sitters, and to mix up the oil of flattery with his discourse as assiduously as with his colours. This is far from the truth. Sir Joshua’s manners were indeed affable and obliging, but he flattered nobody; and instead of gossiping or making it his study to amuse his sitters, minded only his own business. I remember being in the next room the first time the Duchess of Cumberland came to sit, and I can vouch that scarce a word was spoken for near two hours. Another thing remarkable to show how little Sir Joshua crouched to the Great is, that he never even gave them their proper titles. I never heard the words ‘your lordship or your ladyship,’ come from his 449mouth; nor did he ever say Sir in speaking to any one but Dr. Johnson: and when he did not hear distinctly what the latter said (which often happened) he would then say ‘Sir?’ that he might repeat it. He was in this respect like a Quaker, not from any scruples or affectation of independence, but possibly from some awkwardness and confusion in addressing the variety of characters he met with, or at his first entrance on his profession. His biographer is also unjust to Sir Joshua in stating that his table was scantily supplied out of penuriousness. The truth is, Sir Joshua would ask a certain number and order a dinner to be provided; and then in the course of the morning, two or three other persons would drop in, and he would say, ‘I have got so and so to dinner, will you join us?’ which they being always ready to do, there were sometimes more guests than seats, but nobody complained of this or was unwilling to come again. If Sir Joshua had really grudged his guests, they would not have repeated their visits twice, and there would have been plenty of room and of provisions the next time. Sir Joshua never gave the smallest attention to such matters; all he cared about was his painting in the morning, and the conversation at his table, to which last he sacrificed his interest; for his associating with men like Burke, who was at that time a great oppositionist, did him no good at court. Sir Joshua was equally free from meanness or ostentation and encroachment on others; no one knew himself better or more uniformly kept his place in society.

H.—It is a pity to mar the idea of Sir Joshua’s dinner-parties, which are one of the pleasantest instances on record of a cordial intercourse between persons of distinguished pretensions of all sorts. But some people do not care what they spoil, so that they can tell disagreeable truth.

N.—In the present case there is not even that excuse. The statement answers no good end, while it throws a very unfounded slur on Sir Joshua’s hospitality and love of good cheer. It is insinuated that he was sparing of his wine, which is not true. Again, I am blamed for not approving of Dr. Johnson’s speech to Sir Joshua at the Miss Cottrells’, when the Duchess of Argyll came in, and he thought himself neglected—‘How much do you think you and I could earn in a week, if we were to work as hard as we could?’ This was a rude and unmerited insult. The Miss Cottrells were the daughters of an Admiral and people of fashion, as well as the Duchess of Argyll; and they naturally enough fell into conversation about persons and things that they knew, though Dr. Johnson had not been used to hear of them. He therefore thought it affectation and insolence, whereas the vulgarity and insolence were on his own 450side. If I had any fault to find with Sir Joshua, it would be that he was a very bad master in the art. Of all his pupils, I am the only one who ever did any thing at all. He was like the boy teaching the other to swim. ‘How do you do when you want to turn?’—‘How must you do when you turn? Why, you must look that way!’ Sir Joshua’s instructions amounted to little more. People talk of the instinct of animals as if a blind reason were an absurdity: whereas whatever men can do best, they understand and can explain least. Your son was looking at that picture of the lap-dog the other evening. There is a curious story about that. The dog was walking out with me one day, and was set upon and bit by a strange dog, for all dogs know and hate a favourite. He was a long time in recovering from the wound; and one day when Mr. P. H. called, he ran up to him, leaped up quite over-joyed, then lay down, began to whine, patted the place where he had been hurt with his paws, and went through the whole history of his misfortune. It was a perfect pantomime. I will not tell the story to G—, for the philosopher would be jealous of the sagacity of the cur.

H.—There was Jack Spines, the racket-player: he excelled in what is called the half-volley. Some amateurs of the game were one day disputing what this term of art meant. Spines was appealed to. ‘Why, gentlemen,’ says he, ‘I really can’t say exactly; but I should think, the half-volley is something between the volley and the half-volley.’ This definition was not quite the thing. The celebrated John Davies, the finest player in the world, could give no account of his proficiency that way. It is a game which no one thinks of playing without putting on a flannel jacket; and after you have been engaged in it for ten minutes, you are just as if you had been dipped in a mill-pond. John Davies never pulled off his coat; and merely buttoning it that it might not be in his way, would go down into the Fives-court and play two of the best players of the day, and at the end of the match you could not perceive that a hair of his head was wet. Powell, the keeper of the court (why does not Sir B. Nash, among so many innovations, rebuild it?) said he never seemed to follow the ball, but that it came to him—he did every thing with such ease.

N.—Then every motion of that man was perfect grace: there was not a muscle in his body that did not contribute its share to the game. So, when they begin to learn the piano-forte, at first they use only the fingers, and are soon tired to death: then the muscles of the arm come into play, which relieves them a little; and at last the whole frame is called into action, so as to produce the effect with entire ease and gracefulness. It is the same in every thing: and 451he is indeed a poor creature who cannot do more, from habit or natural genius, than he can give any rational account of.

(Some remarks having been made on the foregoing conversation, Mr. Northcote, the next time I saw him, took up the subject nearly as follows.)

N.—The newspaper critic asks with an air of triumph as if he had found a mare’s nest—‘What! are Sophia Western and Allworthy, St. Giles’s?’ Why, they are the very ones: they are Tower-stamp! Blifil, and Black George, and Square are not—they have some sense and spirit in them and are so far redeemed, for Fielding put his own cleverness and ingenuity into them; but as to his refined characters, they are an essence of vulgarity and insipidity. Sophia is a poor doll; and as to Allworthy he has not the soul of a goose: and how does he behave to the young man that he has brought up and pampered with the expectations of a fortune and of being a fine gentleman? Does he not turn him out to starve or rob on the highway without the shadow of an excuse, on a mere maudlin sermonizing pretext of morality, and with as little generosity as principle? No, Fielding did not know what virtue or refinement meant. As Richardson said, he should have thought his books were written by an ostler; or Sir John Hawkins has expressed it still better, that the virtues of his heroes are the virtues of dogs and horses—he does not go beyond that—nor indeed so far, for his Tom Jones is not so good as Lord Byron’s Newfoundland dog. I have known Newfoundland dogs with twenty times his understanding and good-nature. That is where Richardson has the advantage over Fielding—the virtues of his characters are not the virtues of animals—Clarissa holds her head in the skies, a ‘bright particular star;’ for whatever may be said, we have such ideas—and thanks to those who sustain and nourish them, and woe to those critics who would confound them with the dirt under our feet and Grub-street jargon! No, that is what we want—to have the line made as black and as broad as possible that separates what we have in common with the animals from what we pretend (at least) to have above them. That is where the newspaper critic is wrong in saying that the blackguard in the play is equal to Mrs. Siddons. No, he is not equal to Mrs. Siddons, any more than a baited bull or an over-drove ox is equal to Mrs. Siddons. There is the same animal fury in Tyke that there is in the maddened brute, with the same want of any ideas beyond himself and his own mechanical and coarse impulses—it is the lowest stage of human capacity and feeling violently acted upon by circumstances. Lady Macbeth, if she is the demon, is not the brute; she has the intellectual part, and is hurried away no less by the violence of her 452will than by a wide scope of imagination and a lofty ambition. Take away all dignity and grandeur from poetry and art, and you make Emery equal to Mrs. Siddons, and Hogarth to Raphael, but not else. Emery’s Tyke, in his extremity, calls for brandy—Mrs. Siddons does not, like Queen Dollalolla, call for a glass of gin. Why not? Gin is as natural a drink as poison; but if Capella Bianca, instead of swallowing the poison herself, when she found it was not given to her enemy, had merely got drunk for spite, in the manner of Hogarth’s heroines, she would not have been recorded in history. There is then a foundation for the distinction between the heroic and the natural, which I am not bound to explain any more than I am to account why black is not white.

H.—If Emery is equal to Mrs. Siddons, Morton is equal to Shakspeare; though it would be difficult to bring such persons to that conclusion.

N.—I ‘ll tell you why Emery in not equal to Mrs. Siddons; there are a thousand Emerys to one Mrs. Siddons; the stage is always full of six or seven comic actors at a time, so that you cannot tell which is best, Emery, Fawcett, Munden, Lewis—but in my time I have seen but Garrick and Mrs. Siddons, who have left a gap behind them that I shall not live to see filled up. Emery is the first blackguard or stage-coach driver you see in a row in the street; but if you had not seen Mrs. Siddons, you could have no idea of her; nor can you convey it to any one who has not. She was like a preternatural being descended to the earth. I cannot say Sir Joshua has done her justice. I regret Mrs. Abington too—she was the Grosvenor-Square of comedy, if you please. I am glad that Hogarth did not paint her; it would have been a thing to spit upon. If the correspondent of the newspaper wants to know where my Grosvenor-Square of art is, he’ll find it in the Provoked Husband, in Lord and Lady Townly, not in the History of a Foundling, or in the pompous, swag-bellied peer, with his dangling pedigree, or his gawky son-in-law, or his dawdling malkin of a wife from the city, playing with the ring like an idiot, in the Marriage à la Mode! There may be vice and folly enough in Vanbrugh’s scenes; but it is not the vice of St. Giles’s, it does not savour of the kennel. Not that I would have my interrogator suppose that I think all is vice in St. Giles’s. On the contrary, I could find at this moment instances of more virtue, refinement, sense, and beauty there, than there are in his Sophy. No, nature is the same everywhere; there are as many handsome children born in St. Giles’s as in Grosvener-Square; but the same care is not taken of them; and in general they grow up greater beauties in the one than the other. A child in St. Giles’s is left to run wild; 453it thrusts its fingers into its mouth or pulls its nose about; but if a child of people of fashion play any tricks of this kind, it is told immediately, ‘You must not do this, unless you would have your mouth reach from ear to ear; you must not say that; you must not sit in such a manner, or you’ll grow double.’ This seems like art; but it is only giving nature fair play. No one was allowed to touch the Princess Charlotte when a child. She was taken care of like something precious. The sister of the Duke of — had her nose broke when a child in a quarrel with her sister, who flung a tea-basin at her; but all the doctors were immediately called in, and every remedy was applied, so that when she grew up, there was no appearance of the accident left. If the same thing had happened to a poor child, she would have carried the marks of it to her grave. So you see a number of crooked people and twisted legs among the lower classes. This was what made Lord Byron so mad—that he had mis-shapen feet. Don’t you think so?

H.—Yes; T. M. told a person I know that that was the cause of all his misanthropy—he wanted to be an Adonis, and could not.

N.—Aye, and of his genius too; it made him write verses in revenge. There is no knowing the effect of such sort of things, of defects we wish to balance. Do you suppose we owe nothing to Pope’s deformity? He said to himself, ‘If my person be crooked, my verses shall be strait.’ I myself have felt this in passing along the street, when I have heard rude remarks made on my personal appearance. I then go home and paint: but I should not do this, if I thought all that there is in art was contained in Hogarth—I should then feel neither pride nor consolation in it. But if I thought, instead of his doll-like figures cut in two with their insipid, dough-baked faces, I should do something like Sir Joshua’s Iphigene, with all that delights the sense in richness of colour and luxuriance of form; or instead of the women spouting the liquor in one another’s faces, in the Rake’s Progress, I could give the purity, and grace, and real elegance (appearing under all the incumbrance of the fashionable dresses of the day) of Lady Sarah Bunbury or of the Miss Hornecks, sacrificing to the Graces, or of Lady Essex, with her long waist and ruffles, but looking a pattern of the female character in all its relations, and breathing dignity and virtue, then I should think this an object worth living for; or (as you have expressed it very properly) should even be proud of having failed. This is the opinion the world have always entertained of the matter. Sir Joshua’s name is repeated with more respect than Hogarth’s. It is not for his talents, but for his taste and the direction of them. In meeting Sir Joshua (merely from a knowledge of his works) you would expect to meet a gentleman—not 454so of Hogarth. And yet Sir Joshua’s claims and possessions in art were not of the highest order.

H.—But he was decent, and did not profess the arts and accomplishments of a Merry-Andrew.

N.—I assure you, it was not for want for [of] ability either. When he was young, he did a number of caricatures of different persons, and could have got any price for them. But he found it necessary to give up the practice. Leonardo da Vinci, a mighty man, and who had titles manifold, had a great turn for drawing laughable and grotesque likenesses of his acquaintances; but he threw them all in the fire. It was to him a kind of profanation of the art. Sir Joshua would almost as soon have forged as he would have set his name to a caricature. Gilray (whom you speak of) was eminent in this way; but he had other talents as well. In the Embassy to China, he has drawn the Emperor of China a complete Eastern voluptuary, fat and supine, with all the effects of climate and situation evident upon his person, and Lord Macartney is an elegant youth, a real Apollo; then, indeed, come Punch and the puppet-show after him, to throw the whole into ridicule. In the Revolutionists’ Jolly-boat, after the Opposition were defeated, he has placed Fox, and Sheridan, and the rest escaping from the wreck: Dante could not have described them as looking more sullen and gloomy. He was a great man in his way. Why does not Mr. Lamb write an essay on the Two-penny Whist? Yet it was against his conscience, for he had been on the other side, and was bought over. The minister sent to ask him to do them half a dozen at a certain price, which he agreed to, and took them to the treasury; but there being some demur about the payment, he took them back with some saucy reply. He had not been long at home, before a messenger was sent after him with the money.

CONVERSATION THE TWENTY-FIRST

N.—G. and I had a dispute lately about the capacity of animals. He appeared to consider them as little better than machines. He made it the distinguishing mark of superiority in man that he is the only animal that can transmit his thoughts to future generations. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘for future generations to take no sort of notice of them.’ I allowed that there were a few extraordinary geniuses that every one must look up to—and I mentioned the names of Shakspeare and Dryden. But he would not hear of Dryden, and began to pull him in pieces immediately. ‘Why then,’ I answered, ‘if you cannot agree among yourselves even with respect to four or five of the most 455eminent, how can there be the vast and overwhelming superiority you pretend to?’ I observed that instinct in animals answered very much to what we call genius. I spoke of the wonderful powers of smell, and the sagacity of dogs, and the memory shown by horses in finding a road that they have once travelled; but I made no way with G—; he still went back to Lear and Othello.

H.—I think he was so far right; for as this is what he understands best and has to imitate, it is fit he should admire and dwell upon it most. He cannot acquire the smell of the dog or the sagacity of the horse, and therefore it is of no use to think about them; but he may, by dint of study and emulation, become a better poet or philosopher. The question is not merely what is best in itself (of that we are hardly judges) but what sort of excellence we understand best and can make our own; for otherwise, in affecting to admire we know not what, we may admire a nonentity or a deformity. Abraham Tucker has remarked very well on this subject, that a swine wallowing in the mire may, for what he can tell, be as happy as a philosopher in writing an essay, but that is no reason why he (the philosopher) should exchange occupations or tastes with the brute, unless he could first exchange natures. We may suspend our judgments in such cases as a matter of speculation or conjecture, but that is different from the habitual or practical feeling. So I remember W— being nettled at D— (who affected a fashionable taste) for saying, on coming out of the Marquis of Stafford’s gallery, ‘A very noble art, very superior to poetry!’ If it were so, W— observed, he could know nothing about it, who had never seen any fine pictures before. It was like an European adventurer saying to an African chieftain, ‘A very fine boy, Sir, your black son—very superior to my white one!’ This is mere affectation; we might as well pretend to be thrown into rapture by a poem written in a language we are not acquainted with. We may notwithstanding believe that it is very fine, and have no wish to hang up the writer, because he is not an Englishman. A spider may be a greater mechanic than Watt or Arkwright; but the effects are not brought home to us in the same manner, and we cannot help estimating the cause by the effect. A friend of mine teazes me with questions, ‘Which was the greatest man, Sir Isaac Newton or a first-rate chess-player?’ It refers itself to the head of the Illustrious Obscure. A club of chess-players might give it in favour of the Great Unknown; but all the rest of the world, who have heard of the one and not of the other, will give it against him. We cannot set aside those prejudices which are founded on the limitation of our faculties or the constitution of society; only that we need not lay them down as 456abstract or demonstrable truths. It is there the bigotry and error begin. The language of taste and moderation is, I prefer this, because it is best to me; the language of dogmatism and intolerance is, Because I prefer it, it is best in itself, and I will allow no one else to be of a different opinion.

N.—I find in the last conversation I saw, you make me an admirer of Fielding, and so I am; but I find great fault with him too. I grant he is one of those writers that I remember; he stamps his characters, whether good or bad, on the reader’s mind. This is more than I can say of every one. For instance, when G— plagues me about my not having sufficient admiration of W—’s poetry, the answer I give is, that it is not my fault, for I have utterly forgotten it; it seemed to me like the ravelings of poetry. But to say nothing of Fielding’s immorality, and his fancying himself a fine gentleman in the midst of all his coarseness, he has oftener described habits than character. For example, Western is no character; it is merely the language, manners, and pursuits of the country-squire of that day; and the proof of this is, that there is no ‘Squire Western now. Manners and customs wear out, but characters last forever. I remember making this remark to Holcroft, and he asked me, What was the difference? Are you not surprised at that?

H.—Not in him. If you mentioned the word character, he stopped you short by saying, that it was merely the difference of circumstances; or if you hinted at the difference of natural capacity, he said, ‘Then, Sir, you must believe in innate ideas.’ He surrendered his own feelings and better judgment to a set of cant-phrases, called the modern philosophy.

N.—I need not explain the difference to you. Character is the ground-work, the natural stamina of the mind, on which circumstances only act. You see it in St. Giles’s—there are characters there that in the midst of filth, and vice, and ignorance, retain some traces of their original goodness, and struggle with their situation to the last: as in St. James’s, you will find wretches that would disgrace a halter. Gil Blas has character.

H.—I thought he only gave professions and classes, players, footmen, sharpers, courtesans, but not the individual, as Fielding often does, though we should strip Western of his scarlet hunting-dress and jockey phrases. There is Square, Blifil, Black George, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, Parson Adams; and a still greater cluster of them in the one that is least read, the noble peer, the lodging-house-keeper, Mrs. Bennet, and Colonel Bath.

N.—You mean Amelia. I have not read that, but will get it. I allow in part what you say; but in the best there is something too 457local and belonging to the time. But what I chiefly object to in Fielding is his conceit, his consciousness of what he is doing, his everlasting recommendation and puffing of his own wit and sagacity. His introductory chapters make me sick.

H.—Why, perhaps, Fielding is to be excused as a disappointed man. All his success was late in life, for he died in 1754; and Joseph Andrews (the first work of his that was popular) was published in 1748. All the rest of his life he had been drudging for the booksellers, or bringing out unsuccessful comedies. He probably anticipated the same result in his novels, and wished to bespeak the favour of the reader by putting himself too much forward. His prefaces are like Ben Jonson’s prologues, and from the same cause, mortified vanity; though it seems odd to say so at present, after the run his writings have had; but he could not foresee that, and only lived a short time to witness it.

N.—I can bear any thing but that conscious look—it is to me like the lump of soot in the broth, that spoils the whole mess. Fielding was one of the swaggerers.

H.—But he had much to boast of.

N.—He certainly was not idle in his time. Idleness would have ruined a greater man.

H.—Then you do not agree to a maxim I have sometimes thought might be laid down, that no one is idle who can do any thing.

N.—No, certainly.

H.—I conceive it may be illustrated from Wilson, who was charged with idleness, and who, after painting a little, used to say, as soon as any friend dropped in, ‘Now let us go somewhere,’—meaning to the alehouse. All that Wilson could do, he did, and that finely too, with a few well-disposed masses and strokes of the pencil; but he could not finish, or he would have staid within all the morning to work up his pictures to the perfection of Claude’s. He thought it better to go to the alehouse than to spoil what he had already done. I have in my own mind made this excuse for —, that he could only make a first sketch, and was obliged to lose the greatest part of his time in waiting for windfalls of heads and studies. I have sat to him twice, and each time I offered to come again, and he said he would let me know, but I heard no more of it. The sketch went as it was—of course in a very unfinished state.

N.—But he might have remedied this by diligence and practice.

H.—I do not know that he could: one might say that there is the same abruptness and crudity in his character throughout, in his conversation, his walk, and look—great force and spirit, but neither softness nor refinement.

458N.—If he had more humility, he might have seen all that in the works of others, and have strove to imitate it.

H.—What I mean is, that it was his not having the sense of these refinements in himself that prevented his perceiving them in others, or taking pains to supply a defect to which he was blind.

N.—I do not think that under any circumstances he would have made a Raphael. But your reasoning goes too much to what Dr. Johnson ridiculed in poetry—fits of inspiration, and a greater flow of ideas in the autumn than the spring. Sir Joshua used to work at all times, whether he was in the humour or not.

H.—And so would every one else with his motives and ability to excel. Lawyers without fees are accused of idleness, but this goes off when the briefs pour in.

N.—Did you see the newspaper accounts of the election of the new Pope? It appears that nothing could exceed his repugnance to be chosen. He begged and even wept to be let off. You are to consider, he is an old man labouring under a mortal disease (which is one circumstance that led to his elevation)—to be taken from the situation of Cardinal (in itself a very enviable one) and thrust violently into a mass of business, of questions and cabals which will distract him, and where he can get no thanks and may incur every kind of odium. It is true, he has an opportunity of making the fortunes of his family; and if he prefers them to himself, it is all very well, but not else. To persons of a restless and aspiring turn of mind, ambition and grandeur are very fine things, but to others they are the most intolerable tax. There is our own King—there is no conceiving the punishment that those processions and public show-days are to him—and then as to all the pomp and glitter that we so much admire, it is to those who are accustomed to it and who see behind the curtain, like so much cast-off rags and tinsel or Monmouth-street finery. They hold it in inconceivable scorn, and yet they can hardly do without it, from the slavery of habit. Then the time of such people is never their own—they are always performing a part (and generally a forced and irksome one) in what no way interests or concerns them. The late King, to whom rank was a real drudgery, used to stand buried in a pile of papers, so that you could not see those on the other side of the table, which he had merely to sign. It is no wonder kings are sometimes seen to retire to a monastery where religion leaves this asylum open to them, or are glad to return to their shepherd’s crook again. No situation can boast of complete ease or freedom; and even that would have its disadvantages. And then again, look at those labourers at the top of the house yonder, working from morning till night, and exposed to all weathers for a bare pittance, without 459hope to sweeten their toil, and driven on by hunger and necessity! When we turn to others, whether those above or below us, we have little reason to be dissatisfied with our own situation in life. But, in all cases it is necessary to employ means to ends, be the object what it may; and where the first have not been taken, it is both unjust and foolish to repine at the want of success. The common expression, ‘Fortune’s Fools,’ may seem to convey a slur on the order of Providence; but it rather shows the equality of its distributions. Are the men of capacity to have all the good things to themselves? They are proud of their supposed superiority: why are they not contented with it? If a fool is not to grow rich, the next thing would be, that none but men of genius should have a coat to their backs, or be thought fit to live. If it were left to them to provide food or clothes, they would have none for themselves. It is urged as a striking inequality that enterprising manufacturers, for instance, should rise to great wealth and honours, while thousands of their dependants are labouring hard at one or two shillings a-day: but we are to recollect, that if it had not been for men like these, the working classes would have been perishing for want: they collect the others together, give a direction and find a vent for their industry, and may be said to exercise a part of sovereign capacity. Every thing has its place and due subordination. If authors had the direction of the world, nothing would be left standing but printing-presses.

N.—What do you think of that portrait?

H.—It is very lady-like, and, I should imagine, a good likeness.

N.—J— said I might go on painting yet—he saw no falling-off. They are pleased with it. I have painted almost the whole family, and the girls would let their mother sit to nobody else. But Lord! every thing one can do seems to fall so short of nature: whether it is the want of skill or the imperfection of the art that cannot give the successive movements of expression and changes of countenance, I am always ready to beg pardon of my sitters after I have done, and to say I hope they’ll excuse it. The more one knows of the art, and indeed the better one can do, the less one is satisfied. This made Titian write under his pictures faciebat, signifying that they were only in progress. I remember, Burke came in one day when Sir Joshua had been painting one of the Lennoxes; he was quite struck with the beauty of the performance, and said he hoped Sir Joshua would not touch it again: to which the latter replied, that if he had seen the original, he would have thought little of the picture, and that there was a look which it was hardly in the power of art to give. No! all we can do is to produce something that makes a distant approach to nature, and that serves as a faint relic of the individual. A portrait 460is only a little better memorial than the parings of the nails or a lock of the hair.

H.—Who is it?

N.—It is a Lady W—: you have heard me speak of her before. She is a person of great sense and spirit, and combines very opposite qualities from a sort of natural strength of character. She has shown the greatest feeling and firmness united: no one can have more tenderness in her domestic connexions, and yet she has borne the loss of some of them with exemplary fortitude. Perhaps, the one is a consequence of the other; for where the attachment or even the regret is left, all is not lost. The mind has still a link to connect it with the beloved object. She has no affectation; and therefore yields to unavoidable circumstances as they arise. Inconsolable grief is often mere cant, and a trick to impose on ourselves and others. People of any real strength of character are seldom affected: those who have not the clue of their own feelings to guide them, do not know what to do, and study only how to produce an effect. I recollect one of the Miss B—s, Lord Orford’s favourites, whom I met with at a party formerly, using the expression—‘That seal of mediocrity, affectation!’ Don’t you think this striking?

H.—Yes; but not quite free from the vice it describes.

N.—Oh! they had plenty of that: they were regular blue-stockings, I assure you; or they would not have been so entirely to his lordship’s taste, who was a mighty coxcomb. But there is none of that in the person I have been speaking of: she has very delightful, genteel, easy manners.

H.—That is the only thing I envy in people in that class.

N.—But you are not to suppose they all have it: it is only those who are born with it, and who would have had it in a less degree in every situation of life. Vulgarity is the growth of courts as well as of the hovel. We may be deceived by a certain artificial or conventional manner in persons of rank and fashion; but they themselves see plainly enough into the natural character. I remember Lady W— told me, as an instance to this purpose, that when she was a girl, she and her sister were introduced at court; and it was then the fashion to stand in a circle, and the Queen came round and spoke to the different persons in turn. There was some high lady who came in after them, and pushed rudely into the circle so as to get before them. But the Queen, who saw the circumstance, went up and spoke to them first, and then passed on (as a just punishment) without taking any notice whatever of the forward intruder. I forget how it arose the other day, but she asked me—‘Pray, Mr. Northcote, is Discretion reckoned one of the cardinal virtues?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘it 461is not one of them, for it is all!’ If we had discretion at all times, we should never do wrong: but we are taken off our guard by being thrown into new and difficult situations, and have not time to weigh the consequences or to summon resolution to our aid. That is what Opie used to say when he had been engaged in an argument over-night, what excellent answers he could give the next day—and was vexed with himself for not having thought of them. No! if we had sufficient presence of mind to foresee the consequences of our actions on the spot, we should very rarely have occasion to repent of them afterwards.