nor should I object to passing mine over again. Till I was twenty, I had no idea of any thing but books, and thought every thing else was worthless and mechanical. The having to study painting about this time, and finding the difficulties and beauties it unfolded, opened a new field to me, and I began to conclude that there might be a number of 'other things between heaven and earth that were never dreamt of in my philosophy.' Ask G, or any other literary man who has never been taken out of the leading-strings of learning, and you will perceive that they hold for a settled truth that the universe is built of words. G has no interest but in literary fame, of which he is a worshipper: he cannot believe that any one is clever, or has even common sense, who has not written a book. If you talk to him of Italian cities, where great poets and patriots lived, he heaves a sigh; and if I were possessed of a fortune, he should go and visit the house where Galileo lived or the tower where Ugolino was imprisoned. He can see with the eyes of his mind. To all else he is marble. It is like speaking to him of the objects of a sixth sense; every other language seems dumb and inarticulate. The end of CONVERSATIONS OF JAMES NORTHCOTE, ESQ., R.A. 2. An Advertisement, etc. The advertisement to the Paris edition of TableTalk was as follows: 'The work here offered to the public is a selection from the four volumes of Table Talk, printed in London. Should it meet with success, it will be followed by two other volumes of the same description, which will include all that the author wishes to preserve of his writings in this kind. The title may perhaps serve to explain what there is of peculiarity in the style or mode of treating the subjects. I had remarked that when I had written or thought upon a particular topic, and afterwards had occasion to speak of it with a friend, the conversation generally took a much wider range, and branched off into a number of indirect and collateral questions, which were not strictly connected with the original view of the subject, but which often threw a curious and striking light upon it, or upon human life in general. It therefore occurred to me as possible to combine the advantages of these two styles, the literary and the conversational; or after stating and enforcing some leading idea, to follow it up by such observations and reflections as would probably suggest themselves in discussing the same question in company with others. This seemed to me to promise a greater variety and richness, and perhaps a greater sincerity, than could be attained by a more precise and scholastic method. The same consideration had an influence on the familiarity and conversational idiom of the style which I have used. How far the plan was feasible, or how far I have succeeded in the execution of it must be left to others to decide. I am also afraid of having too frequently attempted to give a popular air and effect to subtle distinctions and trains of thought; so that I shall be considered as too metaphysical by the careless reader, while by the more severe and scrupulous inquirer my style will be complained of as too light and desultory. To all this I can only answer that I have done not what I wished, but the best I could do; and I heartily wish it had been better.' ESSAY I. ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING This and the following essay are from The London Magazine for December 1820 (Vol. 11. pp. 597-607), No. v. of a series entitled Table Talk. 5. There is a pleasure, etc. Cf. vol. 1. note to p. 76. "No juggling here.' Cf. Here is such patchery, such juggling, and such knavery.' Troilus and Cressida, Act 11. Scene 3. Cowper, The Task, 111. 227-8. "Study with joy, etc. 6. More tedious,' etc. King John, Act 11. Scene 4. 'My mind to me,' etc. The first line of the well-known poem attributed to Sir Edward Dyer (d. 1607). PAGE 6. Note. See The Sorrows of Young Werther (Novels and Tales, Bohn, P. 254). 7. Pure in the last recesses of the mind.'_ Dryden's translation of the Second Satire of Persius, 1. 133. According to Frances Reynolds (Johnsonian Miscellanies, ed. G. B. Hill, 11. 272), the lines were quoted by Johnson at the end of an eloquent eulogium of Mrs. Thrale. 'Palpable to feeling, etc. Cf. If 'tis not gross in sense... 'tis probable and palpable to thinking.' Othello, Act 1. Scene 2. 8. Light thickened. 'Light thickens; and the crow Makes wing to the rooky wood.' Macbeth, Act II. Scene 2. Wilson. Richard Wilson (1714-1782). See Conversations of Northcote, ante, It was not so Claude, etc. Claude finally settled in Rome in 1627 and The first head, etc. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, 1. 108 note. The picture, which seems to have been painted near Manchester in 1803, is still in the possession of Hazlitt's family. 9. With Sir Joshua. Cf. the second of Hazlitt's Essays on Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses, ante, pp. 131 et seq. As in a glass darkly, etc. 1 Corinthians, xiii. 12. 10. Sees into the life of things. Wordsworth, Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey. II. Jan Steen, or Gerard Dow. Jan Steen (1626-1679), and Gerard Dou (1613-1675). 'Mist, etc. Paradise Lost, v. 435-6. Richardson. The Essays of Jonathan Richardson (1665-1745), which originally appeared in 1715 and 1719, were published in two volumes in 1725, and in one volume, edited by his son, in 1773. See pp. 297-8 of the one volume edition. Vasari tells this story of Michael Angelo and the Pope. • That you might almost say, etc. —so distinctly wrought That one might almost say, her body thought.' John Donne, An Anatomy of the World, Second Anniversary, 245-6. 12. Old Abraham Tucker. See vol. iv. pp. 371-385. "The source,' &c. See Northcote's Life of Reynolds, 11. 286. A picture of my father. Exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1806. See Gribelin's etchings. In the second (1714) and subsequent editions of 'Riches fineless. Othello, Act . Scene 3. "Ever in the haunch of winter sings. Henry IV., Part II. Act iv. Scene 4. 13. I also am a painter, See Vasari's Lives (ed. Blashfield and Hopkins), 1. 32, note 28. Mr. Skeffington. Sir Lumley St. George Skeffington (1771-1850), author of The Sleeping Beauty and other plays, and a friend of the Regent's, succeeded his father as baronet in 1815. The battle of Austerlitz. December 2, 1805. He himself is gone to rest. Hazlitt's father died on July 16, 1820. |