nite; and once more Cupid had blown the old | rowed from a book by Smith, the biographer ashes into a flame. Tremble, ye tailless cats, in of Nollekens, so the general view of the year the dirty gallery of Queen Ann-street! tremble, is taken (of course without acknowledgment) old sordid housekeeper! for your new mistress from the Annual Register.' comes to scatter ye to the four winds, with account of Court life at Kew (i. 33) is from Thus the Hope, and Love, and Joy, winged and rosy cherubs, careering before her in the air, and the Pt. ii. of the 'Register,' pp. 1-2; the menbright crescent of the honeymoon rising to shed tion of the regatta as a new entertainment, blessed influences on the roof of a house once introduced from Venice' (i. 34), is from the more awakened to life. 'Register,' Pt. i. p. 216; and the record of a very old man's death (i. 36) is from Pt. i. p. 87; although Mr. Thornbury could not help improving even this, by changing the name from Garden to Gordon, adding a year to the age, and describing the parish of Auchterless, North Britain,' as a village in the north of England!"

But no; cruel fate stepped in,' &c.—Ib.

This foolish rant would have been bad enough in any case; but in truth the whole idea of an intended marriage is founded on an utter misunderstanding of the letter. Here is the passage in question :

'Sandycombe [Turner's house at Twickenham] sounds just now in my ears as an act of folly, when I reflect how little I have been able to be there this year, and less chance (perhaps for the next). In [I am ?] looking forward to a continental excursion

if Miss

would

but waive bashfulness, or, in other words, make an offer, instead of expecting one, the same might change occupiers.'-ii. 41, 42.

.

The meaning of this must be clear to every one but Mr. Thornbury. It has nothing to do with marriage, although, by way of humour, the painter talks of waiving fulness. In short, the offer which he wishes the lady to make is not that of her hand, but of a price or a rent for Sandycombe Lodge; the result which he contemplates is not that his town-house might receive a mistress, but that there might be a change of occupiers' in his country-house.

Almost equally superfluous is the chapter on Turner's Contemporaries in Water and Oil,' or, at least, the greater part of it; and we need hardly say that it is full of blunders. Then come two chapters of which Girtin is the chief hero; chapters which fill almost forty pages, but of which the whole substance might be very well given in five.

Here is a specimen, remarkable alike for consistency and good taste:

'Girtin has been very unfairly set down as a bash-careless, dissolute artist, fond of low society. Far be it Nothing can be more untrue.... from me to sneer at Girtin's loving humour and adventure, or going to Northumberland in a dirty collier, eating salt-beef, smoking black pipes, and bandying North-country jokes. A young prig of a dandy would have maintained a dogged silence, except now and then to quote the Greek" Delectus," and express his nausea and disgust at the general filthiness of the vessel, and the boorishness of the "plebs," the "hoi polloi," the "crew." The one would have been dubbed "a cursed jackanapes," the other have been cheered at parting as "a right goodhearted fellow as ever trod shoe-leather." i. 110, 111.

I do not,' says Mr. Thornbury, wish to imitate that learned and industrious monk who, writing the life of St. Jerome, commenced with the siege of Troy' (i. 30). Whether there ever was such a monk, or what Mr. Thornbury's idea of St. Jerome may be, we do not care to inquire; but we have certainly never met with any book so full of irrelevant matter. Thus the second chapter is entitled 'The London of Turner's Boyhood,' and contains an account of the capital-the vast, the negative, the miserable, the loathsome, the great, the magnificent' (i. 22)—which might equally well figure as the London of Johnson's old or of Lord Eldon's early manhood, or of any other man's boyhood who was born about 1775,-when, as we are told with the author's usual accuracy, George III. had been twenty-five years on his uneasy throne' (i. 33). But, not content with this, Mr. Thornbury launches out into an account of the most remarkable things of that year-not only in London, but all over the world, including the American Revolution; and as his picture of London seems to be mainly bor

เ

age,

Girtin's last illness is thus described :

furnished with a set of dates in the lives of Turner's contemporaries,' with a Table of historical dates' in English history, a like table in French history, and one of 'Our great naval victories! Really it is difficult to see, on this principle of stuffing, bow any book should ever come to an end at all. Among the contemporaries,' whose names are arranged in no sort of order, are reckoned Reynolds, who ceased to paint when Turner was fourteen; Gainsborough, who died when Turner was thirteen; and Scott, the marine painter, who died three years before Turner was born! (i. 380.) As for the correctness of the dates, it will be enough to say that Sir William Allan is described as 'a fellow-pupil of Wilkie,' and yet as born in 1815; that Mr. Maclise is said to have become R.A. at twenty, and that Sir Edwin Landseer is said to have attained the same honour at the very early age of five-having, as it would seem, contributed to exhibitions for some years before his birth !* As in an extract which we have already given, Bird is here described as a predecessor of Wilkie;' but whereas he was there styled the son of a clothier,' he is here a carpenter's son' (i. 381). Then, as if Mr. Thornbury's own account of the so-called 'contemporaries' were not enough, we have, in vol. ii. 57 seqq., about thirty pages of twaddling reminiscences, traditions, and remarks about them by Mr. Trimmer, which even Mr. Thornbury himself confesses to be 'somewhat irrelevant;' and, on the principle of St. Jerome's biogra

yond the beginning, to trace the 'Rise and description of the state in which his drawProgress of Water Colour Painting in Eng-ings were found after his death; and then, land,' from the illuminations of Anglo-Saxon by way of a finish to the chapter, we are missals downwards, through those who, with a beautiful display of Scriptural knowledge, are indifferently styled 'patriarchs' and 'preAdamites' (e. g. i. 81); and although much of this is a repetition of things which had been said before, we are favoured with an unexpected novelty in Mr. Thornbury's notes on a late exhibition of water-colours (i. 139, 140). A little further on there is an account of Loutherbourg's Eidophuskion' (as Mr. Thornbury calls it)-a sort of dioramic exhibition, with which Turner had nothing whatever to do (i. 158-161). Then in chapter xiii.—Turner's Work for the Engravers we have a history of Engraving in England, executed in the usual fashion. There is a list of early engravers at p. 243, which is almost repeated at p. 245. There is much repetition of former details as to Turner's illustrations of Scott, and of the places which he visited in order to make drawings for the engravers. And there are blunders and contradictions in plenty. Basire is always turned into Basile. The painter Cipriani is spoken of as if he were an engraver (p. 245). We are told in one place that Woollett was born in 1755 (p. 243), and in two other places that he was born in 1735 (pp. 246, 383). From 1780,' it is said, 'Rooker, Ryland, Strange, and Woollett began to get patronage. In 1751 Strange commenced his series of copies from the old masters' (p. 244). According to this account, we might suppose that poor Strange had to work uncheered by the encouragement of patrons for nine and twenty years; but from a state-pher, we are further favoured with confused ment in the next page, that he died in 1772, it would seem that his probation was shortened, and that the patronage did not begin until he had been eight years in his grave. In either case the story would be so sad that we wonder how Mr. Thornbury can have restrained himself from moralising on it. But for the comfort of readers we may state from another source that the Jacobite engraver lived to be knighted by the Hanoverian George III. in 1787, and enjoyed his dignity until 1795.*

In chapter xviii., Turner's choice of Polyphemus for a subject is made the pretext for an analysis of the ninth book of Pope's Odyssey.' Chapter xxii., on 'Turner's NoteBooks and Sketches,' is without any arrangement, and is in great part repeated from the notices of his tours and from Mr. Ruskin's

*We need hardly commend here the very amusing Life of Strange, with the account of his remarkable wife; by the late Mr. Dennistoun.

and unintelligible histories of the societies of artists which have been formed in England (ii. 100 sqq.), and of the charities for the benefit of artists (ii. 271). Whatever Turner was in any way connected with, of that his biographer seems to think himself entitled to inflict a loose, flimsy, and inaccurate account on us; except, indeed (which we thankfully acknowledge), that the chapter of extracts from Turner's verses is not preceded by a history of English poetry.

The iteration in which Mr. Thornbury indulges is beyond anything that we have ever seen, and, if this feature were removed, the book would shrink very considerably. Thus in vol. i. chap. xii. we have seven pages by Mr. Cyrus Redding about a tour with Turner in Devonshire (pp. 201-8); and immediately after we have another expanded version of the same tour by the same pen,

*Maclise, born 1811, 1831, R.A.; Sir E. Landseer, born 1826, R. A. in 1831' (i. 383).

which fills eleven pages (208-219). We are although 'jealousy at the success of his contold twice (if not oftener) of the rapidity temporaries is said to have been one of the with which Turner executed an elaborate accelerating causes of his dreadful death;' drawing for Mr. Fawkes (i. 134, ii. 88); and somewhat later that, getting embarrassed twice, that Turner engaged to work for a and in debt, he killed himself about two years publisher named Walker, and that Girtin after Girtin's death' (i. 116). That a man refused (i. 75, 107); twice that Turner would should have killed himself out of envy of a not allow his lawyer to distrain for the rent deceased pupil, is certainly not very likely. of some houses (ii. 122, 133); twice that And there is reason to believe that the whole nearly all his illustrations of Scott belong to account of this unfortunate artist is a gross Mr. Munro (i. 192, 196); twice that a wo- misrepresentation. His notice of Girtin, man employed to stitch up the 'Liber Stu- although certainly tinged by the rememdiorum' stole some of the prints (i. 274, 409); brance of a quarrel, does full justice to the thrice, that Turner would never verify the old pupil's abilities, and is probably not too genuineness of pictures ascribed to him (i. severe in the reflection on his habits; and the 408; . 152, 248); thrice that he designed notice of Turner is highly eulogistic. ii. On the doorway of his house in Queen Anne every ground, therefore, we disbelieve the Street (i. 166; ii. 173, 177); thrice that a charge of envy; and, although it is very poscopy of the Liber Studiorum' has been sold sible that debt may have helped to urge him for 30001. (i. 271, 274, 286); twice that on, the main cause of his suicide was (as we Charles Turner, the engraver, burnt many are assured by a gentleman who remembers proof impressions of the plates, in ignorance him and highly respects his memory) a natuof their value (i. 271, 287); twice that the rally melancholy disposition. Again, at vol. painter was excessively obstinate, with a i. p. 172, a story is told by Mr. Trimmer that, story from Petworth in each case (ii. 156, when Howard was painting a child holding 160); times without number that he was not a cat, he could not manage the hind legs and mean, but generous-not recluse, but social; tail; whereupon Turner suggested, Wrap and that he intended the picture of Carthage them up in your red pocket-handkerchief,' for his winding-sheet; and these are but a and so the difficulty was overcome. few out of many instances. Phrases on vol. ii. pp. 37-8, the same story is related by which the author prides himself are repeated Mr. Thornbury himself, with such embellishbefore the reader can have had time to forget ments of style as might be expected, and them; we have had an instance in the pas- with an alteration which makes nonsense of it sages already quoted as to the 'bony. claw.'-besides that the painting of the additionSo, we are told at vol. ii., p. 85, that in the cat as well as handkerchief-is transferred drawing-room at Farnley, 'shining yet like a from one artist to the other. sun, is the great picture of Dort;' and at p. 89, that the collection has for its sun the

*

luminous Dort.' Bet perhaps the most startling instance of iteration within a very small compass is contained in two lines of vol. i., p. 381: 'Geddes, a Scotchman, was born 1789, and died 1844. He went to Italy in 1828, and died 1844.'

But at

'There was a want of warm colour in the

foreground, He [Turner] advised the introducThe now-forgotten poet [i. e. Howard, the painttion of a cat wrapped up in a red handkerchief [!]. er] was horrified, and did not see his way to such an introduction. Turner instantly took up his brushes, and painted in the ingenious expedient.'

Sometimes, however, the repetition is not without some variety. As other striking instances of inconsistency, Thus, in vol. i. p. 330, we read that in 1837 he [Turner] we may mention the impossibility of reconpainted "Regulus leaving Rome." This pic-ciling the summary of Turner's tours, vol. i. p. 198, with the details in other parts of the ture was painted at Rome in 1829.' In one place we are told that an artist named Dayes book; and the extraordinary difference be'got embarrassed, and committed suicide, it tween Mr. Thornbury's statements as to the was supposed, from envy at the progress of painter's mother. Her maiden name is said his contemporaries-Turner and his old pupil to have been Mallord or Marshall' (i. 4), [Girtin]' (i. 102). But in the next page it names which are surely not identical. At is said that years after Girtin's death he one time she is a Nottinghamshire young committed suicide under the pressure of debts, lady,' with whom Mr. Thornbury supposes the elder Turner to have become acquainted through being called in to dress her hair while she was visiting down in Devonshire.'

*This turns out to be incorrect. See a letter from Mr. Pye, the engraver, in the Athenæum' of

March 1.
Mr. Wornum makes the more credible
statement that the best collections of proofs, con-
taining the plates in more than one state, are
valued at from 2001, to 500l.—Memoir, p. xi.
17

VOL. CXI.

เ

*The only ground for identifying them is that, while the mother is always called Marshall, the son bore Mallord as a part of his Christian name.

She is studiously styled the lady-mother' | and brooding solitary life, and naturally strong (i. 13, 19); and there are flings at her passions, could not be expected to lead to anyproud family,' with terrible sarcasms against thing but a selfish and vicious old age. Latterly, 'the believers in two sorts of blood-blue Turner resorted to wine while he painted, tổ rouse his imagination; and at Chelsea, I fear, he and red-aristocratic and plebeian,' to whom it is supposed that the discovery of the fact that Turner's mother was of gentle birth will be of extreme importance.' (i. 10, 11.) But elsewhere she is described as a native of Islington' (i. 5), with whom the barber had become acquainted after his removal to don (i. 4); and it seems certain she had an uncle a butcher at Brentford, with whom the future painter lodged while at school (i. 19). The believers in two kinds of blood,' therefore, are, after all, left in a distressing uncertainty.

gave way to even more fatal drinking. Nor were these his only excesses. He would often, latterly, I am assured on only too good authority, paint hard all the week till Saturday night; he would then put by his work, slip a five-pound note in [sic] his pocket, button it seLon-curely up there, and set off to some low sailors' house in Wapping or Rotherhithe, to wallow till drudge through another week. A blinded Samthe Monday morning left him free again to son, indeed!-a fallen angel forgetful of his lost Paradise !'-ii. 167, 168.

It is a favourite doctrine both with Mr. Ruskin and with Mr. Thornbury, that Turner was deeply wronged by the world, and that on the world his faults ought to be charged. We must express our entire disbelief of such a theory. We had, indeed, trusted that it had already been exploded by Leslie's wellknown remarks on Mr. Ruskin; but here we have again the old complaint, with the odd variation that the idea of Turner's unsociability, which had been brought forward by Mr. Ruskin as a proof of his having been grievously injured by the world, is now after Leslie's refutation of it-described by Mr. Thornbury as a base and malignant in

*

letters, his biographer has not been able, like | price was probably as much as could have many other late biographers, to thrust on been expected by a boy of his age and conthe public a mass of correspondence which, dition. If he had died immediately after if it were ever to see the light, ought at least having executed those drawings, they would to have been withheld until it could be pub- probably have never fetched more. And it lished without giving pain to the living or was by the small earnings of his youthful exciting bitter thoughts against the dead. days, as a draughtsman, as a teacher, and as an illustrator of topographical books, that he was enabled to maintain himself, until, at an unusually early age, he reached the first place in his art, and obtained the highest prices for his works. At twenty-four, he was an Associate of the Royal Academy; at twentyseven, a full Academician, although Mr. Thornbury, while he abuses others for having been slow to understand him, has nothing but violent abuse for the Academy which so early showed its appreciation of his merit. (See vol. i. p. 99.) For fifty years before his death he was acknowledged to be the greatest landscape-painter of his own time, at least-for nothing can be more utterly groundless than the fancy which has lately grown up, that Mr. Ruskin, a few years before the painter's death, was the first to discover his surpassing excellence; and, having begun the world with nothing, he left property the amount of which is very inadequately represented by the appraiser's valuation, of 140,000l. If his life was not happy, its unhappiness did not arise from any want of public encouragement. Even if it were true that a man is justified in avenging himself for carly sufferings at the hands of a few persons by unamiable behaviour to a different, a far larger, and a wholly innocent set of persons in maturer years, we do not think with Mr. Thornbury (i. 393) that Turner had any such justification.

vention of his enemies!

In truth, few men have been more successful than Turner; and his success was early, unbroken, and increasing to the very end. The son of a very small tradesman, he received an education which, although scanty, might have been turned to greater account, if he had been disposed, like multitudes of men less favourably started in life, to follow it up by self-education; † at all events, whether by the help of a timely legacy or otherwise (i. 53), the father was able to give him as good an education in art as England could offer. We are told again and again that early sufferings from grasping patrons and dealers in art made him distrustful; but in reality it would seem that, far from having had worse struggles than other men who have risen from humble beginnings, he must have escaped very easily. If he sold his early drawings for three shillings each, the

*Autobiographical Recollections,' i. 201–5.

Mr. Thornbury thinks that Turner was illused by the nobility, who spent their money on the old masters; and that the first true recognition of him was reserved for the rich manufacturers of Birmingham and Manchester. But we find him employed by Lord Essex, a very early patron; largely employed

was, indeed, most kind and valuable to both Turner and Girtin. He set before them good models, directed them in their sketching from nature, and paid them as much as they could at that time have got anywhere. If the drawings executed for him have since risen in value, there is no ground for charging him with niggardliness.

Turner was a man of keen observation, and in one sense was always educating himself. But al- * We need not say that it is mere nonsense when though he seems to have read a good deal of poe- Mr. Thornbury writes of him, after his election as try, his literary acquirements were always very A.R.A., Then he is back again to London (sketchdefective. He could never spell; for instance, he ing the Savoy Chapel in gray) perhaps with Girwrites wife, whife' (ii. 91). His penmanship, too, tin, for Dr. Munro's [. e. Monro's] half-a-crown was probably bad for it is clear that in the let-a-day and supper,' i. 357. Dr. Monro's patronage ters and verses which are printed there are many mistakes. And Mr. Thornbury seems to have been led by the misspelling of an autograph codicil into a misstatement as to his will at vol. ii. 289, where it is stated that Hannah Danby (whom Mr. Thornbury elsewhere calls Ellen, ii. 273) was appointed custodian of the Turner Gallery, at 100% a year, with 50% more for her services.' This is clearly nonsense. But on turning to the Appendix (p. 414) we find the original words to be one hundred -year for her service, and fifty pounds for her assistance service which may be required to keep the said gallery in a viewable state.' 'Assistance seems to be Turner's way of spelling assistant's.'

Turner's property,' says Mr, Wornum,' was sworn under 140.000l., his pictures being appraised at the ordinary value of such effects.' (Memoir,' xx.) We have been informed on good authority that the pictures and drawings bequeathed to the nation may alone be now fairly estimated at four hundred thousand pounds!