230 On Means and Ends. [SEPT'. 



under-do every thing, and are either mad with enthusiasm or in despair* 

 The extreme slowness and regularity of the French school have then arisen, 

 as a natural consequence, out of their very fickleness and frivolity (their 

 severally supposed national characteristics) ; for, owing to the last, their 

 studious exactness costs them nothing ; and, again, they have no headstrong 

 impulses or ardent longings that urge them on to the violation of rules, or 

 hurry them away with a subject or with the interest belonging to it. All 

 is foreseen and settled before-hand, so as to assist the fluttering and feeble 

 hold they have of things. When they venture beyond the literal and 

 formal, and (mistaking pedantry and bombast for genius) attempt the 

 grand and the impressive style, as in David's and Girodet's pictures, the 

 Lord deliver us from sublimity engrafted on insipidity and petit-maitre-ism ! 

 You see a solitary French artist in the Louvre copying a Raphael or a 

 Rubens, standing on one leg, not quite sure of what he is about : you see 

 them collected in groupes about David's, elbowing each other, thinking 

 them even finer than Raphael, more truly themselves, a more perfect com- 

 bination of all that can be taught by the Greek sculptor and the French 

 posture-master ! Is this patriotism, or want of taste ? If the former, it is 

 excusable ; and why not, if the latter ? 



Even should a French artist fail, he is not disconcerted there is some* 

 thing else he excels in : " for one unkind and cruel fair, another still con- 

 soles him." He studies in a more graceful posture, or pays greater atten- 

 tion to his dress ; or he has a friend, who has beaucoup du talent, and 

 conceit enough for them both. His self-love has always a salvo, and 

 comes upon its legs again, like a cat or a monkey. Not so with Bruin the 

 Bear. If an Englishman (God help the mark !) fails in one thing, it is 

 all over with him ; he is enraged at the mention of any thing else he can 

 do, and at every consolation offered him on that score ; he banishes all 

 other thoughts, but of his disappointment and discomfiture, from his 

 breast neither eats nor sleeps (it is well if he does not swallow down 

 double " potations, 'pottle-deep/* to drown remembrance) will not own, 

 even to himself, any other thing in which he takes an interest or feels a 

 pride ; and is in the horrors till he recovers his good opinion of himself in 

 the only point on which he now sets a value, and for which his anxiety 

 and disorder of mind incapacitate him as effectually as if he were drunk 

 with strong liquor instead of spleen and passion. I have here drawn the 

 character of an Englishman, I am sure; for it is a portrait of myself and, 

 I am sorry to add, an unexaggerated one. I intend these Essays as studies 

 of human nature ; and as, in the prosecution of this design, I do not spare 

 others, I see no reason why I should spare myself. I lately tried to 

 make a copy of a portrait by Titian (after several years' want of practice), 

 with a view to give a friend in England some notion of the picture, which 

 is equally remarkable and fine. I failed, and floundered on for some days, 

 as might be expected. I must say the effect on me was painful and exces- 

 sive. My sky was suddenly overcast. Every thing seemed of the colour 

 of the paints I used. Nature in my eyes became dark and gloomy. I had 

 no sense or feeling left, but of the unforeseen want of power, and of the tor- 

 menting struggle to do what i could not. I was ashamed ever to have 

 written or spoken on art : it seemed a piece of vanity and affectation in 

 me to do so all whose reasonings and refinements on the subject ended 

 in an execrable daub. Why did I think of attempting such a thing with- 

 out weighing the consequences of exposing my presumption and incapa- 

 city so unnecessarily ? It was blotting from my mind, covering with a 



