1827.] On Means and Ends. 231 



thick veil all that I remembered of these pictures formerly my hopes 

 when young, my regrets since, one of the few consolations of my life and 

 of my declining years. I was even afraid to walk out of an evening by 

 the barrier of Neuilly, or to recal the yearnings and associations that once 

 hung upon the beatings of my heart. All was turned to bitterness and gall. 

 To feel any thing but the consciousness of my own helplessness and folly, 

 appeared a want of sincerity, a mockery, and an insult to my mortified 

 pride ! The only relief I had was in the excess of pain I felt : this was at 

 least some distinction. I was not insensible on that side. No French 

 artist, I thought, would regret not copying a Titian so much as I did, nor 

 so far shew the same value for it, however he might have the advantage of 

 me in drawing or mechanical dexterity. Besides, I had copied this very 

 picture very well formerly. If ever I got out of my present scrape, I had 

 at any rate received a lesson not to run the same risk of vexation, or com- 

 mit myself gratuitously again upon any occasion whatever. Oh! happy 

 ought they to be, I said, who can do any thing, when I feel the misery, 

 the agony, the dull, gnawing pain of being unable to do what I wish in 

 this single instance ! When I copied this picture before, I had no other 

 resource, no other language. My tongue then stuck to the roof of my 

 mouth : now it is unlocked, and I have done what I then despaired of 

 doing in another way. Ought I not to be grateful and contented ? Oh, 

 yes ! and think how many there are who have nothing to which they can 

 turn themselves, and fail in every object they undertake. Well, then, 

 Let bygones be bygones (as the Scotch proverb has it) ; give up the 

 attempt, and think no more of Titian, or of the portrait of a Man in black 

 in the Louvre. This would be very well for any one else ; but for me, 

 who had nearly exhausted the subject on paper, that I should take it into 

 my head to paint a libel of what I had composed so many and such fine 

 panegyrics upon it was a fatality, a judgment upon me for my vapouring 

 and conceit. I must be as shy of the subject for the future as a damned 

 author is of the title of his play or the name of his hero ever after. Yet 

 the picture would look the same as ever. I could hardly bear to think so : 

 it would be hid or defaced to me as " in a phantasma or a hideous dream." 

 I must turn my thoughts from it, or they would lead to madness ! The 

 copy went on better afterwards, and the affair ended less tragically than I 

 apprehended. I did not cut a hole in the canvas, or commit any other 

 extravagance : it is now hanging up very quietly facing me ; and I have 

 considerable satisfaction in occasionally looking at it, as I write this para- 

 graph. 



Such are the agonies into which we throw ourselves about trifles our 

 rage and disappointment at want of success in any favourite pursuit, and, 

 our neglect of the means to ensure it. A Frenchman, under the penalty of 

 half the chagrin at failure, would take just twice the pains and considera- 

 tion to avoid it : but our morbid eagerness and blundering impetuosity, 

 together with a certain concrete/less of imagination which prevents our 

 dividing any operation into steps and stages, defeat the very end we have 

 in view. The worst of these wilful mischiefs of our own making is, that 

 they admit of no relief or intermission. Natural calamities or great griefs, 

 as we do not bring them upon ourselves, so they find a seasonable respite 

 in tears or resignation, or in some alleviating contrast or reflection : but 

 pride scorns all alliance with natural frailty or indulgence; our wilful pur- 

 poses regard every relaxation or moment's ease as a compromise of their 



