PAINE PAINTING. 



387 



him to go to America. He took his advice, and, 

 reaching Philadelphia in 1774, in the following Jan- 

 uary, became editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, 

 which he conducted with considerable ability. Hos- 

 tilities having commenced between the mother coun- 

 try and the colonies, he composed his celebrated 

 pamphlet, entitled Common Sense, which was writ- 

 ten with great vigour. The object of this tract was 

 to recommend the separation of the colonies from 

 Great Britain. For this production, the legislature 

 of Pennsylvania voted him .500. He also received 

 the degree of M. A. from the university of the same 

 province, and was chosen a member of the American 

 philosophical society. To these rewards was added 

 the office of clerk to the committee for foreign affairs, 

 which, although a confidential situation, did not jus- 

 tify him in assuming the title of " late secretary for 

 foreign affairs," which he did in the titlepage of the 

 Rights of Man. While in this office, he published a 

 series of political appeals, which he denominated the 

 Crisis. He was obliged to resign his secretaryship 

 in 1779, owing to his having divulged some official 

 secrets in a controversy with Silas Ueane, whom he 

 accused of a fraudulent attempt to profit by his 

 agency, in conveying the secret supplies of stores 

 from France. The next year, he obtained the ap- 

 pointment of clerk to the assembly of Pennsylvania, 

 and, in 1785, on the rejection of a motion to appoint 

 him historiographer to the United States, received 

 from congress a donation of 3000 dollars. He also 

 received 500 acres of land from the state of New 

 York. In 1787, he embarked for France, and, after 

 visiting Paris, went to England, with a view to the 

 prosecution of a project relative to the erection of 

 an iron bridge, of his own invention. This scheme 

 involved him in pecuniary difficulties, and, in the 

 course of the following year, he was arrested for 

 debt, but was bailed by some American merchants. 

 On the appearance of Burke's Reflections on the 

 French Revolution, he wrote the first part of his 

 Rights of Man, in answer to that celebrated work. 

 The second part was published early in 1792 ; and, 

 May 21, in that year, a proclamation was issued 

 against wicked and seditious publications, alluding 

 to, but not naming, the Rights of Man. On the 

 same day, the attorney-general commenced a prose- 

 cution against Paine as the author of that work. 

 While the trial was pending, he was chosen member 

 of the national convention for the department of 

 Calais ; and, making his escape, he set off for France, 

 and arrived there in September, 1792. On the trial of 

 Louis XVI., he voted against the sentence of death, 

 proposing his imprisonment during the war, and his 

 banishment afterwards. This conduct offended the 

 Jacobins, and, towards the close of 1793, he was ex- 

 cluded from the convention, on the ground of his 

 being a foreigner (though he had been naturalized) 

 and, immediately after, he was arrested, and com- 

 mitted to the Luxembourg. Just before his confine- 

 ment, he had finished the first part of his work against 

 revelation, entitled the Age of Reason, being an In- 

 vestigation of true and fabulous Theology ; and, 

 having confided it to the care of his friend Joel Bar- 

 low, it was published ; by which step he forfeited the 

 countenance of the greater part of his American con- 

 nexions. On the fall of Robespierre, he was re- 

 leased, and, in 1795, published, at Paris, the second 

 pait of his Age of Reason ; and, in May, 1796, ad- 

 dressed to the council of five hundred a work entitled 

 the Decline and Fall of the System of Finance in 

 England, and also published his pamphlet entitled 

 Agrarian Justice. Fearful of being captured by 

 British cruisers, he remained in France till August, 

 1802, when he embarked for America, and reached 

 Baltimore the following October. He had lost his 



first wife the year following his marriage, and, after 

 a cohabitation of three years and a half, had sepa- 

 rated from a second, by mutual consent, several 

 years before. Thus situated, he obtained a female 

 companion in the person of a madame de Bonneville, 

 the wife of a French bookseller, who, with her two 

 sons, accompanied him to America ; but, whatever 

 was the nature of this connexion (at the age of sixty- 

 five), which has been differently represented, the hus- 

 band and children, with the wife, became his chief 

 legatees. His subsequent life was by no means 

 happy ; for, although occupied in various mechanical 

 speculations and other engrossing pursuits, and pos- 

 sessed of decent competence, his attacks upon reli- 

 gion had exceedingly narrowed his circle of acquain- 

 tance ; and his habitual intemperance tended to the 

 injury of his health, and the ultimate production of a 

 complication of disorders, to which he fell a victim 

 June 8, 1809, in his seventy-third year. Being re- 

 fused interment in the ground of the society of Friends, 

 which favour he had requested before his death, he 

 was buried on his own farm. The strong part taken 

 by this extraordinary man in religion and politics has 

 produced such extremes of praise and execration, 

 that there exist few or no sources of unbiassed infor- 

 mation, either as to his abilities or character, except 

 his writings. That he possessed much native vigour 

 of intellect, is indisputable, and, concentrated as it 

 became by resolute exclusion of multifarious acquire- 

 ment, and of even a moderate recourse to books, it 

 assumed, in his writings, that piquancy, force, and 

 simplicity, which, of all qualities, secure the largest 

 share of general attention in popular controversy. 

 The political pamphlets, letters, and addresses of Paine 

 are numerous, and may be found in the collective 

 editions of his works. They are also enumerated at 

 the end of his Life by Sherwin. See his Life by 

 Cheetham and Sherwin. 



PAINTER'S COLIC. See Colic. 



PAINTING, in a technical sense, is the art which 

 represents the appearance of natural objects on a 

 plane surface by means of colours, so as to produce 

 the appearance of relief. As a fine art, its highest 

 object is the beautiful, exhibited in visible forms by 

 colours. The noblest field of the painter is that in 

 which he vies with the poet, embidying ideas, and 

 representing them to the spectator ; but, as there are 

 innumerable gradations in poetry, from the most ele- 

 vated epic or drama to the shortest song, the excel- 

 lence of which may consist merely in giving effect to 

 a single sentiment or situation, comic, touching, &c., 

 so pictures may present all varieties from the 

 elevated productions of a Michel Angelo, in the 

 Capella Sistina, to the image of a single dewdrop, a 

 leaf, a cat in a Flemish piece. And just as taste 

 may degenerate in respect to poetry, and prefer 

 insipidity, bombast, or false glitter to true poetical 

 beauty, so taste may degenerate, and has degene- 

 rated, in respect to painting ; and a portrait, the 

 greatest praise of which was that every single hair of 

 the beard might be seen by a microscope, has been 

 thought extremely " natural," and valued more 

 highly than the most poetical compositions. It is 

 but little praise to say of a picture, in this sense, 

 that it is natural. We have spoken of this subject 

 in the article Copy, where the reader will find some 

 observations on the necessity of genius even in copy- 

 ing nature of genius which can extract the essential, 

 characteristic, and distinguishing. A painter must 

 have the creative power of a poet. Why do we find 

 so many portraits appallingly like the original, so as 

 to be recognised at first glance, and which yet leave 

 a disagreeable impression ? The reason is that the 

 painter copied with Chinese accuracy the form be- 

 fore him, but could not discover the spirit-whicli am- 



