xx The Barberini or Portland Vase 267 



commendation of Sir Joshua Keynolds and Sir William 

 Chambers. 



"Thus you see, sir," Wedgwood continued, "I am 

 laying foundations, and in some measure sacrificing the 

 present for the future ; but I shall not in the mean- 

 time leave myself altogether without resources. I have 

 an excellent modeller here, who has been some years 

 under Mr. Webber's instructions. And Mr. Banks, a 

 very able statuary in London, whom you must have 

 known in Italy, and another artist in town, both of 

 whom have promised to employ all the time they 

 can spare for me. . . . 



"I have likewise many chimneypieces in hand, 

 some of which, with the vases and figures that are 

 to go along with them, will be very tedious and ex- 

 pensive. But my great work is the Portland Vase. 

 I have now finished a third and last edition of the 

 figures ; the two first being suppressed in hopes of 

 making the third still more perfect. In this I have 

 certainly succeeded, but how far I have done so upon 

 the whole, and with what success, others must deter- 

 mine. My present difficulty is to give those beauti- 

 ful shades to the thin and distant parts of the figures, 

 for which the original artist availed himself of the semi- 

 transparency of the white glass, cutting it down nearer 

 and nearer to the blue ground, in proportion as he 

 wished to increase the depth of shade. But the case is 

 very different with me. I must depend upon an agent, 

 whose effects are neither at my command, nor to be per- 



