FLORENTINE SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING. 381 



crowned with a most lively and cheerful disposition, altogether 

 made him appear to me as one of the best of characters. In 

 his workshop I often spent my winter evenings. This was 

 also the case with a number of young men who might be con- 

 sidered as his pupils ; many of whom, I have no doubt, he di- 

 rected into the paths of truth and integrity, and who revered 

 his memory through life. He rose early to work, lay down 

 when he felt weary, and rose again when refreshed. His diet 

 was of the simplest kind ; and he ate when hungry, and drank 

 when dry, without paying regard to meal-times. By steadily 

 pursuing this mode of life he was enabled to accumulate sums 

 of money from ten to thirty pounds. This enabled him to 

 get books, of an entertaining and moral tendency, printed and 

 circulated at a cheap rate. His great object was, by every 

 possible means, to promote honourable feelings in the minds 

 of youth, and to prepare them for becoming good members of 

 society. I have often discovered that he did not overlook in- 

 genious mechanics, whose misfortunes perhaps mismanage- 

 ment had led them to a lodging in Newgate. To these he 

 directed his compassionate eye, and for the deserving (in his 

 estimation), he paid their debt, and set them at liberty. He 

 felt hurt at seeing the hands of an ingenious man tied up in 



gravings of them. The prices now given without hesitation for nearly 

 worthless original drawings by first-rate artists, would obtain for the 

 misguided buyers, in something like a proportion of ten to one, most 

 precious copies of drawings which can only be represented at all in en- 

 graving by entire alteration of their treatment, and abandonment of 

 their finest purposes. I feel this so strongly that I have given my best 

 attention, during upwards of ten years, to train a copyist to perfect fidel- 

 ity in rendering the work of Turner ; and having now succeeded in en- 

 abling him to produce facsimiles so close as to look like replicas, fac- 

 similies which I must sign with my own name and his, in the very work 

 of them, to prevent their being sold for real Turner vignettes, I can ob- 

 tain no custom for him, and am obliged to leave him to make his bread 

 by any power of captivation his original sketches may possess in the 

 eyes of a public which maintains a nation of copyists in Rome, but is 

 content with black and white renderings of great English art ; though 

 there is scarcely one cultivated English gentleman or lady who has not 

 been twenty times in the Vatican, for once that they have been in the 

 National Gallery. 



