22(5 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



[July, 



naked, drawing his left knee." The fact is, 1 found Sir David stark 

 naked as ever lie was born, sitting on the edge of his bed, with a glass, 

 drawing. " Wilkie," said I, ray heavens, where am I to breakfast?" 

 Without making a reply, he put his port- crayon to his mouth to wet 

 his chalk, and said without moving, "It's jist copital practice, let me 

 tell ye." "I'll take a walk," said I; and after a walk I found the 

 room aired and bed turned up, and a good breakfast. It is astonishing 

 how remarkable men are for particulars to impress you with an idea 

 they are exceedingly correct, when they are not sure of it. The left 

 knee ! why not the right, why not both — and half of the right ankle — 

 and four of the toes ? 



So idle and loquacious was Wilkie sometimes, that one evening 

 when there was nearly dead silence, Fuzeli reading and nothing heard 

 but the scraping of charcoal, Wilkie sent over to me some verses on 

 his friend Crockat, the whole gist of which was doggrel rhyme such as, 



My dear Mr. Crockat, 

 Your name I won't pock-at, 



I added a couple, and it went nearly all round, and before it got half 

 wav, the students were choaking with laughter. Fuzeli looked up 

 two or three times with the light shining on his white lion head, in a 

 suppressed fury. We went on drawing in an hysterical agony, to 

 keep under which with cur lips, and keep our faces sedate, I nearly 

 bu rsted a blood-vessel. I believe I have the verses now. It is such 

 nonsense, for biograp! ers to talk as if their hero had none of the 

 follies of life. 



All the account of the journey to Devon, 1809, is a perfect absurdity. 

 Jt seems Cunningham must have skimmed the journal in his usual 

 careless manner. The facts of this journey are as follows. Whilst 

 ,v e were dining at the Admiralty, Lord Mulgrave, the first lord, asked 

 .is how we were going ? I replied by sea. His Lordship said, Would 

 you like tu go in a man-of-war? We were delighted, and he told 

 General Phipps at table, as he knew Curtis, the Port-Admiral at 

 Portsmouth, to give us a letter to put us on board any man-of-war 

 sailing to Plymouth! Away we went in high glee, to Portsmouth ; 

 we dined with Admiral Curtis, a tine old veteran, of the siege of 

 Gibraltar; there we met our friend Colin Mackenzie, then agent fir 

 Russian prisoners. As the Walcheren Expedition was collecting at 

 Portsmouth, the men-of-war were coming up, so there was no chance ( 

 and we took our passage in a coaster; but just as we were going. Ad- 

 miral Curtis came to the inn, and said, " will ye put up with a cutter?" 

 " Certainly; a cuck-boat in her Majesty's service," said I an 1 Wilkie. 

 " A utter is now under weigh," said the Admiral ; " I'll telegraph 

 her. ' In a few minutes, Moody, the commander, was in the Admiral's 

 office, and Wilkie and I were put under his charge, is two very great 

 men. Wilkie lay on his back in horror all the way, and so insensible 

 : timesi that a carronade was fired over his very face, and he never 

 heard it. 



arrived at Plymouth, my native town, in great glory, from 

 e I had issued five years before, an obscure youth, and were 

 h.nded by Moody, in full slate, as if we were bullion for the treasury! 

 Happy days! Moody was afterwards drowned, a gallant British 

 seaman. I remember Sir David, hearing us all laughing, put up his 

 head through the hatchway ; he had a red nightcap, which with his 

 pale face, was a picture; but before I could sketch him, he dropped, 

 as if shot, below, nor did we see hiin after! 



Cunningham says, he visited the Haydons, the Eastlakes, the 

 Northcotes. Nonsense! He was my guest at my father's for a month; 

 I introduced him to the Eastlakes. The author calls Sir William 

 Elford, Sir Richard, but that is nothing. Wilkie made beautiful 

 drawings of my father and my sister — Cunningham says, it was only 

 of ray sister, but that is nothing. 



It is a curious instance of Wilkie's caution — I never knew he kept 

 a journal, and he told my sister he did not. I have travelled with 

 him, lived with him on the most intimate terms one man could live 

 with another — he saw me at Paris put down my thoughts on art every 

 night before going to rest. Wilkie told me he did not see its use, 

 and after shaking hands and wishing me good night, must have gone 



to his own bed room, and done what I did not do, put down his re- 

 marks on me, and kept his journal of what his friends said or did. 



It is extraordinary, also, to see how completely he agreed with me 

 on the nature and evil of modern colour. He sneers, in his letters, at 

 the pink and raw reds and yellows of the season — he asks what co- 

 lour is the go for the spring? Page 300, vol. IF, when speaking of 

 Titian's superb Pietro Martyre — "this being the day on which the 

 exhibition opens, one can scarcely view this great work but in con- 

 trast, being almost an example of all thai is the object of an artist to 

 avoid when fainting for that arena." 310 — "One year is very like 

 another at Somerset House ! What Sir Joshua wrote and Sir George 

 talked /vas right — and I am not now to be talked out of it." Again — 

 "With us, you know, every young exhibitor, with pink, white, and 

 blue, thinks himself a colourist like Titian." " I saw at Florence his 

 Venus, his flesh (O ! how my friends would stare) is a simple tint, 

 . n'liik wet." 447 — "Reynolds' portrait at Florence has never 

 cracked, and has never been varnished." At vol. HI, page 12 — "I 

 painted up at once, a custom quite denied in modem art." Would any 

 believe that I have painted up at once all my life while wet — that I 

 had preached this doctrine to Wilkie all my life — that he did it at 

 first, gave it up, then went abroad, began it again, and talks of it as a 

 discovery ! Thus, after going to Italy, he comes to the same conclu- 

 sions as Sir Joshua, Sir George, and Gainsborough, on the evil of want 

 of tone. 



To conclude as I began, on the exaggerations of this life ; the au- 

 thor says, page 484, vo 1 . III, the artists gave Wilkie a dinner in 1806, 

 in honour of the Politicians — that one of the set made a speech, and 

 said "let us do honour to genius, but before, we must honour justice ; 

 and can justice be honoured, while England groans from side to side ? 

 I give the toast which will set all right, ' a full, free reform of the 

 House of Commons.' ' Ah, but very moderate,' said Wilkie, and emp- 

 tied his glass. It was long remembered in Wilkie's protest." What 

 are the facts? as follows: First, no dinner was given to Wilkie in 

 honour of the Politicians' fame. It was in 181V) this was said, and 

 , it my table, when John Scott, Mr. Otley, and Wilkie dined 

 with m>', and when all were in high glee ; John Scott said, " let us drior 

 Reform." Wilkie said, "No, no — I mustn't ;' we appealed to his 

 courtesy, and Otley filled Wilkie's glass; he drank his wine to the 

 dregs, and "success to Reform;" but frightened out of his life, turned 

 roun!, and in a subdued tone said, "Very moderate, remember." 

 We plagued him the whole night; and Otley threatened to write 

 to the ministers, which put him in perfect horror. It was all joyous 

 fun, knowing the man. This is the way lives are written, and facts 

 perverted — speeches invented, and absurdities told. 



With all these careless inaccuracies, which could have been all 

 remedied by proper inquiry and revision, and which the author would 

 have done had his life been spared, it is a most interesting life and 

 ought to sell well. It has occurred to me as a curious question, why 

 Vasari's lives are sold throughout Europe better than any other 

 painter's lives, and the reason is, they are not exclusively professional, 

 though a whole code of technical practice can be ascertained from his 

 occasional technical allusions, both on fresco and oil, execution and 

 cartoons; but I will venture to say if these utilities had been their 

 only merit, they would have lain unread, except by artists all over the 

 world. Not so Vasari; he had more sense. Every man can read his 

 lives and be amused, because he mixes up all the vices, virtues, 

 follies, and tricks, characteristic of each artist. We know Michel 

 Angelo, and Raphael, and Juieo Romano, and Titian, as well as if we 

 had lived with them; he tells us all sorts of anecdotes of their private 

 lives. Fuzeli used to say to me, "What have we to do with their 

 private lives?" I used to reply, "Every thing." It is these touches 

 of human character in every painter, the humour of Buffalmacco — the 

 violent temper of Michel Angelo — the suavity of Raphael — that 

 interests the unprofessional man, the general reader, and have kept 

 Vasari the very Bible of painting, and ever will. Whereas in the 

 lives of Fuzeli, Laurence, Reynolds, and Wilkie, each in succession, 

 is but a dry detail of professional correspondence, from which one 

 retires harassed, disgusted, and sick; and after being published by a 



