ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS 15 



Wilkie, at his best, than to Meissonnier, to whom I 

 have compared him. 



It now only remains for me to correct a mistaken 

 impression regarding the artist's life, and I close this 

 voluminous scroll. If there are any ladies or gentlemen 

 present who have attempted to study Good's career, 

 they must, I think, have been sui-prised by this extra- 

 ordinary fact : — that, though he lived on until 1872, from 

 the year 1833, when he was in the prime of his powers, 

 he ceased to work as an artist. The reasons hitherto 

 assigned for this puzzling course on his part have been, 

 first, the lack of appreciation shown by the public for 

 his work : secondly, the fact that in a pecuniary sense 

 he had from other sources become independent. Now 

 I think that either of these reasons would have been 

 derogatory, if not to the man, at least to the artist. 

 But it so happens that neither of these reasons is the 

 true one ; for I have the best authority for stating that 

 his retirement — which all who care for art, and especially 

 all who care for Border art, have the deepest reason to 

 deplore — was due solely to the state of his health. He 

 was a sufferer in fact from head-pains, which must 

 necessarily have been aggravated by application to his art : 

 hence his abandonment of it. 



From 1833 onward, he lived a somewhat sequestered life 

 in his house on the Quay Walls, giving much of his time 

 to his favourite pursuit of boat-sailing, which he would 

 practise in a small centre-board boat of his own, in 

 company of a superannuated tar. He is described, by 

 one who knew him well, as a man of amiable disposition 

 and exemplary life, given to acts of unostentatious charity, 

 and acknowledging spiritual benefit received from the 

 Wesleyan connection, to which at his death I believe 

 he bequeathed money. Dying in the eighty-third year 

 of his age, he seems already to have survived his 

 reputation ; for the obituary notice in the local newspaper 

 U of the scantiest, least appreciative, kind. Contrast 



