eyes (which almost brought them into mine) to a set of apprentice-boys and box-lobby loungers, who neither knew nor cared what a fine performer and a fine gentleman he was thought twenty years ago. Players were so far particularly unfortunate. The theatrical public have a very short memory. Every four or five years there is a new audience, who know nothing but of what they have before their eyes, and who pronounce summarily upon this, without any regard to past obligations or past services, and with whom the veterans of the stage stand a bad chance indeed, as their former triumphs are entirely forgotten while they appear as living vouchers against themselves. "Do you remember,” said Northcote, "Sheridan's beautiful lines on the subject in his 'Monody on Garrick'?" I said I did; and that it was probably the reading them early that had impressed this feeling so strongly on my mind. Northcote then remarked: "I think a great beauty is most to be pitied. She completely outlives herself. She has been used to the most bewitching homage, to have the highest court paid and the most flattering things said to her by all those who approach her, and to be received with looks of delight and surprise wherever she comes; and she afterwards not only finds herself deprived of all this and reduced to a cypher, but she sees it all transferred to another, who has become the reigning toast and beauty of the day in her stead. It must be a most violent shock. It is like a king who is dethroned and reduced to serve as a page in his own palace. I remember once being struck with seeing the Duchess of Devonshire, the same that Sir Joshua painted, and who was a miracle of beauty when she was young, and followed by crowds wherever she went-I was coming out of Mrs. W-'s, and on the landing-place, there was she, standing by herself, and calling over the bannister for her servant to come to her. If she had been as she once was, a

thousand admirers would have flown to her assistance; but her face was painted over like a mask, and there was hardly any appearance of life left but the restless motion of her eyes. I was really hurt." I answered, the late Queen had much the same painful look that he described her face highly rouged, and her eyes rolling in her head like an automaton, but she had not the mortification of having ever been a great beauty. "There was a Miss too," Northcote added, "who was a celebrated beauty when she was a girl, and who also sat to Sir Joshua. I saw her not long ago, and she was grown as coarse and vulgar as possible; she was like an apple-woman, or would do to keep the Three Tuns. The change must be very mortifying. To be sure, there is one thing, it comes on by degrees. The ravages of the smallpox must formerly have been a dreadful blow!" He said, literary men or men of talent in general were the best-off in this respect. The reputation they acquired was not only lasting, but gradually grew stronger if it was deserved. I agreed they were

seldom spoiled by flattery, and had no reason to complain after they were dead. "Nor while they are living," said Northcote, "if it is not their own fault." He mentioned an instance of a trial about an engraving where he, West, and others had to appear, and of the respect that was shown them. Erskine, after flourishing away, made an attempt to puzzle Stothard by drawing two angles on a piece of paper, an acute and an obtuse one, and asking, “Do you mean to say these two are alike ?” "Yes, I do," was the answer. "I see," said Erskine, turning round, "there is nothing to be got by angling here." West was then called upon to give his evidence, and there was immediately a lane made for him to come forward, and a stillness that you could hear a pin drop. The judge (Lord Kenyon) then addressed him: "Sir Benjamin, we shall be glad to hear your opinion.”

Mr. West answered, " He had never received the honour of a title from his Majesty ;" and proceeded to explain the difference between the two engravings which were charged with being copies the one of the other, with such clearness and knowledge of the art, though in general he was a bad speaker, that Lord Kenyon said, when he had done, "I suppose, gentlemen, you are perfectly satisfied. I perceive there is much more in this than I had any idea of, and am sorry I did not make it more my study when I was young." I remarked that I believed corporations of art or letters might meet with a certain attention, but it was the stragglers and candidates that were knocked about with very little ceremony. Talent or merit only wanted a frame of some sort or other to set it off to advantage. Those of my way of thinking were "bitter bad judges" on this point. A Tory scribe who treated mankind as rabble and canaille was regarded by them in return as a fine gentleman: a Reformer like myself, who stood up for liberty and equality, was taken at his word by the very journeymen that set up his paragraphs, and could not get a civil answer from the meanest shopboy in the employ of those on his own side of the question. Northcote laughed, and said I irritated myself too much about such things. He said it was one of Sir Joshua's maxims that the art of life consisted in not being overset by trifles. "We should look at the bottom of the account, not at each individual item in it, and see how the balance stands at

the end of the year. We should be satisfied if the path of life is clear before us, and not fret at the straws or pebbles that lie in our way. What you have to look to is, whether you can get what you write printed and whether the public will read it, and not to busy yourself with the remarks of shopboys or printers' devils. They can do you neither harm nor good. The impertinence of mankind is a thing that no one can guard against."

1

Conversation the Fourteenth.

NORTHCOTE showed me a poem with engravings of Dartmoor, which were too fine by half.1 I said I supposed Dartmoor would look more gay and smiling after having been thus illustrated, like a dull author who has been praised by a reviewer. I had once been nearly benighted there, and was delighted to get to the inn at Ashburton. 66 'That," said Northcote, "is the only good of such places-that you are glad to escape from them, and look back to them with a pleasing horror ever after. Commend me to the Valdarno or Vallambrosa, where you are never weary of new charms, and which you quit with a sigh of regret. I have, however, told my young friend who sent me the poem that he has shown his genius in creating beauties where there were none, and extracting enthusiasm from rocks and quagmires. After that, he may write a very interesting poem on Kamtschatka." He then spoke of the panorama of the North Pole which had been lately exhibited-of the icebergs, the seals lying asleep on the shore, and the strange twilight as well worth seeing. He said it would be curious to know the effect, if they could get to the Pole itself, though it must be impossible: the veins, he should suppose, would burst, and the vessel itself go to pieces from the extreme cold. I asked if he had ever read an account of twelve men who had been left all the winter in Greenland, and of the dreadful shifts to which they were reduced? He said he had not. They were obliged to build two booths of wood, one within the other; and

1 I do not know what work is here intended, unless it be Carrington's Dartmoor, A Descriptive Poem,' with notes by the late W. Burt, Esq., and twelve prints. (Lond. 1826, 18mo.?) There were two editions the same year, in one of which the preface by Burt is omitted. See Davidson's Bibliotheca Devoniensis,' 1852, p. 131. -ED.

if they had to go into the outer one during the severity of the weather, unless they used great precaution, their hands were blistered by whatever they took hold of as if it had been redhot iron. The most interesting part was the account of their waiting for the return of light at the approach of spring, and the delight with which they first saw the sun shining on the tops of the frozen mountains. Northcote said: "This is the great advantage of descriptions of extraordinary situations by uninformed men: Nature, as it were, holds the pen for them; they give you what is most striking in the circumstances, and there is nothing to draw off the attention from the strong and actual impression, so that it is the next thing to the reality. Godwin was here the other day, and I showed him the note from my bookseller about the 'Fables,' with which you were so much pleased, but he saw nothing in it." I then said: "Godwin is not one of those who look attentively at nature or draw much from that source. Yet the rest is but like building castles in the air, if it is not founded in observation and experience. Or it is like the enchanted money in the Arabian Nights,' which turned to dry leaves when you came to make use of it. It is ingenious and amusing, and so far it is well to be amused when you can; but you learn nothing from the fine hypothesis you have been reading, which is only a better sort of dream, bright and vague, and utterly inapplicable to the purposes of common life. Godwin does not appeal to nature, but to art and execution. There is another thing-which it seems harsh and presumptuous to say-but he appears to me not always to perceive the difference between right and wrong. There are many others in the same predicament, though not such splendid examples of it. He is satisfied to make out a plausible case, to give the pros and cons like a lawyer; but he has no instinctive bias or feeling one way or other, except as he can give a studied reason for