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are usually spent at watering places, where the evils of scanty room are experienced in tenfold aggravation.

Lord Chesterfield, as a kind of supplement to a serious letter he had written in the World in recommendation of Johnson's Dic tionary, then (1754) about to be published, contributes an hu mourous paper concerning newly-coined words in fashionable so ciety. "I assisted," says he, " at the birth of that most signi ficant word flirtation, which dropt from the most beautiful mouth in the world, and which has received the sanction of our most accurate laureat in one of his comedies. I was also a witness to the rise and progress of that most important verb, to fuzz (at cards)." Vast and vastly were then the "fashionable words of the most fashionable people ;" and vastly glad and vastly sorry, vastly great and vastly little, were standing phrases of exaggera tion in the politest companies. They have been succeeded by immense and monstrous, and lastly, by the most vulgar of all, famous, which may be still in existence if it has not been abo lished by the ridicule of a witty female pen. A subsequent pa per, by Mr. Cambridge, treats upon other articles for a neological dictionary. Every age is productive of such terms, some of which become incorporated into common language, while the greater part are only a temporary cant, which sinks into oblivion, and is succeeded by other terms of the like nature. The habitual use of all cants, however, whether high or low, is an infallible token of vulgarity of taste and poverty of expression.

A paper in the World, by Whitehead, complains of the mul titude of romances and novels with which the press overflowed, and which he divides into those "which are above, and those which are below, nature." The latter, or the common novels, appear to have been of a lower cast than the compositions of that description at the present day, and frequently indecent and vicious. If modern novels do not often merit an elevated place in the li terary scale, they rarely offend against morals or decorum.

There are not, in these papers, many notices of literary productions of consequence; perhaps their subjects did not lead to it. The announcement of Johnson's Dictionary has already been mentioned. That writer, in the Rambler, gives a slight critique on English historians, in which the only names are Raleigh, Clarendon, and Knolles. Hooke, however, had at this time published the greater part of his Roman History; and he, Browne, and Akenside, are selected by name in a paper of the Connoisseur, among living authors of eminence. We should now add to the list many more of that period whose works survive; yet the vast additions since made to the mass of standard English literature permit us to conclude, that the national advancement in arts, arms, commerce, and manufactures, during the last half-century,

has

has been attended with a proportional advance in mental improvement, and in the industry and ability of our writers.

I shall be gratified if the preceding remarks prove interesting to your readers, and remain, Sir,

Yours, &c.

J. A.

ART. XV.-On the Spirit proper for a Young Artist,

THE arts are now rising into greater notice every day, and there are not wanting persons who see in them a new sign of national decay. It has ever been the custom of small thinkers, who can. not trace the gradual changes of political feature, to attribute the decline of states to some superficial cause of this sort. They think, like the rigid dissenters, that what is ornamental cannot be useful, and that they have proved you in the high road to destruction, the moment they find you guilty of an accomplishment. But in this, as in all other cases, it is the abuse of the thing, that produces the abuse of the logic. Nothing that is calculated to inspire us with the love of right, can in it's nature be wrong. To contemplate on the canvas the deeds of our ancestors, to cherish taste and the love of virtue in their proper unison, to sit in rooms where we are surrounded with the faces of the wise and good who witness, as it were, our commonest meditations, can only tend to produce in us enlarged and honourable feelings, and to make us individually and therefore nationally good. The per version of art is another matter. Le Brun may have helped the vain-gloriousness of his countrymen by his allegorical flatteries of Louis XIV., and Julio Romano may have assisted the sensuality of his, by his illustrations of the detestable Aretin. But these were vices of the painter, not of the profession, and should teach us, if we would prevent similar perversions of genius, not to begin by abusing the art, but by instilling proper sentiments into the artist.

The young artist then, who has taste and enthusiasm, and would render his profession an honour to himself, must begin by doing as much honour as he can to his profession. By this, I do

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not mean, that he should display any prejudices or make any pas rade on it's account,-that he should exalt it over all other ac quirements and thereby shew his ignorance, or should carry him. self with a pedantic air of satisfaction and thereby betray his insufficiency. I mean that he should acquire as correct an idea as possible of the spirit requisite to make him truly great. To this rend, it is necessary that he should be something more than stu dious, something more than fond of the great poets, nicely observant of nature, and ardent for reputation: it is necessary that he should have a just sense of the characters of his employers, of his own wants, and of the main end of his art-national advance. ment. If he obtain two of these requisites, he will hardly fail of the third, for the great evils he has to avoid, next to indolence and dissipation, are, à courtly notion of patronage, and a worldly notion of personal success: It is a pity, that the lectures of Sir Joshua Reynolds and other professors are so deficient in this respect; they teach the student what is correct and beautiful in art, and thus indeed pursue the main, perhaps the only, end for which they are to mount the rostrum ; but they say nothing of it's moralities, they say nothing of the character which an artist ought to maintain in society, of that dignity and that singleness of mind, which are so useful as well as honourable to the art in their ef fects. In Sir Joshua, these deficiencies perhaps should be no matter of surprise, as it is now pretty well acknowledged, I believe, that he was too much a man of the world and extremely cautious of giving offence to it's feelings. His successors have been men of more independent sentiments, but they have neglected what might have been imagined congenial to their feelings. Perhaps they would have gone to the other extreme, for it is curious enough, that of an art which professes to refine the be haviour and sweeten society, no less than three teachers, since the lectures of Sir Joshua, have been remarkable for rudeness of manners-one of them from misanthropy, another from want of education, and the third from a most disgusting mixture of inso lence and affectation.

It is a common mistake with young artists, as soon as they have taken the brush in their hands, to think that nothing can be done without a patron. If the youth is in a very low rank of society, or in absolute want of bread, patronage of some kind is certainly necessary; but I speak of the generality of students who have parents or other near friends, and are at least enabled to live till they can procure their independence. It may be unpleasant to wait, and it is a laudable feeling not to relish dependence of any kind; they must therefore procure their own subsistence as soon as possible by industry and every proper exer

tion, but let them beware that in pursuing one good feeling, they do not lose sight of a thousand others which a false notion of patronage may set aside; in a word, let them take care how they exchange one kind of dependence for another infinitely more dangerous and humiliating. By too high an idea of patronage, they serve to keep one another in continual alarm, and to obstruct the best part of ambition.-I have no patron, says one despondingly; I am neglected, I shall never get on.-I have a patron, says an other proudly; I am properly appreciated, my fortune and fame are secure. These reasonings are equally bad, and injure the true feeling of art, by depraving the moral feeling. By degrees, want of patronage comes to be regarded as synonymous with want of talent, and of course, the possession of the one as a proof of the other; or if not, ambition is turned out of it's proper course; envy and craft succeed to emulation and fair endeavour; and a society of artists, which ought to be an assembly of placid and friendly men, conscious of their powers and social utility, becomes a throng of jealous adversaries, annoying and obstructing each other at every step, and relying for success, not upon their talents for art, but upon their turn for intrigue.

It is by no means my intention to say that an artist should have no patrons. Nobody would deny the mutual blessings of respect and reward to men of taste and desert. But care should be taken, that the patron is properly won, and that the artist does not confound individual interest with the claims of the public-in a word, that he does not degenerate from a man of enlarged mind into a courtier. If he has an early demand for his pictures, so much the better, provided those who buy them are good judges: if certain persons of rank or riches shew a value for him all his life, nothing can be more pleasant, provided they va. lue him for what he does, and not for what they can make him do. But the great patrons to whom he should look up, are the public, -society at large,-posterity.

A young artist is introduced, perhaps, to his patron's table; he touches wealth and title with his elbows; and he is honoured, if not with much attention from the company, with good dishes and excellent wine. His patron is a good-natured and well-meaning man, and probably has some taste though he talks a great deal about it; our young stranger listens to what is said, perhaps tacitly acquiesces in every thing out of politeness, or bashfulness, or a false notion of gratitude; but there is great danger that if he think too little of himself on these occasions, his pa. tron will look on him in a light still less and at the same time learn to think too much of himself. By degrees the patron feels and demands a kind of claim upon the practical as well as theoretical acquiescence

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acquiescence of his protegee, for the power of wealth over genius is in general too flattering to it's possessor not to be abused, and there is no homage greater or more dangerous than that which in tellect pays to superficiality. By degrees also, the other has learnt a habit of yielding; he gives into any opinion that chances to be that of the great world, whether of men, of manners, or of politics; and at last becomes a mere slave to his inferiors, a diner and a ready laugher, a cringing taker of snuff and of insults. If matters do not reach this extreme,-if the young artist is too full of his books and his better ambition to agree with the frivolity about him, if he becomes tired with sayings that teach him nothing and with jests that cannot amuse his fancy, there is still danger that the contrast of his own unadorned solitude with the glitter and luxury into which he is drawn, may enter too much into his views of success, and that he may render the better part of his labours subservient to the worse. If this do not take away enough of his spirit to make him cringing, it will take away enough to make him insincere. A bishop never preaches against war, and an artist in high life is equally cautious how he offends the passions of his employers. He will become a courtier, so much the more dangerous as he is more pleasing he will add to the follies of high life by giving them the grace, if not of his practice, of his presence and acquiescence; and his habits will not only injure the tone of his thinking and consequently the strength of his genius, but they will degrade his character in the sight of wise men, and most assuredly injure it with future ages. The ill effects of too intimate an acquaintance with the great have been observable in the prostitution of every kind of genius, The poets, in particular, dealing like the painters in an art which can be rendered as seductive to vice as to virtue, have found it a fatal obstruction to their better thoughts and reputation. If Boileau had not been a courtier, he would not have written the worst of all odes :-if Virgil and Horace had not been courtiers, they would have saved half their moral character with posterity; and Dryden, in like manner, would have been preserved from the infamy of calling Charles II., "pious," "forgiving," and the best of kings." As to philosophers, they have nothing tọ do but to fly altogether from the splendour of courts. Shade, not sunshine, is necessary to their laurels. In the palace at Berlin, Voltaire was a man of wit, was a chamberlain, was an eater of ragouts, was a miserable squabbler, was a slave; it was at home only, that he was a philosopher. Painters, the nature of whose engagements hinders them from enjoying the seclusion of the literary, must for that reason be still more cautious how they lose the bloom of their character,-how they give into com

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