society as well as admired for his artistic | sin, did everything for, deception, and nothskill. Caring more for his art than for ing for the sake or love of what they painted. wealth, he grudged no labor in order to do Moreover, Claude displayed "the industry his very best on every occasion. Too sim- and intelligence of a Sèvres china painter." ple in his tastes to have need of riches, he He was totally "ignorant of the laws of perwas most liberal with his purse to those of spective." "Perhaps he is the best instance his relations who had not been either fortu- of the want of imagination nearly total." nate or successful in the world. He died in "There was a foolish elegance in Claude, his eighty-second year, the possessor of and a dull dignity in Gaspar, but then their only ten thousand scudi (a little more than works resembled nothing that ever existed £2,000), which, along with his drawings, he in the world." As the conclusion to these bequeathed to his three nephews. Such sweeping and baseless assertions, we may was the admirable career of Claude Lor- add this injunction: "The artificial Claude raine, in whom Europe has long recognized and Gaspar work may be cast aside out of the most perfect landscape-painter that the our way.' world has seen. This is the artist who in several things is altogether peerless, whom hosts have tried to imitate, but whom none has ever excelled. This is he who, according to Mr. Thornbury, was the "special predecessor and enemy" of Turner. (Vol. i. p. 37.) Finally, this is the Claude whom Mr. Ruskin has wasted much of his time in the vain attempt to defame and degrade, for no other apparent reason save the silly expectation that the lower Claude can be ranked, the higher must Turner be estimated.

*

Evidently there is little hope for Claude, if the half of these utterances be true, in which case those who have been accustomed to recognize in him a great master, as well as have taken delight in the contemplation of his works, will deserve our contemptuous pity. It is not our intention to undertake the defence of the "principal master of Turner," because Mr. Ruskin has spared us that trouble.

We need not enlarge on the importance of the admissions made by a prejudiced obIt is by no means a digression to introduce server. His praise is always enhanced in a discussion respecting the merits of Claude. value when extorted by genuine and overThe man whom Mr. Thornbury thinks fit, whelming excellence that can neither be defor reasons which we cannot fathom, to style nied nor explained away. The great merit, the "special enemy" of Turner, should not then, which Mr. Ruskin allows to Claude be passed over unnoticed in an estimate of without any qualification, is his having "set the rank of the latter as an artist. Even the sun in heaven."† For this, he says, were it otherwise, it is impossible to forbear" we are perhaps hardly enough grateful, referring to one who, in the opinion of Turner's most able and unscrupulous eulogist, was his "principal master." Previously, however, to our recounting Claude's faults, let us see what are Mr. Ruskin's feelings towards him. He has frankly avowed them in the following words: "If I have such a thing as a prejudice at all (and, although I do not myself think I have, people certainly say so), it is against Claude."+ Keeping in mind this avowal, it should not surprise us to find that "Claude's pictures are one mass of error from beginning to end." (Vol. i. p. 75.) This is certainly very unfortunate, but it does not lay that artist open to censure in the same way as the next charge would do if it were substantiated, and which is, that he, as well as Cuyp and Gaspar Pous"Modern Painters," vol. iii. 325.

↑ "Modern Painters," Appendix, vol. iii. p. 342.

owing to the very frequency of our afterenjoyment of it." We gladly coincide with him, but should have preferred had he spoken in the singular in place of in the plural number; the ingratitude having been manifested by himself alone. Again, Claude "gives the first example of the study of nature for her own sake." This is merely a truism; but what makes it interesting is the discrepancy between it and the statement that the same painter did "everything for deception, and nothing for the sake or love of what he painted." We are more puzzled than ever when we meet with statements like these. "A perfectly genuine and untouched sky of Claude is, indeed, almost perfect, and beyond all praise, in all qualities of air." "The

Ibid., vol. i. p. 157; 813; vol. ii. p. 151; vol. iii. p. 332-3. † Ibid., vol. i. p. 87-8; 205; 340.

1

seas of Claude are the finest pieces of water- to decide as to the character of a speech. painting in ancient art." "The foliage of Claude in his middle distance is the finest and truest part of his pictures, and, on the whole, affords the best example of good drawing to be found in ancient art." And yet we are told that the works of this artist, who painted such sky, seas, and foliage, resembled "nothing that ever existed in the world," and that "the artificial Claude work may be cast aside out of the way!

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with their predecessors and contemporaries man's work." It might have been as well only, but with those who lived before, along had Mr. Ruskin told us how often he heard with, and after them. Posterity alone stands Turner praise the works of others; for if he on a vantage-ground sufficiently high for seldom, or never, bestowed praise, it can making the comparison. "Fame," as Sir hardly be claimed as a virtue his withholdGeorge Mackenzie has it, "is a revenue ing censure. Our chief reason for assigning payable only to our ghosts," and the patent no weight to what Mr. Ruskin says on this of nobility which a great master" earns in head is, that it is in direct contradiction to his lifetime can only be deposited on his other testimony as valuable as his. Here is tombstone, because it is not till long after what the Rev. Mr. Trimmer, who knew him his death that posterity becomes invesetd for forty years, is constrained to own: "I with the sovereign powers essential for be- think he hardly did justice to his brother stowing it. If this be true, can we rank landscape-painters, most of whom, I fear, he Turner with the "great masters," even did considered beneath criticism." we believe that he deserved that eminence? We prefer the humbler part of recognizing in him a marvellous painter, and of admiring his works, while refraining from petulantly demanding immortality for his name, or dogmatically asserting that his pictures are perfect.

But we have both the power and the right to pronounce judgment on his life and character, aad it is with sorrow that, deciding in accordance with the evidence furnished by his biographer, we must affirm there is little which is admirable in the one or fascinating in the other. He was a man of narrow intellect and coarse tastes. It is doubtful whether a better education and more favorable circumstances would have served to expand his contracted mind and soften his rude disposition. Nature had been bountiful to him in many things, but had withheld others from him which no teaching or training could bestow. Those who owe their knowledge of him to the beautiful fictions of Mr. Ruskin will think this a harsh, if not an erroneous statement. They may ask of us why we do not recognize one trait in his character which at least merits unstinted commendation-his entire freedom from jealousy and spite. If such were the fact, we should gladly give full weight to it. But are we warranted in accepting the unsupported testimony of Mr. Ruskin on this or any other point? We think not, and here is our reason. First, however, let us give one out of many passages in which Mr. Ruskin affirms this. "I knew him for ten years, and during that time had much familiar intercourse with him. I never once heard him say an unkind thing of a brother artist, and I never once heard him find a fault with another LIVING AGE. 870

THIRD SERIES.

It would be hard to find in the annals of painting an artist whose path in life was easier, and whose career was more prosperous than Turner's. From first to last he enjoyed public favor and patronage to a degree altogether unequalled. He was, indeed, one of Fortune's spoilt children. It is true he was dissatisfied with his lot. He fancied himself unappreciated by the general public and malignantly persecuted by the critics. The offence of the public consisted in confessing itself unable to see something to admire in all his works. We cannot believe that he would have been contented with anything but a public made up of persons like a Mr. G. Story, who is referred to by Mr. Thornbury as a rising young artist, and who states that "Turner's 'Jessica' is a roundabout proof that he was a great man; for it seems to me that none but a great painter dare have painted anything so bad." (Vol. ii. p. 14.) Neither hearty praise nor wholesome fault-finding could be tolerated by an artist who would acknowledge no mistake and brook no rival. Surely he could have afforded to be indifferent alike to public apathy and critical carping! A man so shrewd as Turner ought to have known that neither the eulogy nor the censure of contemporaries can make a work immortal, or hinder its becoming so. Assuredly it would have been better for his peace of mind had he held an opinion like that expressed by Pope in a letter to Martha Blount: "I think no man deserves a monument that could not be wrapped up in a winding-sheet of papers writ against him."

Only one thing occurred during his lifetime which seriously injured him in public

* Lectures on Architecture and Painting, p. 182.

estimation, the foolish attempt of Mr. Rus- sulted his memory? He may be incapable

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of doing more than manufacturing a book; but surely we have a right to demand that a bookmaker by trade should have mastered his craft. Good writing we need not expect from Mr. Thornbury; correct writing we shall not get, whether we expect it or not; it is, however, a shameful and unpardonable dereliction of duty in this biographer to have misused, as he has not scrupled to do, the materials entrusted to him by the painter's executors and friends. On their behalf we protest against the slovenly manner in which their communications have been huddled together without regard to chronological or methodical arrangement. As critics, we denounce the inaccurate manner in which quotations from printed books are given, the recklessness with which dates are trifled with, the way in which differing and contradictory versions of the same story are repeated without either apology or explanation. Justice requires us to add that the criticisms on Turner's paintings are not always open to the same censure as the other portions of these volumes. Many of the critical remarks are incorrect and misleading; still, they are forcibly worded and

kin to make him act at once as the apostle of Nature and as a martyr for the sake of Art. Nor was it less ill-judged and reprehensible to aim at elevating his position by assailing the reputation of his contemporaries. Whatever they did badly, he did well; whatever they had failed in performing, he had done to perfection. This was wrong; but what rendered it the more blameworthy was, that for those whom he disliked and those whom he loved, Mr. Ruskin had two weights and two measures. In elevating Turner to the level of Shakspeare and Bacon, he overlooked the obvious truth, that if such were his rank, if he had really performed something more unprecedented than either of them, if, while Shakspeare only did perfectly what Æschylus had done partially, and Bacon what Aristotle had attempted, none before Turner had lifted the veil from the face of Nature," then no advocacy or demonstration was required to elevate him to that rank, as men could not fail to acknowledge what was so evident. Mr. Ruskin forgot, also, that the depreciation of others could not enhance his hero's greatness, any more than it could make us love and study Shakspeare more were it to be beautifully expressed. But for this Mr. demonstrated that there was not a particle of genius in Marlowe. Much, however, as we regret the mistaken course pursued by Mr. Ruskin, sincerely as we deplore that he should have so wantonly and grossly misemployed his splendid talents, we should never dream of going so far as to affirm that not only had he committed a blunder, but is chargeable with something very like a crime. He tells us in his "Lectures on Architecture and Painting," that Turner was "hunted to his grave by the malignities of small critics and the jealousies of hopeless rivalry." Mr. Thornbury gives us a very different tale, and his statement contains, at least, as much truth as most of Mr. Ruskin's own assertions. "I have heard people, friends of Turner, assert that Mr. Ruskin's book killed him, by increasing his fame, leading him more into society, and so altering his food, his hours, and his habits." (Vol. ii. p. 264.) We leave to Mr. Thornbury the task of defending himself for having gravely advanced so heinous a charge. But what shall we say of his conduct in having, under the pretence of writing Turner's life, basely in

Thornbury cannot claim any merit, since these criticisms are borrowed from Mr. Ruskin. Indeed, were the pages extracted from that gentleman's writings struck out, these volumes would lose much of their bulk and nearly all their interest. The nature of the author's own criticisms may be gathered from the following brief one, which is a fair specimen of the rest. Concerning the painter's "Field of Waterloo," he says it is "a muddle of sublimity, a perfect fricassee of ill-drawn lumps of figures, yet sublimely lurid in general effect." (Vol. ii. p. 300.) Here is a sample of how he estimates the painter's genius, which, according to this estimate, must have been peculiar and somewhat aerial. The language employed is applicable to no man, unless it be the husband of Queen Mab: "Turner had a profound sense of the tragic. The beautiful and the terrible were both at his command. His shipwrecks are full of terror, and from these he can pass away into sunshine, or leap up in a rainbow, and so scale heaven." (Vol. i. p. 234.)

Can our account of this work be wholly

untrue, and our condemnation unmerited? which at one time nothing could harm or If not, why should it find favor in the eyes of any critic? Is it possible that a man could indite passages like those quoted in the course of this article, and yet be a praiseworthy author? Incredible as it appears, there are to be found critics who hold up this work as a model, and laud its writer to the skies. One styles it "a clever and highly attractive work; " another is of opinion that "Mr. Thornbury has done his part ably; "† while a third proclaims it to be "a valuable addition to our artistic biography." These discrepancies can be reconciled only by supposing there are beaties and excellencies in these volumes which the unpurged vision of ordinary mortals cannot perceive, some esoteric marvels which the initiated alone are capable of appreciating, and are worthy to celebrate.

affect, had been sapped by disease, and was soon to be stiffened in death. Instead of going to Nature for inspiration, he foolishly and vainly sought for it in the gin-bottle. Under these circumstances, we cannot be surprised that it was often a matter of doubt as to which side of his pictures should be suspended uppermost. Sometimes, indeed, there were good reasons for conjecturing that he had forwarded his palette set with colors by mistake for a picture. To such works the closest parallels we have ever met with are the two volumes containing his biography. Open them where we may, we shall never catch their author indulging for two consecutive pages in sensible and coherent narrative. Whether they are read forwards or backwards, we get only a blurred, indistinct, and untrustworthy impression of him whose story they profess to narrate. We close them with a feeling of relief sim

Perhaps it may comfort this biographer to be told that in one respect he resembles his hero. When the painter's years were draw-ilar to what we experience on awakening out ing to an end, when his eagle eye had become dim and his wondrous hand lost its cunning, when his memory had begun to prove treacherous, and his reason was tottering on its throne, instead of relinquishing his brush, he continued to paint and exhibit new pictures at the Royal Academy. These were not merely daubs, but they had no meaning. It seemed, indeed, as if, like Lycophron, who wrote his "Prophecy of Cassandra" with the intent that it should be incomprehensible, he had striven to perplex as well as astonish his admirers. It was not so. His pictures could not fail being eccentric and unintelligible, mere caricatures of his earlier ones, seeing that he was but the wreck of his former self. He had irreparably impaired his splendid faculties by deplorable excesses, and the powerful frame,

*Examiner for 28th December, 1861.
Daily News for 18th November, 1861.
Spectator for 23d November, 1861.

of a nightmare, or returning to consciousness after a fever. Thus, what Turner unwittingly did in his dotage, Mr. Thornbury cannot excel in the fulness and vigor of his powers. That this catchpenny-book should have taken him four years to compile, is only less puzzling than that he has had the hardihood to put his name on the title-page, and has succeeded in persuading publishers of respectability to give it to the world. Our readers may marvel still more at our having given it so much attention. We shall be sorry to incur their displeasure, and are very loth to merit their censure. It must be owned, however, that we shall have great difficulty in exculpating ourselves satisfactorily, should they borrow the words of Robert Hall, and ask, with pardonable indignation, why conduct so trumpery a performance "to the land of forgetfulness with the pomp of criticism "?

THE greatest triumph of English alliteration, according to the London Quarterly, is the following line, composed by a young lady in the

A CHINESE dictionary in ninety-five volumes has just been purchased for the Imperial Library, Paris, from Dr. Bassilliewski, formerly attached to the Russian Legation at Pekin. It is said to comprise all the compound expressions year 1860, on the occasion of a gentleman in the Chinese language, accompanied by an planting a lane with lilacs : immense number of illustrations, drawn from works historic, philosophic, and poetic.

"Let lovely lilacs line Lee's lonely lane."