proximate cause of his fatal malady. His nerves became deeply affected, and a rapid decline ensued, which in four months prostrated his strength to the tomb. His latest effort was to travel from Paris to London, where he arrived about the middle of September; but all medical aid was in vain; and he died at ten o'clock, on the 23d of September, 1828. His closing hours were perfectly calm; and he was in full possession of his reason almost to the end.

Mr. Bonington's remains were deposited in the vault at St. James's, Pentonville, on the 29th of September. Mr. Ruell (the curate to the chapel) performing the service, and the Rev. T. J. Judkin attending in his full dress as a friend. Sir Thomas Lawrence and Mr. Howard appeared as the representatives of the Royal Academy, and Mr. Robson and Mr. Pugin as the representatives of the Society of Painters in Water Colours. His other friends, to the number of thirty, paid their last tribute of respect to his memory.

The foregoing short but interesting account of Mr. Bonington is from the Literary Gazette. In Le Globe, a Parisian journal principally devoted to literature and the fine arts, there appeared, subsequently to Mr. Bonington's death, a biographical notice of him, from which the following liberal passages have been extracted:

"Bonington was very young when he came to Paris. His vocation for the arts was decided from his infancy; but his taste for them did not manifest itself in any childish fondness for shapeless scrawls. The little scenes which he designed, without any principles, indicated great intelligence; he imitated with ease and spirit; and learnt to see without any master's having directed his talent.

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When, having exercised his hand according to the principles which are first taught, he acquired the power of embodying his conceptions, it became evident what he would one day be. His brilliant and striking compositions were the ad

miration of the school. The contemporaries of Bonington foresaw that he would not servilely follow, in the train of a professor, any system, whatever it might be; and that he was not born to copy any one, but to create, by imitating nature. At sixteen years of age, he had already deserved that the chief of the school, to whose lessons he did not very attentively listen, should reproach him for his want of submission to the precepts of picturesque rhetoric.

“Bonington had quitted the beaten track: he walked, at his own risk and peril, in paths which he traced for himself in advancing. He could no more feel and express himself like Girodet, Guérin, Gérard, or Gros, than Victor Hugo could feel and express himself like the Abbé Delille, Fontanes, or M. Parseval Grandmaison. His spirit was independent, and revolted at routines. He escaped from them by removing from the school where genius is taught as the art of putting a figure together, and where the rudiments of old compositions are sacred. When he had studied the living model at the Academy sufficiently to draw the figure correctly, he left it.

*

*

"It was not to the representation of the great events of history that Bonington applied his talents: he confined himself to paint familiar scenes, and to represent the effects of light on an extensive country, or on the ocean. Of a pensive character, he was affected by the sight of an agitated sea; and whatever there is of poetry in the varied appearances of that imposing spectacle, powerfully animated and tinged his works. The studies and pictures which he produced at twenty years of age, when, liberating himself from the yoke, he went to the western coast to give himself up to his own imagination, are highly entitled to the esteem of amateurs. The colourist is recognised in them, not by the exaggeration of tones, or af fected opposition of light and shade, deemed necessary by certain artists who have parodied the English system, but by a harmony and a simplicity full of truth and taste. * "Broad in his handling, he perhaps pushed that quality to

excess.

His figures, so beautiful in their design and action,

are sometimes too vague in their details. Their colour is charming; but the impasting of the touch does not correspond with the proportions of the heads and the members. This defect, to which, however, too much importance ought not to be attached, is especially apparent in that picture of Bonington's which represents a View on the Grand Canal at Venice.'* This work is in other respects a very fine thing; I even believe that it is the piece the most completely characteristic of the talent of the author. It has been said to resemble a Canaletti. Certain it is that Bonington studied that as well as all other masters, much in Italy; and that most of his pictures are a little tinctured by his predilection for them; but the resemblance which exists between his View on the Grand Canal at Venice' and Canaletti's pictures, is only in the subject. Canaletti has a precision which Bonington did not try to attain; he is a colourist, but not like the young Englishman, whose tone is not only brilliant but poetical. Thus, like almost all the young Anglo-Venetians of our school of romantic painting, Bonington imparted to many of his works that tint of age which renders the productions of the old masters very respectable; but which, departing from nature, is surprising in a painter who has always sought truth.

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Bonington tried all styles, except that which is called historical. What he had intended to do, was to borrow from the middle ages subjects for a series of easel pictures, in which he was desirous of combining and showing the value of the finish of the Dutch, the vigour of the Venetians, and the

"We are diame

We well remem

* In a note on this passage, the " Literary Gazette " says: trically opposed in opinion to the French critic on this point. ber the picture in question, which was exhibited in the early part of the present year (1828) at the British Gallery ; and we also well remember being singularly struck by the broad, spirited, and intelligent handling of the figures. They reminded us strongly of the exquisite boar-hunting, or baiting, by Velasquez, which hung on the same wall, and nearly in the same place, five or six years before. The following is a part of the notice of Mr. Bonnington's picture which appeared in the Literary Gazette' of the 9th of February: The execution is masterly; not only in the buildings, water, &c. but also in the figures, which are numerous, and to which, by a few bold and well-placed touches, Mr. Bonington has given a character and an expression rarely to be seen in the productions of this branch of the arts."

magic of the English. How deeply it is to be regretted that death struck him ere he could put such a plan into execution! He succeeded equally in marine subjects, in architecture, in landscape, and in interiors. Whether he disported with the crayon (so despised since Latour, but the credit of which he re-established), painted in oil or water-colours, or handled the lithographic chalk or pen, he did remarkable things. Watercolours have not been much esteemed in France for twenty years; Bonington revived them, united them to aquarelle, and produced that admirable picture, The Tomb of Saint Omer,' which may, in point of finishing, solidity of tone, and force of effect, compete with Granet's firmest works. The beautiful

6

Picturesque Journey,' by Messrs. Taylor, Nodier, and Cailleaux, and a separate collection published by our young artist, attest his superiority as the draughtsman of romantic ruins. That which ought not to have happened, happened, The Fragments,' into which Bonington had thrown all the originality of his genius, met with but moderate success. The amateurs did not understand those delightful drawings; but the reception which they experienced from the artists, consoled Bonington for the bad taste of the public, and for the pecuniary loss which he sustained in consequence.

"M. Gross, who, on what was, probably, a very frivolous pretext, had shut his attelier against Bonington, eventually did him justice. He recalled him; and, in the presence of all his pupils, who were enchanted with the success their comrade, had achieved, praised his fine talents, which no one had directed, and begged that he would have the goodness to become one of the ornaments of his school.

'Bonington was tall, and appeared to be strongly built ; and there was nothing in him which could excite suspicions of consumption. A brain fever was the prelude of the malady of which he died, in the arms of several friends whom he had made in London by his kindness and good-will. His countenance was truly English; no other expression than that of melancholy gave it character. The new school of painting has lost in him one of its most illustrious supporters."

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No. XVII.

THE REV. WILLIAM COXE,

ARCHDEACON OF WILTS,

FEW writers of the present age have conferred more important and lasting obligations on English literature than the venerable person who is the subject of the following Memoir. His biographical works, on which his reputation principally rests, are, in effect, contributions to the modern history, not only of this country, but of Europe, derived from sources not accessible to the ordinary historian. The state papers and official correspondence intrusted to him by families of high rank, enabled him to illustrate many important political transactions which were either enveloped in mystery, or disfigured by misrepresentation; and the discretion which he exercised, in regard to those valuable documents, while it justified the confidence reposed in his high integrity, could be equalled only by his indefatigable industry in collecting, and his sound judgment in appreciating, the historical evidence existing in records of a more public nature. These qualities, alike apparent in the earliest and in the latest of his principal compositions, gained him a distinguished name among his contemporaries, which will descend with increasing lustre to posterity.

Mr. Coxe was the eldest son of Dr. William Coxe, physician to the King's household in London. He was born in Dover Street Piccadilly, on the 7th of March, 1747, O. S.; and in his fifth year was placed under the care of the Rev. Mr. Fountaine, who kept the grammar-school at Mary-leBone. In 1753 he was removed to Eton, and continued his education there under the Rev. Dr. Bernard till 1765; when he was elected to King's College, Cambridge. In 1768 he