But there is nothing classical or imitative about his 'Review at Portsmouth' Sketch-Book of this year with its innumerable sketches of shipping, and its usual stumbling scraps of verse such as—

'The floating bulwark lies
Above (?) the holy cross unfurled (?)
Blowing ... shows the saviour of the world
Hence gloomy evil infamy's.'

In 1814, as I have said in Chapter XIX., the first seven parts of The Southern Coast were published, and in this year Turner appears as an author with ill-success. He had attempted to describe 'St. Michael's Mount' for The Southern Coast, and Combe, the editor to whom Turner's description had been sent, writes thus to Cooke, the publisher:—

Friday afternoon.

My Dear Sir,—I am really concerned to be obliged to say that Mr. T——'s account is the most extraordinary composition I have ever read. It is impossible for me to correct it, for in some parts I do not understand it. The punctuation is everywhere defective, and here I have done what I could, and have sent the proof to Mr. Bulmer. I think the revise should be sent to Mr. T——, to request his attention to the whole, and particularly the part that I have marked as unintelligible. In my private opinion, it is scarcely an admissible article in its present state; but as he has signed his name to it, he will be liable to the sole blame for its imperfections.—Your faithful humble servant,

w. c.'

Cooke suppressed Turner's composition; but Combe, evidently knowing his man, told Cooke that unless he wished to drive Turner 'stark staring mad' he must be sure to send him corrected sheets of the suppressed article. The end was that Turner's contribution was cancelled. In 1827 all connection between Cooke and Turner was broken off. Turner was clearly in the wrong. How could anybody work with this genius? 'His mind,' says Hamerton, 'was subject to confused changes and irregularities about all transactions, owing to its want of method and clearness.' The Freemasons' Hall affair between Turner and Cooke must have been amusing to some, painful to others. 'It was,' says Thornbury, 'a dispute about the return of some drawings (I think of the Annual Tour) that both claimed. Turner's red face grew white with the depth of his rage, Cooke grew hot and red, and "must," "shan't," "shall," "rogue" flew about.'

In this year Turner bought Solus Lodge, later called Sandycombe Lodge, on the road between Twickenham and Isleworth. There his old father used to dig in the garden, and look after the household, and there Turner spent probably some of the happiest days of his life. He was friendly with the Trimmer family of Heston, four miles off, and the Vicar, the Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, tried to teach Turner Greek in return for lessons in painting, but he could never overcome the difficulty of the verbs, and finally had to renounce the attempt. 'I fear I must give it up, Trimmer,' he said; 'you get on better with your painting than I with my Greek.' The young Trimmers, who were living when Thornbury wrote his Life of Turner, describe him as a slovenly old man (he was still far off fifty), very sociable and wont to make them laugh. The days must have passed pleasantly at Sandycombe, sketching in oils on a large canvas in a boat, painting in the summer-house of the garden which ran down to the Thames, fishing, and driving old 'Crop-ear' about the country. The young Trimmers give a much pleasanter picture of Turner than most of his friends and contemporaries, but then they loved him. They describe Queen Anne Street as homely, and say that when they visited him they were always welcome to what he had, and that he would offer them cake and wine, and stuff the cake into their pockets. And they show Turner in modest mood before the work of other painters, telling how he spoke with rapture of a picture probably by Poussin, 'Jonah cast on Shore,' describing it as wonderful; and how he was enthusiastic about Gainsborough's execution, and Wilson's tone. And how, one day, looking at a Van de Velde, Turner said, 'I can't paint like him.'

But he could. Van de Velde is to-day in the trough of his own dark seas, and Turner is on the crest of his own opalescent waves beneath a sky flushed with his dreams of colour.