Your reason for liking your Paul Veronese (what an impudence to talk so to a man who has just purchased a real Titian!) does not quite disprove my theory. You like the picture because you like the verses you once made upon it: you associate the picture (naturally enough) with them: and so shall I in future, because I like the verses too. But then you ask further, what made you write the verses if you were not moved by the picture imprimis? Why you know the poetic faculty does wonders, as Shakespeare tells us, in imagining the forms of things unseen, etc., and so you made a merit where there was none: and have liked that merit ever since. But I will not disturb you any further in your enjoyment: if you have a vision of your own, why should I undo it?
Yesterday I was busily employed in painting over my Opie, which had suffered by heat, or something of that kind. I borrowed Laurence’s palette and brushes and lay upon the floor two hours patching over and renovating. The picture is really greatly improved, and I am more reconciled to it. It has now to be varnished: and then I hope some fool will be surprised into giving £4 for it, as I did. I have selected an advantageous position for it in a dealer’s shop, just under a rich window that excludes the light.
On second thoughts I shall not send you down my Twilight: but bring it with me. I like it much, and do not repent the purchase. As to the difficulty of bringing down so many pictures, I shall travel by the steamer; which will bear any quantity. The great new purchase, spoken of in yesterday’s letter, will also go with me: it will be insured at a high valuation before it is entrusted to the Deep, of whose treasures I don’t at all wish it to become one. My Titian is a great hit: if not by him, it is as near him as ever was painted. But you would not care six straws for it. The history of the finest theory of colouring lies in those few inches of canvas. But Laurence (who has gone for some days into the country) must see it, and tell me about it. He is so good a judge, that I ought never to talk till I have first heard his verdict.
I was amused at a passage in Clarissa the other day, which gives one some idea of what the average state of the arts was among the gentry of a hundred years ago. Miss Howe, in drawing up a character of her lost Clarissa, says that among other things she had a fine taste for the Pencil: had not time to practise it much, but ‘was an absolute mistress of the “should be,”’ and then proceeds thus: ‘To give a familiar instance for the sake of young Ladies: she (untaught) observed when but a child, that the Sun, Moon, and Stars, never appeared at once: and were therefore never to be in one piece: that bears, tygers, lions, were not natives of an English climate, and should not therefore have a place in an English
landscape: that these ravagers of the forest consorted not with lambs, kids, or fawns: nor kites, hawks, or vultures, with doves, partridges, and pheasants.’ Such was a prodigy in those days. It is easy to sneer at this passage: but whoever has read anything of the Masques, etc., of James’s time, will readily recall what absurdities were brought together, even by the good Scholars of the day: and therefore will not wonder at the imperfect Natural History that was found in young Ladies’ Drawings, and samplers. I remember now to have seen wonderful combinations of phenomena in those samplers which are occasionally to be found hung up in the parlours of Country Inns, and Farm houses.
These letters succeed like the ghosts of Banquo’s progeny before the eyes of Macbeth. Lucky that time itself draws on too close for this letter to ‘hold a glass that shews you many more.’ You did not answer my question about the Gainsboroughs. So I won’t ask you another.
Sonnet on my new Picture.
Oh Twilight! Twilight!!
Rot me, if I am in a poetical humour: I can’t translate the picture into words.