If Thorwaldsen had done nothing else, "The Lion" would be monument enough. We remember William Cullen Bryant, like Dante Gabriel Rossetti, for one poem; Poe for three. Thoreau wrote only one essay the world will cherish; and "keeping Ruskin's 'Sesame and Lilies' and 'The Golden River,' we can let the rest go," says Augustine Birrell.
Thorwaldsen paid the penalty of success. He should have tasted exile, poverty and heartbreak—not to have known these was his misfortune. And perhaps his best work lay in keeping alive the classic tradition; in educating whole nations to a taste for sculpture; in turning the attention of society from strife to art, from war to harmony. His were the serene successes of beauty, the triumphs of peace.
GAINSBOROUGH
If ever this nation should produce a genius sufficient to acquire to us the honorable distinction of an English School, the name of Gainsborough will be transmitted to posterity, in this history of art, among the very first of that rising name. —Sir Joshua Reynolds
[Illustration: Gainsborough]
Most biographies are written with intent either to make the man a demigod or else to damn him as a rogue who has hoodwinked the world. Of the first-mentioned class, Weems' "Life of Washington" must ever stand as the true type. The author is so fearful that he will not think well of his subject that he conceals every attribute of our common humanity, and gives us a being almost devoid of eyes, ears, organs, dimensions, passions. Next to Weems, in point of literary atrocity, comes John S. C. Abbott, whose life of Napoleon is a splendid concealment of the man.
Of those who have written biographies for the sake of belittling their subject, John Gait's "Life of Byron" occupies a conspicuous position. But for books written for the double purpose of downing the subject and elevating the author, Philip Thicknesse's "Life of Gainsborough" must stand first. The book is so bad that it is interesting, and so stupid that it will never die. Thicknesse had a quarrel with Gainsborough, and three-fourths of the volume is given up to a minute recital of "says he" and "says I." It is really only an extended pamphlet written by an arch-bore with intent to get even with his man.
The writer regards his petty affairs as of prime importance to the world, and he shows with great care, and not a single flash of wit, how all of Thomas Gainsborough's success in life was brought about by Thicknesse. And then, behold! after Thicknesse had made the man by hand, all he received for pay was ingratitude and insolence! Thicknesse was always good, kind, unselfish and disinterested; while Gainsborough was ungrateful, procrastinating, absurd and malicious— this according to Thicknesse, who was on the spot and knew. Well, I guess so!
Brock-Arnold describes Thicknesse as "a fussy, ostentatious, irrepressible busybody, without the faintest conception of delicacy or modesty, who seems to think he has a heaven-born right to patronize Gainsborough, and to take charge of his affairs."
The aristocratic and pompous Thicknesse presented the painter to his friends, and also gave much advice about how he should conduct himself. He also loaned him a fiddle and presented him a viola da gamba, and often invited him to dinner. For these favors Gainsborough promised to paint a portrait of Thicknesse, but never got beyond washing in the background. During ten years he made thirty-seven excuses for not doing the work, and as for Mrs. Gainsborough, she once had the temerity to hand the redoubtable Thicknesse his cocked hat and cane and show him the door. From this, Thicknesse is emboldened to make certain remarks about Mrs. Gainsborough's pedigree, and to suggest that if Thomas Gainsborough had married a different woman he might have been a different painter. Thicknesse, throughout the book, thrusts himself into the breach and poses as the Injured One.