This playfully overdrawn picture of Wright’s habits was probably written before Wright went to Italy. Wright was of very temperate and abstemious habits, which, unfortunately, cannot be said of Mortimer.
Dr. Wolcott, as Peter Pindar, in one of his Poems, called Mr. Wright’s moons silver sixpences; upon being remonstrated with, he said he had not seen any of his moonlights, but supposed the moon must look like a sixpence. Probably this was the passage that Mr. Holland disliked, when he wrote the following lines, had them printed, and pasted them over the passage in his volume of Peter Pindar’s Poems—
“Would’st thou paint Landscape, study Derby Wright,
Where freedom, elegance, and truth unite.
Rich sparkling tints, grand shapes and masses show
How fine his pencil marks the Sunset’s glow;
Nor does his Master-hand less skillful seem,
When silver Cynthia quivers in the stream;
E’en Envy with approving smiles must own
In all Wright paints, Nature and Wright are ONE.”