We somehow got from Sir Walter to the Queen’s trial, and the scenes at Brandenburg House. I said they were a strong illustration of that instinct of servility—that hankering after rank and power, which appeared to me to be the base part of human nature. Here were all the patriots and Jacobins of London and Westminster, who scorned and hated the King, going to pay their homage to the Queen, and ready to worship the very rags of royalty. The wives and daughters of popular caricaturists and of forgotten demagogues were ready to pull caps in the presence-chamber for precedence, till they were parted by Mr. Alderman Wood. Every fool must go to kiss hands; ‘our maid’s aunt of Brentford’ must sip loyalty from the Queen’s hand! That was the true court to which they were admitted: the instant there was the smallest opening, all must rush in, tag-rag and bobtail. All the fierceness of independence and all the bristling prejudices of popular jealousy were smoothed down in a moment by the velvet touch of the Queen’s hand! No matter what else she was (whether her cause were right or wrong)—it was the mock-equality with sovereign rank, the acting in a farce of state, that was the secret charm. That was what drove them mad. The world must have something to admire; and the more worthless and stupid their idol is, the better, provided it is fine: for it equally flatters their appetite for wonder, and hurts their self-love less. This is the reason why people formerly were so fond of idols: they fell down and worshipped them, and made others do the same, for theatrical effect; while, all the while, they knew they were but wood and stone painted over. We in modern times have got from the dead to the living idol, and bow to hereditary imbecility. The less of genius and virtue, the greater our self-complacency. We do not care how high the elevation, so that it is wholly undeserved. True greatness excites our envy; mere rank, our unqualified respect. That is the reason of our antipathy to new-made dynasties, and of our acquiescence in old-established despotism. We think we could sit upon a throne, if we had had the good luck to be born to one; but we feel that we have neither talent nor courage to raise ourselves to one. If any one does, he seems to have got the start of us; and we are glad to pull him back again. I remember Mr. R—, of Liverpool (a very excellent man, and a good patriot,) saying, many years ago, in reference to Buonaparte and George III., that ‘the superiority of rank was quite enough for him, without the intellectual superiority.’ That is what has made so many renegadoes and furious Anti-Buonapartists among our poets and politicians, because he got before them in the race of power. N— ‘And the same thing made you stick to him, because you thought he was your fellow! It is wonderful how much of our virtues, as well as of our vices, is referable to self. Did you ever read Rochefoucault?’—Yes. ‘And don’t you think he is right?’ In a great measure: but I like Mandeville better. He goes more into his subject. ‘Oh! he is a devil. There is a description of a clergyman’s hand he has given, which I have always had in my eye whenever I have had to paint a fine gentleman’s hand. I thought him too metaphysical, but it is long since I read him. His book was burnt by the common hangman; was it not?’ Yes; but he did not at all like this circumstance, and is always recurring to it.—‘No one can like this kind of condemnation, because every sensible man knows he is not a judge in his own cause; and besides, is conscious, if the verdict were on the other side, how ready he would be to catch at it as decisive in his favour.’ I said, it was amusing to see the way in which he fell upon Steele, Shaftesbury, and other amiable writers, and the terror you were in for your favourites, just as when a hawk is hovering over and going to pounce upon some of the more harmless feathered tribe. He added, ‘It was surprising how Swift had escaped with so little censure; but the Gulliver’s Travels passed off as a story-book, and you might say in verse what you would be pelted for in plain prose.—The same thing you have observed in politics may be observed in religion too. You see the anxiety to divide and bring nearer to our own level. The Creator of the universe is too high an object for us to approach; the Catholics therefore have introduced the Virgin Mary and a host of saints, with whom their votaries feel more at their ease and on a par. The real object of worship is kept almost out of sight. Dignum the singer (who is a Catholic) was arguing on this subject with some one, who wanted to convert him, and he replied in his own defence—“If you had a favour to ask of some great person, would you not first apply to a common friend to intercede for you?”’ In some part of the foregoing conversation, N— remarked that ‘West used to say, you could always tell the highest nobility at court, from their profound humility to the King: the others kept at a distance, and did not seem to care about it. The more the former raised the highest person, the more they raised themselves who were next in point of rank. They had a greater interest in the question; and the King would have a greater jealousy of them than of others. When B— was painting the Queen, with whom he used to be quite familiar, he was one day surprised, when the Prince-Regent came into the room, to see the profound homage and dignified respect with which he approached her. “Good God!” said he to himself, “here is the second person in the kingdom comes into the room in this manner, while I have been using the greatest freedoms!” To be sure! that was the very reason: the second person in the kingdom wished to invest the first with all possible respect, so much of which was naturally reflected back upon himself. B— had nothing to lose or gain in this game of royal ceremony, and was accordingly treated as a cypher.’
CONVERSATION THE TENTH
Northcote shewed me a printed circular from the Academy, with blanks to be filled up by Academicians, recommending young students to draw. One of these related to an assurance as to the moral character of the candidate; Northcote said, ‘What can I know about that? This zeal for morality begins with inviting me to tell a lie. I know whether he can draw or not, because he brings me specimens of his drawings; but what am I to know of the moral character of a person I have never seen before? Or what business have the Academy to inquire into it? I suppose they are not afraid he will steal the Farnese Hercules; and as to idleness and debauchery, he will not be cured of these by cutting him off from the pursuit of a study on which he has set his mind, and in which he has a fair chance to succeed. I told one of them, with as grave a face as I could, that, as to his moral character, he must go to his god-fathers and god-mothers for that. He answered very simply, that they were a great way off, and that he had nobody to appeal to but his apothecary! The Academy is not an institution for the suppression of vice, but for the encouragement of the Fine Arts. Why then go out of their way to meddle with what was provided for by other means—the law and the pulpit? It would not have happened in Sir Joshua’s time,’ continued Northcote, ‘nor even in Fuseli’s: but the present men are “dressed in a little brief authority,” and they wish to make the most of it, without perceiving the limits. No good can possibly come of this busy-body spirit. The dragging morality into every thing, in season and out of season, is only giving a handle to hypocrisy, and turning virtue into a bye-word for impertinence!’
Here Northcote stopped suddenly, to ask if there was not such a word as rivulet in the language? I said it was as much a word in the language as it was a thing in itself. He replied, it was not to be found in Johnson; the word was riveret there. I thought this must be in some of the new editions; Dr. Johnson would have knocked any body down, who had used the word riveret. It put me in mind of a story of Y— the actor, who being asked how he was, made answer that he had been indisposed for some days with a feveret. The same person, speaking of the impossibility of escaping from too great publicity, related an anecdote of his being once in a remote part of the Highlands, and seeing an old gentleman fishing, he went up to inquire some particulars as to the mode of catching the salmon at what are called ‘salmon-leaps.’—The old gentleman began his reply—‘Why, Mr. Y—,’ at which the actor started back in great surprise. ‘Good God!’ said Northcote, ‘did he consider this as a matter of wonder, that, after shewing himself on a stage for a number of years, people should know his face? If an artist or an author were recognised in that manner, it might be a proof of celebrity, because it would shew that they had been sought for; but an actor is so much seen in public, that it is no wonder he is known by all the world. I once went with Opie in the stage-coach to Exeter; and when we parted; he to go on to Cornwall and I to Plymouth, there was a young gentleman in the coach who asked me, “Who it was that I had been conversing with?” I said it was Mr. Opie, the painter; at which he expressed the greatest surprise, and was exceedingly concerned to think he had not known it before. I did not tell him who I was, to see if my name would electrify him in the same manner. That brings to my mind the story I perhaps may have told you before, of a Mr. A— and Dr. Pennick of the Museum. They got into some quarrel at the theatre; and the former presenting his card, said with great pomposity, “My name is A—, Sir;” to which the other answered, “I hear it, Sir, and am not terrified!”’ I asked if this was the A— who fought the duel with F—. He said he could not tell, but he was our ambassador to some of the petty German States.
A country-gentleman came in, who complimented Northcote on his pictures of animals and birds, which I knew he would not like. He muttered something when he was gone, in allusion to the proverb of giving snuff to a cat. Afterwards, a miniature-painter brought some copies he had made of a portrait of a young lady by Northcote. They were really very well, and we learned he was to have five guineas for the larger size, and two for the smaller ones. I could now account for the humility and shabby appearance of the artist. He paid his court better than his rustic predecessor; for being asked by Northcote if the portrait of the young lady was approved? he said the mother had told him, before she engaged him to copy it, that ‘it was one of the loveliest pictures (that was her expression) that had ever been seen!’ This praise was better relished than that of his dogs and parrots.
I took notice to Northcote that the man had a very good head; but that he put me in mind of the state and pretensions of the art before artists wrote Esquire after their names. He said, Yes, he was like Andrew Taffi, or some of those in Vasari. I observed how little he was paid for what he really did so well; to which Northcote merely replied, ‘In all things that are not necessary, those in the second class must always be miserably paid. Copying pictures is like plain-work among women, it is what any body can do, and, therefore, nothing but a bare living is to be got by it.’ He added, that the young lady, whose portrait her family was so anxious to have copied, was dead, and this was a kind of diversion to their grief. It was a very natural mode of softening it down; it was still recurring to the object of their regret, and yet dwelling on it in an agreeable point of view. ‘The wife of General H—, (he continued) many years ago, came to me to do a picture of her son, a lieutenant in the navy, who was killed in battle, but whom I had never seen. There was no picture of him to go by, but she insisted on my doing one under her direction. I attempted a profile as the easiest; and she sat behind me and sang in a soft manner to herself, and told me what I was to do. It was a wretched business, as you may suppose, being made out from description; but she would have it to be a great likeness, and brought all the family and even the servants to see it, who probably did not dare to be of a different opinion. I said to her, “What a pity it was Sir Joshua had not done a portrait of him in his life-time!” At this she expressed great contempt, and declared she would not give two-pence for all Sir Joshua’s pictures; indeed, she had one which I was very welcome to have if I chose to come for it. I lost no time in going to her house, and when I came there, she led me up into an old garret which was used as a lumber-room, and taking it carefully out of a shabby frame not worth a groat, said “There, take it, I am not sorry to get it out of the house.” I asked what it was that made her so indifferent about this picture? and she answered, “It was a likeness of a young gentleman who had been kind enough to die, by which means the estate came to the General.” She spoke in this unfeeling manner, though her own son had just died in the same circumstances; and she had had a monument made for him, and strewed flowers upon it, and made such a fuss about his death, that she would hardly have known what to do if he had come to life again!’ I asked what was her reason for disliking Reynolds’s pictures? ‘Oh! that was her ignorance, she did not know why!’
Northcote said, ‘G— called here with his daughter. I asked her about Lord Byron; she said his temper was so bad that nobody could live with him. The only way to pass the day tolerably well with him was to contradict him the first thing in the morning. I have known tempers of that kind myself; you must quarrel with them in order to be friends. If you did not conquer them, they would conquer you.’ Something was observed about Byron and Tom Paine, as to their attacks upon religion; and I said that sceptics and philosophical unbelievers appeared to me to have just as little liberality or enlargement of view as the most bigoted fanatic. They could not bear to make the least concession to the opposite side. They denied the argument that because the Scriptures were fine they were therefore of divine origin, and yet they virtually admitted it; for, not believing their truth, they thought themselves bound to maintain that they were good for nothing. I had once, I said, given great offence to a knot of persons of this description, by contending that Jacob’s Dream was finer than any thing in Shakspeare; and that Hamlet would bear no comparison with, at least, one character in the New Testament. A young poet had said on this occasion, he did not like the Bible, because there was nothing about flowers in it; and I asked him if he had forgot that passage, ‘Behold the lilies of the field,’ &c.? ‘Yes,’ said Northcote, ‘and in the Psalms and in the book of Job, there are passages of unrivalled beauty. In the latter there is the description of the war-horse, that has been so often referred to, and of the days of Job’s prosperity; and in the Psalms, I think there is that passage, “He openeth his hands, and the earth is filled with plenteousness; he turneth away his face, and we are troubled; he hideth himself, and we are left in darkness;” or, again, how fine is that expression, “All the beasts of the forests are mine, and so are the cattle upon a thousand hills!” What an expanse, and what a grasp of the subject! Every thing is done upon so large a scale, and yet with such ease, as if seen from the highest point of view. It has mightily a look of inspiration or of being dictated by a superior intelligence. They say mere English readers cannot understand Homer, because it is a translation; but why will it not bear a translation as well as the book of Job, if it is as fine? In Shakspeare, undoubtedly, there is a prodigious variety and force of human character and passion, but he does not take us out of ourselves; he has a wonderful, almost a miraculous fellow-feeling with human nature in every possible way, but that is all. Macbeth is full of sublimity, but the sublimity is that of the earth, it does not reach to heaven. It is a still stronger objection that is made to Hogarth; he, too, gave the incidents and characters of human life with infinite truth and ability; but then it was in the lowest forms of all, and he could not rise even to common dignity or beauty. There is a faculty that enlarges and beautifies objects, even beyond nature. It is for this reason that we must, reluctantly perhaps, give the preference to Milton over Shakspeare; for his Paradise (to go no further) is certainly a scene of greater beauty and happiness, than was ever found on earth, though so vividly described that we easily make the transition, and transport ourselves there. It is the same difference that there is between Raphael and Michael Angelo, though Raphael, too, in many of his works merited the epithet of divine.’—I mentioned some lines from Shakspeare I had seen quoted in a translation of a French work, and applied to those who adhered to Buonaparte in his misfortunes:
—He that can endure
To follow with allegiance a fallen lord,
Does conquer him that did his master conquer,