H.—I confess all this, but I hardly know how to remedy it; nor do I feel any strong inducement. Taking one thing with another, I have no great cause to complain. If I had been a merchant, a bookseller, or the proprietor of a newspaper, instead of what I am, I might have had more money or possessed a town and countryhouse, instead of lodging in a first or second floor, as it may happen. But what then? I see how the man of business and fortune passes his time. He is up and in the city by eight, swallows his breakfast in haste, attends a meeting of creditors, must read Lloyd’s lists, consult the price of consols, study the markets, look into his accounts, pay his workmen, and superintend his clerks: he has hardly a minute in the day to himself, and perhaps in the four-and-twenty hours does not do a single thing that he would do if he could help it. Surely, this sacrifice of time and inclination requires some compensation, which it meets with. But how am I entitled to make my fortune (which cannot be done without all this anxiety and drudgery) who do hardly any thing at all, and never any thing but what I like to do? I rise when I please, breakfast at length, write what comes into my head, and after taking a mutton-chop and a dish of strong tea, go to the play, and thus my time passes. Mr. — has no time to go to the play. It was but the other day that I had to get up a little earlier than usual to go into the city about some money transaction, which appeared to me a prodigious hardship: if so, it was plain that I must lead a tolerably easy life: nor should I object to passing mine over again. Till I was twenty, I had no idea of any thing but books, and thought every thing else was worthless and mechanical. The having to study painting about this time, and finding the difficulties and beauties it unfolded, opened a new field to me, and I began to conclude that there might be a number of ‘other things between heaven and earth that were never dreamt of in my philosophy.’ Ask G—, or any other literary man who has never been taken out of the leading-strings of learning, and you will perceive that they hold for a settled truth that the universe is built of words. G— has no interest but in literary fame, of which he is a worshipper: he cannot believe that any one is clever, or has even common sense, who has not written a book. If you talk to him of Italian cities, where great poets and patriots lived, he heaves a sigh; and if I were possessed of a fortune, he should go and visit the house where Galileo lived or the tower where Ugolino was imprisoned. He can see with the eyes of his mind. To all else he is marble. It is like speaking to him of the objects of a sixth sense; every other language seems dumb and inarticulate.
The end of Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., R.A.
NOTES
TABLE TALK
PAGE [2]. An Advertisement, etc. The advertisement to the Paris edition of Table Talk was as follows:— ‘The work here offered to the public is a selection from the four volumes of Table Talk, printed in London. Should it meet with success, it will be followed by two other volumes of the same description, which will include all that the author wishes to preserve of his writings in this kind. The title may perhaps serve to explain what there is of peculiarity in the style or mode of treating the subjects. I had remarked that when I had written or thought upon a particular topic, and afterwards had occasion to speak of it with a friend, the conversation generally took a much wider range, and branched off into a number of indirect and collateral questions, which were not strictly connected with the original view of the subject, but which often threw a curious and striking light upon it, or upon human life in general. It therefore occurred to me as possible to combine the advantages of these two styles, the literary and the conversational; or after stating and enforcing some leading idea, to follow it up by such observations and reflections as would probably suggest themselves in discussing the same question in company with others. This seemed to me to promise a greater variety and richness, and perhaps a greater sincerity, than could be attained by a more precise and scholastic method. The same consideration had an influence on the familiarity and conversational idiom of the style which I have used. How far the plan was feasible, or how far I have succeeded in the execution of it must be left to others to decide. I am also afraid of having too frequently attempted to give a popular air and effect to subtle distinctions and trains of thought; so that I shall be considered as too metaphysical by the careless reader, while by the more severe and scrupulous inquirer my style will be complained of as too light and desultory. To all this I can only answer that I have done not what I wished, but the best I could do; and I heartily wish it had been better.’
ESSAY I. ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING
This and the following essay are from The London Magazine for December 1820 (Vol. II. pp. 597–607), No. V. of a series entitled Table Talk.
[5]. ‘There is a pleasure,’ etc. Cf. vol. I. note to p. 76. ‘No juggling here.’ Cf. ‘Here is such patchery, such juggling, and such knavery.’ Troilus and Cressida, Act II. Scene 3. ‘Study with joy,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, III. 227–8. [6]. ‘More tedious,’ etc. King John, Act III. Scene 4. ‘My mind to me,’ etc. The first line of the well-known poem attributed to Sir Edward Dyer (d. 1607).
‘Light thickens; and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood.’