together, that the devil himself could not mend them; but in the main, I cannot beat it out of my noddle but that he is as mad as a March hare. Now because I am pretty confident of knowing his blind side, whatever crotchets come into my crown, though without either head or tail, yet can I make them pass on him for gospel. Such was the answer to his letter and another sham that I put upon him the other day, and is not in print yet, touching my lady Dulcinea's enchantment; for you must know, between you and I, she is no more enchanted than the man in the moon" (Don Quixote, vol. iii. ch. xxxiii., Shelton's translation).

"In the expressions of the actors, says Tom Taylor, “the painter has caught the very spirit of the scene. Sancho, halfshrewd, half-obtuse, takes the duchess into his confidence, with a finger laid along his nose; his way of sitting shows that he is on a style of seat he is unused to. Chantrey (the sculptor) sat to Leslie for the expression of the Sancho, and his hearty sense of humour qualified him to embody the character well. The duchess's enjoyment breaks through the habitual restraint of her high breeding and the grave courtesy of her Spanish manners in the sweetest half-smile-a triumph of subtle expression. The sour and literal Doña Rodriguez is evidently not forgetful how Sancho, on his arrival, had desired her to have a care of Dapple. The mirth of the whispering waiting-maid culminates in the broad sunshiny grin of the mulatto-woman. All the accessories are painted with the nicest sense of propriety. Petworth was a treasure house to Leslie of old-world wealth in furniture, jewellery, china, and toilet ornaments; and during his visits there he made careful and numerous studies of such objects."

620. A RIVER SCENE.

F. R. Lee, R.A. (1799-1879), and T. Sidney Cooper, R.A. (born 1803: still living).

One of the results of an artistic partnership which began about 1848, and continued for many years; the present picture was exhibited in 1855. The cattle are by Mr. Cooper, whose works are still familiar to visitors at the Academy; the landscape by Frederick Richard Lee. He was originally a soldier, but left the service owing to delicate health, and entered as an Academy student in 1818. He became a regular exhibitor at the Academy from 1827 onwards, being elected A.R.A. in 1834, and R. A. in 1838. His pictures were chiefly landscapes, but in later years he exhibited some successful sea-piecessuch as "Plymouth Breakwater" in 1856 (see for Mr. Ruskin's estimate of the painter Academy Notes, 1856, p. 22; and Modern Painters, vol. i., Preface to second edition, p. xix. n.)

A broad river at evening, with cattle added by Mr. Cooper

The dews will soone be falling;

Leave your meadow grasses mellow,
Mellow, mellow;

Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow;

Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Lightfoot,
Quit the stalks of parsley hollow,

Hollow, hollow.

JEAN INGELOW: High Tide.

120. JOSEPH NOLLEKENS, R.A. (1737-1823).

Sir William Beechey, R.A. (1753-1839).

It is somewhat curious that this should be the only picture by Beechey in the National Gallery, for he had surpassed all painters up to his time in the number of his contributions to the Academy, having exhibited 362 portraits there-including those of nearly all the famous and fashionable personages of the time. At the age of nineteen he had left a notary's office at Stowe in Gloucestershire and come up to London to be articled to a solicitor, but as a matter of fact he went off to the Academy Schools, and rapidly made himself a great name as a portrait painter. In 1793 he was elected A.R.A., and was appointed portrait painter to the Queen. In 1798 he painted a picture (now at Hampton Court) of a Royal Review in Hyde Park, which procured him his election as R. A. and the honour of knighthood. He is not one of the great portrait painters, but his works are adequate and vigorous, and are another instance of the general excellence of the English School in this branch of art.

Nollekens is one of the most curious figures in the history of English art. He was for more than half a century the fashionable sculptor of his time—the predecessor in this respect of Sir Francis Chantrey. Kings, statesmen, actors, authors, beauties, all sat to him. He restored the "Townley Venus" and many other ancient sculptures; he executed also many mythological groups of his own, and his mural monuments were in great request. But he was a rough, vulgar, uneducated man; and, in spite of some latent kindness of heart, was a confirmed miser. He left behind him a fortune of £200,000, his executors being Sir William Beechey and a former apprentice, Mr. J. T. Smith. The latter gentleman had expected more than the L100 bequeathed him for his trouble, and avenged himself by writing an ill-natured but exceedingly entertaining work on his old friend (Nollekens and his Times, 1828). A more friendly life is contained in Allan Cunningham's

book. In these works the visitor may read how "old Nolly," or "little Nolly," drove a splendid trade at Rome by doing up old sculptures for new; how he boasted to Lord Mansfield of having smuggled, in one of his busts, the lace ruffles that he went to court in, and how he saved by living on the scraps he called "Roman Cuttings"; and how when his wife Mary, who surpassed him in frugality, hoped he was not going to ask some visitors to dinner, he promised "never to encourage that sort of thing: let them get their meals at home." But there was one distinguished visitor who was always admitted — Dr. Johnson to wit, who used to back "his friend Joe Nollekens to chop out a head with any of them," and say that “Mary might have been his if little Joe had not stept in." Many too are the anecdotes of Nollekens and his sitters and his models. Something of the old man's miserliness and rough originality may be traced in this portrait.

432.

THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE.

E. M. Ward, R.A. (1816–1879). See under XX. 431, p. 510. The earth hath bubbles, as the water hath;

And these are of them.

A scene in Change Alley in 1720-" when the South Sea Company were voting dividends of fifty per cent, when a hundred pounds of their stock were selling for £1100, when Threadneedle Street was daily crowded with the coaches of dukes and prelates, when divines and philosophers turned gamblers, when a thousand kindred bubbles were daily blown into existence, the periwig-company, and the Spanish-jackasscompany, and the quicksilver-fixation-company" (Macaulay's Essays). "The crowds were so great indoors," adds Lord Mahon (History of England), "that tables with clerks were set in the streets. In this motley throng were blended all ranks, all professions, and all parties, churchmen and dissenters, whigs and tories, country gentlemen and brokers. An eager strife of tongues prevailed in this second Babel; new reports, new subscriptions, new transfers flew from mouth to mouth; and the voices of ladies (for even many ladies had turned gamblers) rose loud and incessant above the general throng."

Our greatest ladies hither come
And ply in chariots daily,

Or pawn their jewels for a sum,

To venture it in Alley.

Ballad of the Time.

356. "YOUTH ON THE PROW AND PLEASURE AT THE HELM."

W. Etty, R.A. (1787-1847).

See under XX. 614, p. 502.

This picture (exhibited 1832) is a transfer to canvas of the picture in Gray's Bard of the lull before a storm, of pleasure before destruction

605.

Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,

While proudly riding o'er the azure realm

In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes;

Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm ;

Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,

That, hush'd in grim repose, expects his ev'ning prey.

THE DEFEAT OF COMUS.

Sir E. Landseer, R.A. (1802-1873). See under XX. 1226, p. 505. The victims of Comus's sorceries (see XVIII. 1182, p. 458) assumed, as the potion worked its spell, "the inglorious likeness of a beast." But the attendant spirit, sent by Jupiter to befriend the innocent, warns the two brothers, who had lost their sister in the wood, that she is in the power of Comus, and instructs them to "rush on him: break his glass, And shed the luscious liquor on the ground." One of them is here seen rushing in with his spear and overturning the monsters in the doorway on the right. The glass has been dashed to the ground, and Comus, in the centre of the picture, throws up his magic wand in despair. One of his revel rout still clings appealingly to him, for those who drink of his cup "all their friends and native home forget, To roll with pleasure in a sensual stye." The picture is a sketch painted for the Queen in 1843 for a fresco in the summer-house at Buckingham Palace. The task set before Landseer was curiously opposite to the natural bent of his genius. At other times he painted beasts as half human, here he had to paint men and women as half beasts but he makes their faces human still notice, for instance, the tears in the eyes of two of the female monsters. 922. A CHILD WITH A KID.

:

Sir T. Lawrence, P.R.A. (1760-1830). See 144, P. 445. A portrait of Lady Giorgiana Fane at the age of five, dated 1800. The affectation of the "setting"—the child being made to stand on a bank by a tub of clothes with a kid in the water by her side-is characteristic of Lawrence's taste, whose

children will hardly bear comparison with those of Reynolds and Gainsborough. The circumstances of the painter's own early life perhaps had something to do with it: having been a show boy himself, he made show children of his little sitters also.

603.

THE SLEEPING BLOODHOUND.

Sir E. Landseer, R.A. (1802–1873). See under XX. 1226, p. 505.

Another instance of Landseer's astonishing rapidity of work (see under 409, p. 510). The hound, called "Countess," belonged to Landseer's friend, Mr. Jacob Bell. "She was lying one night on a balcony awaiting her master's return. She heard the wheels of his gig in the distance, and in leaping down missed her balance, fell between twenty and thirty feet, and died during the night. Next morning (Monday), her master took her to Landseer in hopes of securing a sketch of the old favourite, who had long been waiting for a sitting. The sight of the unfortunate hound, Mr. Bell said, suddenly changed an expression of something approaching vexation (at the interruption of his work) into one of sorrow and sympathy, and after the first expression of regret at the misfortune, the verdict was laconic and characteristic: 'This is an opportunity not to be lost; go away; come on Thursday at two o'clock.' It was then about midday, Monday. On Thursday, two o'clock, there was 'Countess' as large as life, asleep, as she is now" (Stephens, pp. 75, 76).

1142. THE AUGUST MOON.

Cecil G. Lawson (1851-1882).

Cecil Lawson was one of the most promising artists who have been affected by the recent movement in English art towards landscape for the sake of landscape, rather than landscape as the frame for some definite human interest (see Chesneau's English School, p. 256). He was the youngest son of Mr. William Lawson, of Edinburgh, a portrait painter; and "having shown an early taste for art, he studied its technicalities under his father's guidance, and while still a boy devoted himself to landscape." He first drew in black and white for maga. zines. Afterwards he exhibited at the Academy in 1870 a view of Cheyne Walk, Chelsea (where he resided). He continued to exhibit at the Academy for some years, but when the Grosvenor Gallery was opened, exhibited there-this picture was at the Grosvenor in 1880. His early London pictures met with much success, but he was a member of none of the art societies, and his later pictures of pure landscape did not meet with equal acceptance: this one was presented to