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Untitled Article
ctafaour of the every-day world as mere noise and fury " signifying nothing" compared with those mighty works and dreaded names that spoke to him in the eternal silence of thought / It
seems that his father , although he would rather his son should have written a sermon than painted like Rembrandt or Raphael / became eventually so far reconciled to his study of the arts as to sit to him for his portrait . There is a very pathetic passage on this circumstance in the essay previously quoted :
* When I gave the effect I intended to any part of the picture , when I imitated the roughness of the akin by a lucky stroke of the . pencil , when I tut the clear pearly tone of a vein , when I gave the ruddy complexion of health , the blood circulating under the broad shadows of one side of the face , I thought my fortune made ; or rather it was already more than made in my fancying that I might one day be able to say with Corregio , " / also am a painter 1 " I think that I finished this portrait on the same day that the news of the battle of Austerlhz came .
How lie exulted in the downfal of the Bourbons and in the establishment , through Napoleon , of the principle ' that there is a power in the people to change its government and governors / is very generally known ; but the agony of his disappointment at finding the hopes of liberty blighted by the breath of Legitimacy and the Holy Alliance , is known but to few .
* I walked out in the afternoon / continues he , ' and as I returned , saw the evening-star set over a poor man ' s cottage with other thoughts and feelings than I shall ever have again . Oh for the revolution of the great Platonic year , that those times might come over again!—I could
Bleep out the three hundred and sixty-five thousand intervening years ? eiy contentedly . The picture ia left : the table , the chair , the window where I learned to construe Livy , the chapel where my father preached , remain where they were ; but he himself is gone to rest , full of years , of faith , of hope , and charity !'
With the intention of following painting as a profession , he subsequently studied at the Louvre , and , however dissatisfactory his progress , he ' never did anything afterwards / Of his feelings during the progress of these studies he has left deep and lasting record . One passage will suffice :
• Here , for four months together , I strolled and studied , and daily heard the warning sound , ' * QtuUres heures passees , il faut fermer , citoyens" ( ah ! wh y did they ever change their style !) muttered in coarse ptorincial French ; and brought away with me some loose draughts and fragments , which I have been forced to part with , like drops of life-blood , for " hard money . " How often , thou ten an tie ft s matoion of god-like magnificence—how often has my heart since gone a pilgrimage to thee !'
If to yearn intensely for the accomplishment of an object , if to possess the genius * requisite for a high success , if to sympathize deeply and comprehensively with the spirit of great and lasting works , while ttofe vndtfpes of youth and of manhood burn and impel towards the sacred temple whose altar is in the centre of
Untitled Article
« B 6 Disquisition on miHUm Hazlitt .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1835, page 636, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2650/page/8/
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