Ardent temperament.-Royal Academy.

Anchises, was purchased for two hundred guineas, by Lord De Tabley. Flushed with success, he renewed his application for admission to the Royal Academy, and for two successive elections, received not a vote in his favour.

"For twenty-one years," says he, writing of the members of the Royal Academy, 'there has not been an affection they have not lacerated—an ambition they have not thwarted—a hope they have not blasted—a calumny they have not propagated—a friendship they have not chilled, or a disposition to employ me, they have not tampered with."

His next great work, Christ's Entrance into Jerusalem, now the property of the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, was begun in 1814, and exhibited in 1820. He was proud of this picture, the central portion of which is deserving of all praise, and although it remained upon his hands, he commenced another of the same character, Christ in the Garden, and a third in the same high walk, Christ Rejected.

He now became involved in debt, and was for a time an inmate of the King's Bench prison, where he witnessed the celebrated Mock Election, which took place there in July, 1827 ; and being struck with the picturesque character of the scene, he imbodied it on canvass, and found a purchaser in George IV. His friends also assisted him; and, once more at ease, he commenced a picture of Eucles, a subscription being set on foot to take it off his hands by a public raffle. Sir Walter Scott interested himself in the subscription, and also sat to him for his portrait.

The success of the Mock Election, a work he tells us, of four months, justified another attempt in the same line; and he next produced, Chairing the Members, a scene from the Mock Election. It was exhibited at the Bazaar, in Bond-street, in 1829,

Etty.-Busy desire to be a painter.

and found a purchaser at three hundred guineas, in Mr. Francis, of Exeter. Another picture of the same period, was Pharaoh dismissing Moses, at the dead of night, after the Passover; bought by Mr. Hunter, an East India merchant, for five hundred guineas. This was followed by Napoleon musing at St. Helena, of which he painted three copies; one for Sir Robert Peel, a second for the duke of Devonshire, and a third for the duke of Sutherland. This work was popular as an engraving; but a second picture of the same character, the Duke of Wellington on the Field of Waterloo, was much inferior in execution. His last works were Curtius leaping into the Gulf, and Uriel and Satan. On the morning of his death, he had been working on a picture of Alfred, and the Trial by Jury. He came to his end by his own hand, in 1846.

ETTY.

William Etty was a native of the city of York, where he was born, in 1787. He says, in an autobiographical letter addressed to a relative: "My first panels, on which I drew, were the boards of my father's shop floor; my first crayon a farthing's white chalk; but my pleasure amounted to ecstasy when my mother promised me that next morning, if I were a good boy, I should use some colours, mixed with gum water. I was so pleased I could scarcely sleep. On the eighth of October, 1798, just half a century ago, at the tender age of eleven and a half years, I was sent abroad into the world, and put an apprentice to a letter-press printer, as a compositor, at Hull, to which business I served seven full years, faithfully and truly, and worked at it three weeks as journeyman; but I had such a busy desire to be a painter, that the last years of my servitude dragged on most

First endeavours.-Principles of conduct.

heavily. I counted the years, days, weeks, and hours, till liberty should break my chains and set my struggling spirit free! That hour, that golden hour of twelve on the twenty-third of October, 1805, I watched on the dial-plate of Hull high church, and felt such a throb of delight as for seven long years I had been a stranger to.

"I worked for three weeks as a journeyman printer, waiting with anxious expectation each morning a summons from London, either from my dear brother Walter, or your noble and beloved grandfather, my dear uncle, William Etty, of the firm of Bodley, Etty, and Bodley, 31 Lombard-street; himself a beautiful draughtsman in pen and ink, and who, if he had studied engraving, would have been in the first rank. He smiled on and patronized my juvenile and puny efforts, but saw enough to convince him that my heart was in it alone. These three benevolent individuals—my uncle and brother and Mr. T. Bodley— united hand in hand to second my aspiring and ardent wishes ; and having painted in crayons a head of your dear mother, Mrs. Clarke, and also two successful crayon heads of my uncle's two favourite cats, I was encouraged in this my darling pursuit, and the sun of my happiness began to shine.

"And here I will beg to say-because I hope it will have an influence, on the younger aspirants in the art, and I can give the experience of a long life—that I strongly and strenuously recommend to their notice, that however I might at times, and who does not forget my duty to my God and Maker, yet it was impressed on my mind by my dear parents, and echoed feelingly in my own heart, a love and fear of Almighty God, and a reference of every action to His divine will; a confidence in His friendly mercy, a fear of offending Him, and I may safely say, I never for one moment forgot the path of virtue without the

Draws in the Academy.-Studies with Sir T. Lawrence.

bitterest feeling of remorse, and an ardent desire to return to it, the only path of sunshine, happiness, and peace. My sincere wish, in whatever station of life I was placed, was to be actuated by an honest desire to do my duty to God and man, and whatever deficiency may have arisen, this was my only principle of action, and one I can confidently recommend to the young, who are desirous of raising the reputation of themselves or their country, whether in the arts or in any other liberal pursuit. 'My first academy was in a plaster-cast shop, kept by Granelli, in that lané near Smithfield, immortalized by Dr. Johnson's visit to see the "Ghost." I drew, in heat and cold; sometimes the snow blowing into my studio under the door, white as the casts. There I studied and drew the Cupid and Psyche, after the antique, well enough to take to Mr. Opie, to whom I had a respectable letter of introduction; then, with palpitating heart and admiring feeling, I approached the dread study of this truly great and powerful artist. He encouraged me, and gave me a letter to another great and powerful genius, Fuseli, who admitted me as a probationer in dear, Somerset House. With a flannel vest tied round his waist, and an eagle eye, he received me in that magic circle of unearthly creations peculiarly his own.

I drew in the Royal Academy; here was an event in my life, so long looked for and hoped for. Poor dear Collins and I entered the Academy as probationers the same week. We drew the Laocoon side by side, with many now no more; poor Haydon, ardent, mistaken in some respects, but still glorious in his enthusiasm, drew at the same time, his zeal and that of Hilton in the cause of historic art, urged me to persevere, and by their example and precept, I certainly benefited and was encouraged."

After a year's study with Sir Thomas Lawrence, for several years he pursued his studies with perseverence and ardour before

Persevering toil.-The dawn of success.

success dawned upon him. Etty thus writes of his labours at this period : I lit the lamp at both ends of the day. I studied the skeleton, the origin, and insertion of the muscles: I sketched from Albinus. I drew in the morning, I painted in the evening; and, after the Royal Academy, went and drew from the prints of the antique statues of the Capitolina, the Clemintina, Florentine, and the other galleries, finishing the extremities in black-lead pencil, with great care. This I did at the London Institution, in Moorfields. I returned home; kept in my fire all night, to the great dismay of my landlord, that I might rise next morning before daylight to draw; in short, I worked with such energy and perseverance to conquer my radical defects, that at last a better state of things began to dawn, like the sun through a November fog; and though I did not get a medal, from an informality on my part, I gained it, in point of fact, for my picture was esteemed the best; and Mr. West said of it-it would one day be sold for a Titian. I had what was better, a high compliment paid me, from the president's chair, by Sir Martin Shee, on my copy of the Ganymede of Titian. I then sent a small picture to the British Gallery, highly finished and carefully wrought; it made a considerable noise. I sent a larger the same year to the Royal Academy; it made a still greater noise. The Coral Finders, the Cleopatra, were sent the next year, Sir Francis Freeling being my patron. It made a great impression in my favour. Sir Thomas said, jocularly, to me of it: 'They (the public) leave Marc Antony,' meaning himself, whistling in the market-place, and go to gaze on your Cleopatra.' The old Times even, deigned to notice me, though as much in the shape of a castigation as in any other; but still the Times noticed me. I felt my chariot wheels were on the right road to fame and honour, and I now drove on like another Jehu!"