which the memory of these yearly journeys must have given and recalled to such a mind- - the critic, I say, who from the multitude of possible associations should pass by all these in order to fix his attention exclusively on the pin-papers, and stay-tapes, which might have been among the wares of his pack; this critic, in my opinion, can not be thought to possess a much higher or much healthier state of moral feeling than the Frenchmen above recorded.

XXVI.

WILLIAM HAZLITT.

(1778-1830.)

TABLE-TALK: OPINIONS ON BOOKS, MEN, AND THINGS.

No one is idle, who can do anything. It is conscious inability. or the sense of repeated failure, that prevents us from undertaking. or deters us from the prosecution of any work.

Wilson the painter might be mentioned as an exception to this rule; for he was said to be an indolent man. After bestowing a few touches on a picture, he grew tired, and said to any friend who called in, "Now, let us go somewhere!" But the fact is, that Wilson could not finish his pictures minutely; and that those few masterly touches, carelessly thrown in of a morning, were all that he could do. The rest would have been labour lost. Mor land has been referred to as another man of genius, who could only be brought to work by fits and snatches. But his landscapes and figures (whatever degree of merit they might possess) were mere hasty sketches; and he could produce all that he was capable of, in the first half-hour, as well as in twenty years. Why be stow additional pains without additional effect? What he did was from the impulse of the moment, from the lively impression of some coarse, but striking object; and with that impulse his efforts ceased, as they justly ought. There is no use in labouring invita Minerva1. nor any difficulty in it, when the Muse is not averse. 1 when Minerva is unwilling.

"The labour we delight in physics pain."

Denner finished his unmeaning portraits with a microscope, and without being ever weary of his fruitless task; for the essence of his genius was industry. Sir Joshua Reynolds, courted by the Graces and by Fortune, was hardly ever out of his painting-room, and lamented a few days, at any time spent at a friend's house or at a nobleman's seat in the country, as so much time lost. That darkly-illuminated room "to him a kingdom was: " his pencil was the sceptre that he wielded, and the throne on which his sitters were placed, a throne for Fame. Here he felt indeed at home; here the current of his ideas flowed full and strong; here he felt most self-possession; most command over others; and the sense of power urged him on to his delightful task with a sort of vernal cheerfulness and vigour, even in the decline of life. feeling of weakness and incapacity would have made his hand soon falter, would have rebutted him from his object; or had the canvas mocked, and been insensible to his toil, instead of gradually turning to

cess.

"A lucid mirror, in which nature saw

All her reflected features,"

The

he would, like so many others, have thrown down his pencil in despair, or proceeded reluctantly, without spirit and without sucClaude Lorraine, in like manner, spent whole mornings on the banks of the Tiber or in his study, eliciting beauty after beauty, adding touch to touch, getting nearer and nearer to perfection, luxuriating in endless felicity not merely giving the salient points, but filling up the whole intermediate space with continuous grace and beauty! What farther motive was necessary to induce him to persevere, but the bounty of his fate? What greater pleasure could he seek for, than that of seeing the perfect image of his mind reflected in the work of his hand? But as is the pleasure and the confidence produced by consummate skill, so is the pain and the disheartening effect of total failure. When for the fair face of nature we only see an unsightly blot issuing

from our best endeavours, then the nerves slacken, the tears fill the eyes, and the painter turns away from his art, as the lover from a mistress that scorns him. Alas! how many such have, as the poet says,

Whereof has come in the end despondency and madness —-”

not for want of will to proceed, (oh, no!) but for lack of power! Hence it is that those often do best (up to a certain point of common-place success) who have least knowledge and least ambition to excel. Their taste keeps pace with their capacity; and they are not deterred by insurmountable difficulties, of which they have no idea. I have known artists (for instance) of considerable merit, and a certain native rough strength and resolution of mind, who have been active and enterprizing in their profession, but who never seemed to think of any works but those which they had in hand; they never spoke of a picture, or appeared to have seen one; to them Titian, Raphael, Rubens, Rembrandt, Correggio, were as if they had never been: no tones, mellowed by time to soft perfection, lured them to their luckless doom, no divine forms baffled their vain embrace; no sound of immortality rung in their ears, or drew off their attention from the calls of creditors or of hunger they walked through collections of the finest works, like the Children in the Fiery Furnace, untouched, unapproached. With these true terræ filii the art might be supposed to begin and end they thought only of the subject of their next produc tion, the size of their next canvas, the grouping, the getting in of the figures; and conducted their work to its conclusion with as little distraction of mind and as few misgivings, as a stage-coachman conducts a stage, or a carrier delivers a bale of goods, according to its destination. Such persons, if they do not rise above, at least seldom sink below themselves. They do not soar to the "highest Heaven of invention," nor penetrate the inmost recesses of the heart; but they succeed in all that they attempt or are

2 sons of earth.

capable of, as men of business and of industry in their calling. For them the veil of the Temple of Art is not rent asunder, and it is well one glimpse of the Sanctuary, of the Holy of the Holies, might palsy their hands, and bedim their sight forever after! I think there are two mistakes, common enough on this subject, viz. That men of genius, or of first-rate capacity, do little, except by intermittent fits, or per saltum - and that they do that little in a slight and slovenly manner. There may be instances of this; but they are not the highest, and they are the exceptions, not the rule. On the contrary, the greatest artists have in general been the most prolific or the most elaborate, as the best writers have been frequently the most voluminous as well as indefatigable. We have a great living instance among writers, that the quality of a man's productions is not to be estimated in the inverse ratio of their quantity, I mean in the Author of Waverley; the fecundity of whose pen is no less admirable than its félicity. Shakespear is another instance of the same prodigality of genius his materials being endlessly poured forth with no niggard or fastidious hand, and the mastery of the execution being (in many respects at least) equal to the boldness of the design. As one example among others that I might cite of the attention which he gave to his subject, it is sufficient to observe, that there is scarcely a word in any of his more striking passages that can be altered for the better. If any person, for instance, is trying to recollect a favourite line, and cannot hit upon some particular expression, it is in vain to think of substituting any other so good. That in the original text is not merely the best, but it seems the only right one. I will stop to illustrate this point a little. I was at a loss the other day for the line in Henry V.,

"Nice customs curtesy to great kings."

I could not recollect the word nice: I tried a number of others, such as old, grave, &c. - they would none of them do, but seemed all heavy, lumbering, or from the purpose: the word nice, on the contrary, appeared to drop into its place, and be ready to assist in paying the reverence due. Again,