history of the painter Turner, whose Life, so called, has just been given to the world. for cuitous route of Hero-worship and deification, we are brought back again to the old vulgar dogma, that If the greatest gifts of intellect of all the inspirations of human are but synonymous with a great life Genius is the one least like to soul-if moral excellence, purity of carry its possessor through the world heart, nobility of mind, are all as with honour and dignity, or to prenecessary parts of creative genius serve his garments unspotted. The as the special faculty of utterance great modern example of this exor of creation, that is peculiar to it traordinary process is the great -the dread dilemma which arises painter whose shabby figure has not when a sudden phenomenon ap- been long enough off the stage to pears, splendid with indisputable permit the possibility of its reprogenius, but deficient in everything duction amid fabulous lights. It which ennobles a mere human crea- has fallen to the lot of this unhappy ture, may easily be divined. How man to attract the adoring admirasuch a thing can be, is puzzling tion of one of the most brilliant enough without any theory to per- writers of the day, and, half deified, plex the matter; but when there to have at the same time his notis no possibility of denying the fact, able imperfections accounted common observers, who do not feel according to the only plausible their own discrimination disparaged hypothesis by which the rights of by the paradox, may admit and genius can be kept intact while its deplore the sad contradiction, or faults are excused. If Turner could even adopt the timid wisdom of have chosen for himself, it is prosilence, and conclude it best to turn bable that he would have rather rethe light away from the unsatisfac- signed the applause than borne the tory figure, and direct it upon the consequent examination and deundeniable productions which are fence. But Turner was not consulted; not inconsistent with themselves. and here, accordingly, stands forth, This prudent mode of procedure is, under the strongest light, a figure however, impossible to those who only adapted for twilight and the hold that genius cannot exist by shadows; an unhappy soul, whom itself, but must carry every human common charity is content to accept excellence along with it. Under as a great painter, without special such circumstances the only thing inquiry into his character, but whom to be done is, with the strangest the cruelty of friends forces forth inconsequence, to prove how vulgar into public ignominy, by way of material restrictions and obstacles proving his right, had not circumhave tarnished and limited the di- stances forbidden, to take his place vine soul-have driven it into pain- among the greatest of men. ful corners, where its aspect looks We presume there can be little poor and cowardly only because doubt that circumstances have an of the wicked bonds surrounding effect upon the lives and characters it; and have gained such mastery of men; to say anything else would over its loftier nature as circum- be to contradict flatly the ordinary stances seldom gain over common- opinion of the world. Notwithplace men. Treated according to standing, if one will but look at this plan, the Immortals appear to one's private experience among the us weakly succumbing to tempta- most ordinary and obscure actors in tions and overborne by influences the life drama, how wonderfully, one which ordinary individuals struggle must allow, character, temper, heart, through without any surrender of and spirit, assert themselves beyond honour; and at length, by the cir- the reach of all external powers. *The Life of J. M. W. Turner, R. A. By WALTER THORNBURY. Hurst & Blackett. 1862. - reverence How triumphantly the poor prodi- neglect, and turned to gall, speaks gal, to whom Providence has given sacrilege and profanity. Such is the the fairest prospects, and whose plea set up for Turner by his worsteps are guarded by love and kind- shippers. Who that ever knew the ness, can vindicate his own instincts generous craft but knows some poor against all the virtuous force of cir- painter toiling through real neglect cumstance surrounding him, and and slights, bearing sharp anguishes go to destruction in its very face! yearly from a banging committee, Who needs to be taught that ever- meeting with mortifications and disrecurring lesson? Who can be ig- appointments all the harder to bear norant that scarcely a great career because other lives are dependent has ever been made in this world on his own, who yet bears a sweet otherwise than in the face of cir- heart through all his troubles, and, cumstances in strenuous defiance taking comfort in his art itself, finds of all that external elements could the joy of that restore him always do to overcome the unconquerable to fellowship with all men? Noble, soul? In the face of such examples, what are we to say to the theory that adverse circumstances can excuse a man born with all the compensations of genius for an unloveÎy and ignoble life, a bitter and discontented heart, a course of vulgar vice and sordid meanness? Never was genius more wickedly disparaged. That celestial gift to which God has given capacities of enjoyment beyond the reach of the crowd, is of itself an armour against circumstance more proof than steel, and continually holds open to its possessor a refuge against the affronts of the world, a shelter from its con. tumelies, which is denied to other men. He who reckons of this endowment as of something which gives only a more exquisite egotism, a finer touch of selfishness, a sublimation of envy and self-assertion, and dependence upon the applause of the crowd, forms a mean estimate against which it is the duty of every man who knows better to protest. Outside circumstances, disappointment, neglect, dark want For what Mr. Ruskin could gloss and misery, have plagued the souls over in a maze of harmonious words, and disturbed the temper of great Mr. Thornbury sets forth bare and men before now, but have never, unsoftened in the blaze of day. so far as we are aware, polluted a We will not ask whether the public pure heart, or made a noble mind demanded a life of Turner with so despicable. The bitter soreness of much clamour that the present unappreciated genius belongs pro- author could not forbear; but it is verbially to those whose gift is of only just to say that he has collectthe smallest; and the man who ed a mass of information larger in excuses a bad life by the pretence quantity, and fuller in detail, than that this divine lymph contained Turner's uncommunicative and sewithin it has been soured by popular cretive character could have war humble, disappointed soul ! uncon- 66 Joseph Mallord William Turner (an unlucky multiplicity of names, which he seems in earlier life to have eluded by using only the last) was born-to the great comfort and delight of his biographer, who recurs to the fact on every possible occasion, as if it contained something specially characteristic the son of a barber in Hand Court, the Nor ranted any one in expecting; and that henceforward nobody can have any excuse for reopening the subject, or gathering again out of merciful oblivion the few facts of the great painter's life. Little more can be said for the performance; it is a chaos of material without arrangement or form, full of repetitions, affectations, and Cockneyisms of every conceivable degree of bad Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, in taste. Yet through the muddle, by the year 1775. This humble origin chance or happy fortune more was dignified by no personal supeby luck than good guiding," as the riority in his immediate progenitors. Scotch proverb has it the man The barber was a barber of mind may be seen, shabbily visible as in conformed to his fortunes; the days of his flesh, an unattrac- mother a person of ungovernable tive, sordid figure, giving the lie temper, who ended her life in a sturdily, with obstinate vulgar per- lunatic asylum: not a gleam even severance, to every attempt which of domestic love and comfort shines may be made to make him a poet round the house which Mr. Thornand a gentleman. Under no circum- bury is at much unnecessary pains stances could the picture be a plea- to describe, and which he declares sant one; but now that it has been to be "now so sacred a place in the made, and that no amount of si- eyes of many Englishmen." lence can save the unlucky hero does the boy himself awake any from the cruel kindness of his interest in the breast of the unenfriends, our readers may not be dis- lightened observer. Nobody seems pleased to bear, in a form less diffuse to predict any special glories of than Mr. Thornbury's, the story of him somehow the faculty within a man who has enriched the world him gets kindled into expression with so many sunsets and sunrises by sight of a piece of heraldry, or so many various splendours of storm a drawing of Paul Sandby's, or a and calm, without leaving one print from Vandervelde - which we gracious human reminiscence be- please; Mr. Thornbury jauntily_perhind him to make his fame dear to mits the reader to choose. Then any heart of man. If impartiality he begins to draw cocks and hens, ever could be attained in any hu- and then poplars and waving wilman narrative, here is the unhappy lows by the Thames, when good soul who should have achieved the fortune carries him out to Brentsad distinction of an impartial his- ford to do a little schooling there. tory. The love of his admirers for By the time he is fourteen his their own opinion has, however, drawings are for sale in the winsaved Turner from this pre-emi- dow of his father's shop; a year or nence, and indeed originated in his two later he is a student of the favour a hotter partisanship than Royal Academy, doing for himself could ever have arisen from love at the same time in a variety of of him. Though Mr. Thornbury's notable ways washing - in backhigh-pitched enthusiasm rings false grounds for architects, colouring beside the superlative certainty of prints for printsellers - maintainMr. Ruskin, yet all that could be ing, evidently, a very comfortable gleaned in his favour is undoubted- boyish traffic in those productions ly collected in these volumes. The of industry, and by no means kept idea here presented of him is meant back or kept down by adverse fate. to be a lofty one; how far it justi- Neither is there anything very dark fies either the panegyric or the in the surroundings of his boyhood. apology, every reader can now judge A kind dilettante, Dr. Munro, opens for himself. his house and his portfolios to the boy and his companion Girtin-and, books which were then in fashion, permitting them to study and copy wandering over the country in all as they pleased amid apparently a the freedom of a young artist, makvery good collection of pictures, ing notes and sketches invaluable gave the lads half-a-crown for their for himself, while doing the drawnightly drawings, and entertained ings which paid his expenses and them at supper in a most genial kept him afloat-a perfect probaand encouraging way. Nor was tion for an English landscapethis the only pleasant circumstance painter. His biographer interrupts in Turner's youthful life; he went his account of this industrious life boating on the Thames in many to remind us that "Turner was a a prolonged excursion-he went to bitterly disappointed man," and to Margate he made drawings for tell us that some of his engravings illustrated books-he fell in love. entailed a heavy loss upon the These amusements show little evi- publishers. Notwithstanding, work dence of any lack of youthful in- never seems to have failed him; dulgences in his early life. The and a good supply of work is a vulfalling in love, however, of which gar but sure sign of a certain amount Mr. Thornbury tells the tale most of appreciation, which Turner was tragically, came to final disappoint- the last man in the world to underment and failure; and in this, value. While steadily supporting which seems to have happened himself by these drawings, he bewhen he was about twenty, lies the gan to exhibit pictures; and here only substantial reason his candid again we find no such marks of biographer can find, for the dark neglect as were to be expected. A shades of his character. "It helped picture of Sheffield, exhibited at to sour that great generous nature, one- and - twenty "obtained loud and burn out of him hope and praise from all the critics;" at youth with the terrible corrosive of twenty eight he appears with "Codisappointment," says our author, niston Fells," " evidently a great with grandiloquence; but there is painter," says Mr. Thornbury; at no corresponding pause of despair twenty-nine he was an Associate of to be recorded in the thrifty and the Academy. To most other men busy existence of the young artist. this would have been marked sucWhen he was little more than six- cess; how it can possibly be supteen he seems to have not only ex- posed to lay the foundation of hibited, but sold his pictures. At bitter disappointment- disappointtwenty he added to his many occu- ment almost justifying and pations a little teaching, in which tainly excusing the unhappy pecuhe does not show in the most con- liarities of his after life-perscientious or satisfactory light. "He would be silent and rough, and leave the puzzled pupils pretty well alone while he thought over some sketch of his own. He was not going to let out guinea secrets for five shillings; so he let his pupils paint on as they liked," said Mr. Thornbury, with naïve frankness, probably forgetting that he has just attributed a great and generous nature to his hero. Ever busier and busier went on the increasing life. Between twenty and twentyfive years old he had made expeditions over all the midland counties, through Wales, and the south coast, making drawings for the illustrated During these probationary years cer haps Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Thornbury know; we do not pretend to understand. There are painters who could swallow greater disappointments than any which up to this time seem to have occurred to Turner for the certainty of admission into the privileges of the Academy, even at a less early age; and compassion for a man who has attained the first rank in his profession at nine-and-twenty seems to us a most unnecessary waste of sympathy. Few men do so much; and favoured beyond the lot of common humanity are those who succeed in doing more. the young artist worked with a bours, and make all those experitradesmanlike industry and energy ments in colour which he commuworthy of all praise. A silent, some- nicated to nobody, and which prowhat surly, uncommunicative young duced such brilliant results in afterman, wandering over the country a years, there seems nothing specisturdy humble traveller, on the top ally distressing in his life. He was of stage-coaches, on foot with his not poor; he was not without adbundle over his shoulder, filling his miration from his fellows, and memory and his sketch-books with notice from the world without. His a thousand notes of the way; rest- mind and time were alike fully ocing in the humblest wayside inns, cupied, and in a manner rather living hardily, impatient of all the advantageous to his future fame restraints of companionship, intent than against it. He was, in fact, upon his work, always thrifty, taci- pursuing the study of his art under turn, reserved, willing enough to circumstances which nobody can learn other people's secrets, but call unfavourable, with few of the jealous to extremity about his own. limits and restraints to which most In London, where his friends and men are subjected in the earlier contemporaries had formed one of stages of such a profession. In the the friendly social coteries so usual year 1808 he became Professor of Peramong artists, meeting now and spective in the Academy, the highthen at each other's houses, to sketch est honours of which, though Mr. together in the pleasant interval be- Thornbury gives no dates, he had tween tea and supper, Turner de- no doubt already attained, and went clined to join them. The sketches to live in Hammersmith, where his were to be the property of the host house, according to the account of of the evening, who supplied the a friend, had "a garden sloping to materials; and that, and the neces- the river, at the end of which was sity of working among his brethren, a summer-house. Here, out in the and possibly betraying some of his open air, were painted some of Turdear secrets, deterred the self-con- ner's best pictures. It was tained young man, whose heart, my father, who then resided at even at this early period of his life, Kew, became first acquainted with does not seem to have been suffici- him; and, expressing his surprise ently liberal to bestow tea and bread that Turner could paint under such and cheese ⚫ on his own account. circumstances, he remarked that Had he been hospitably inclined, lights and a room were absurdities, the mean paternal house, that bug- and that a picture could be painted bear to so many a youth of genius, anywhere. His eyes were remarkbad soon ceased to be his home. ably strong. He would throw down At twenty-five the young man was his water-colour drawings on the able to change the shabby atmo- floor of the summer-house, requestsphere of Covent Garden for the ing my father not to touch them, solemn decorum of Harley Street; as he could see them there, and no small advance for an artist. they would be drying at the same Even Mr. Thornbury seems unable time." Mr. Thornbury conjectures to discover anything about these that Turner's reason for seeking years except a record of work quite this suburban dwelling was, that sufficient to show that public neglect he might be near De Loutherbourg, never interfered with the daily whom he admired, and out of whose bread of the laborious painter, house he was at last turned by that Sturdily silent, supporting himself, artist's suspicious wife, who imaas most men have had to do, with gined, and probably not without work secondary to the great work some truth, that the young painter of his life, but in itself not disagree- was obtaining all her husband's able, and leaving him sufficient secrets from him. One of Turner's leisure to carry on his higher la- humanest qualities seems to have here |