Table-Talk | Page 8

all, or else
who have accustomed themselves to brood incessantly on abstract ideas,
that never feel ennui.
To give one instance more, and then I will have done with this
rambling discourse. One of my first attempts was a picture of my father,
who was then in a green old age, with strong-marked features, and
scarred with the smallpox. I drew it out with a broad light crossing the
face, looking down, with spectacles on, reading. The book was
Shaftesbury's Characteristics, in a fine old binding, with Gribelin's
etchings. My father would as lieve it had been any other book; but for
him to read was to be content, was 'riches fineless.' The sketch
promised well; and I set to work to finish it, determined to spare no
time nor pains. My father was willing to sit as long as I pleased; for
there is a natural desire in the mind of man to sit for one's picture, to be
the object of continued attention, to have one's likeness multiplied; and
besides his satisfaction in the picture, he had some pride in the artist,
though he would rather I should have written a sermon than painted
like Rembrandt or like Raphael. Those winter days, with the gleams of
sunshine coming through the chapel-windows, and cheered by the notes
of the robin-redbreast in our garden (that 'ever in the haunch of winter
sings'),--as my afternoon's work drew to a close,--were among the
happiest of my life. When I gave the effect I intended to any part of the
picture for which I had prepared my colours; when I imitated the
roughness of the skin by a lucky stroke of the pencil; when I hit 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, I might one day be able to say with Correggio, 'I also am a
painter!' It was an idle thought, a boy's conceit; but it did not make me
less happy at the time. I used regularly to set my work in the chair to
look at it through the long evenings; and many a time did I return to
take leave of it before I could go to bed at night. I remember sending it
with a throbbing heart to the Exhibition, and seeing it hung up there by
the side of one of the Honourable Mr. Skeffington (now Sir George).
There was nothing in common between them, but that they were the
portraits of two very good-natured men. I think, but am not sure, that I
finished this portrait (or another afterwards) on the same day that the
news of the battle of Austerlitz came; I walked out in the afternoon, 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 sleep out the three hundred and sixty-five thousand
intervening years very contentedly!--The picture is 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!

NOTES to ESSAY I
[1] There is a passage in Werter which contains a very pleasing
illustration of this doctrine, and is as follows:-
'About a league from the town is a place called Walheim. It is very
agreeably situated on the side of a hill: from one of the paths which
leads out of the village, you have a view of the whole country; and
there to a good old woman who sells wine, coffee, and tea there: but
better than all this are two lime-trees before the church, which spread
their branches over a little green, surrounded by barns and cottages. I
have seen few places more retired and peaceful. I send for a chair and
table from the old woman's, and there I drink my coffee and read

Homer. It was by accident that I discovered this place one fine
afternoon: all was perfect stillness; everybody was in the fields, except
a little boy about four years old, who was sitting on the ground, and
holding between his knees a child of about six months; he pressed it to
his bosom with his little arms, which made a sort of great chair for it;
and notwithstanding the vivacity which sparkled in his eyes, he sat
perfectly still. Quite delighted with the scene, I sat down on a plough
opposite, and had great pleasure in drawing