The Harbours of England | Page 3

the teaching of the Master all the more closely because
we feel his fervor, and know how completely he becomes possessed
with a subject which appeals to his imagination or his heart. I have
therefore not scrupled to revive the words which he consented to

immolate at the shrine of Prudence.
It is not my province here to enter into any criticism of the pages which
follow; but, for the benefit of those who are not versed in the minutiæ
of Shelleyan topics, a word may be said regarding Mr. Ruskin's
reference[G] to the poet who met his death in the Bay of Spezzia. The
Don Juan was no "traitorous" craft. Fuller and more authentic
information is to hand now than the meager facts at the disposal of a
writer in 1856; and we know that the greed of man, and not the lack of
sea-worthiness in his tiny vessel, caused Percy Shelley to
"... Suffer a sea change Into something rich and strange."
[G] See post, p. 3.
There is, unhappily, no longer any room for doubt that the Don Juan
was willfully run down by a felucca whose crew coveted the
considerable sum of money they believed Byron to have placed on
board, and cared nothing for the sacrifice of human life in their
eagerness to seize the gold.
The twelve engravings, to which reference has already been made, have
been reproduced by the photogravure process from a selected set of
early examples; and, in addition, the plates so prepared have been
carefully worked upon by Mr. Allen himself. It will thus be apparent
that everything possible has been done to produce a worthy edition of a
worthy book, and to place in the hands of the public what to the present
generation of readers is tantamount to a new work from a pen
which--alas!--has now for so long a time been still.
THOMAS J. WISE.

AUTHOR'S ORIGINAL PREFACE.
Among the many peculiarities which distinguished the late J. M. W.
Turner from other landscape painters, not the least notable, in my
apprehension, were his earnest desire to arrange his works in connected

groups, and his evident intention, with respect to each drawing, that it
should be considered as expressing part of a continuous system of
thought. The practical result of this feeling was that he commenced
many series of drawings,--and, if any accident interfered with the
continuation of the work, hastily concluded them,--under titles
representing rather the relation which the executed designs bore to the
materials accumulated in his own mind, than the position which they
could justifiably claim when contemplated by others. The River
Scenery was closed without a single drawing of a rapidly running
stream; and the prints of his annual tours were assembled, under the
title of the Rivers of France, without including a single illustration
either of the Rhone or the Garonne.
The title under which the following plates are now presented to the
public, is retained merely out of respect to this habit of Turner's. Under
that title he commenced the publication, and executed the vignette for
its title-page, intending doubtless to make it worthy of taking rank with,
if not far above, the consistent and extensive series of the Southern
Coast, executed in his earlier years. But procrastination and accident
equally interfered with his purpose. The excellent engraver Mr. Lupton,
in co-operation with whom the work was undertaken, was
unfortunately also a man of genius, and seems to have been just as
capricious as Turner himself in the application of his powers to the
matter in hand. Had one of the parties in the arrangement been a mere
plodding man of business, the work would have proceeded; but
between the two men of talent it came very naturally to a stand. They
petted each other by reciprocal indulgence of delay; and at Turner's
death, the series, so magnificently announced under the title of the
Harbors of England, consisted only of twelve plates, all the less worthy
of their high-sounding title in that, while they included illustrations of
some of the least important of the watering-places, they did not include
any illustration whatever of such harbors of England as Liverpool,
Shields, Yarmouth, or Bristol. Such as they were, however, I was
requested to undertake their illustration. As the offer was made at a
moment when much nonsense, in various forms, was being written
about Turner and his works; and among the twelve plates there were
four[H] which I considered among the very finest that had been

executed from his marine subjects, I accepted the trust; partly to
prevent the really valuable series of engravings from being treated with
injustice, and partly because there were several features in them by
which I could render more intelligible some remarks I wished to make
on Turner's marine painting