The Life, Studies, and Works of Benjamin West, Esq. | Page 7

are
unfavourable, Nature instructs them to draw assistance immediately
from herself, by endowing them with the faculty of perceiving a fitness
and correspondence in things which no force of reasoning, founded on
the experience of others, could enable them to discover. This aptness is,
perhaps, the surest indication of the possession of original talent. There
are minds of a high class to which the world, in the latitude of its
expressions, often ascribes genius, but which possess only a superior
capacity for the application of other men's notions, unconnected with
any unusual portion of the inventive faculty.
In the following year Mr. Pennington, a merchant of Philadelphia, who
was related to the West family, came to pay a visit to Mr. West. This

gentleman was also a member of the Society of Friends, and, though
strictly attentive to the peculiar observances of the sect, was a man of
pleasant temper and indulgent dispositions. He noticed the drawings of
birds and flowers round the room, unusual ornaments in the house of a
Quaker; and heard with surprise that they were the work of his little
cousin. Of their merit as pictures he did not pretend to judge, but he
thought them wonderful productions for a boy only entering on his
eighth year, and being told with what imperfect materials they had been
executed, he promised to send the young Artist a box of paints and
pencils from the city. On his return home he fulfilled his engagement,
and at the bottom of the box placed several pieces of canvass prepared
for the easel, and six engravings by Grevling.
The arrival of the box was an æra in the history of the Painter and his
art. It was received with feelings of delight which only a similar mind
can justly appreciate. He opened it, and in the colours, the oils, and the
pencils, found all his wants supplied, even beyond his utmost
conceptions. But who can describe the surprise with which he beheld
the engravings; he who had never seen any picture but his own
drawings, nor knew that such an art as the Engraver's existed! He sat
over the box with enamoured eyes; his mind was in a flutter of joy; and
he could not refrain from constantly touching the different articles, to
ascertain that they were real. At night he placed the box on a chair near
his bed, and as often as he was overpowered by sleep, he started
suddenly and stretched out his hand to satisfy himself that the
possession of such a treasure was not merely a pleasing dream. He rose
at the dawn of day, and carried the box to a room in the garret, where
he spread a canvass, prepared a pallet, and immediately began to
imitate the figures in the engravings. Enchanted by his art he forgot the
school hours, and joined the family at dinner without mentioning the
employment in which he had been engaged. In the afternoon he again
retired to his study in the garret; and for several days successively he
thus withdrew and devoted himself to painting. The schoolmaster,
observing his absence, sent to ask the cause of it. Mrs. West, affecting
not to take any particular notice of the message, recollected that she had
seen Benjamin going up stairs every morning, and suspecting that the
box occasioned his neglect of the school, went to the garret, and found

him employed on the picture. Her anger was appeased by the sight of
his performance, and changed to a very different feeling. She saw, not a
mere copy, but a composition from two of the engravings. With no
other guide than that delicacy of sight which renders the Painter's eye,
with respect to colours, what the Musician's ear is with respect to
sounds, he had formed a picture as complete, in the scientific
arrangement of the tints, notwithstanding the necessary imperfection of
the pencilling, as the most skilful Artist could have painted, assisted by
the precepts of Newton. She kissed him with transports of affection,
and assured him that she would not only intercede with his father to
pardon him for having absented himself from school, but would go
herself to the master, and beg that he might not be punished. The
delightful encouragement which this well-judged kindness afforded to
the young Painter may be easily imagined; but who will not regret that
the mother's over-anxious admiration would not suffer him to finish the
picture, lest he should spoil what was already in her opinion perfect,
even with half the canvass bare? Sixty-seven years afterwards the
writer of these Memoirs had the gratification to see this piece in the
same room with the sublime painting of "Christ Rejected," on which
occasion the Painter declared to him that there were inventive touches
of art