214 PRÆTERITA-I

Saddleback and Ben Venue, or, less ambitious yet, to Sandgate and the Sussex Downs.¹

239. The drawings I made in 1835² were really interesting even to artists, and appeared promising enough to my father to justify him in promoting me from Mr. Runciman’s tutelage³ to the higher privileges of art-instruction. Lessons from any of the members of the Water-Colour Society cost a guinea, and six were supposed to have efficiency for the production of an adequately skilled water-colour amateur. There was, of course, no question by what master they should be given; and I know not whether papa or I most enjoyed the six hours in Newman Street: my father’s intense delight in Fielding’s work making it a real pleasure to the painter that he should stay chatting while I had my lesson. Nor was my father’s talk (if he could be got to talk) unworthy any painter’s attention, though he never put out his strength but in writing.⁴

240. I chance in good time on a letter from Northcote in 1830, showing how much value the old painter put on my father’s judgment of a piece of literary work which remains classical to this day, and is indeed the best piece of existing criticism founded on the principles of Sir Joshua’s school:-

“DEAR SIR,-I received your most kind and consoling letter, yet I was very sorry to find you had been so ill, but hope you have now recovered your health. The praise you are so good as to bestow on me and the Volume of Conversations gives me more pleasure than perhaps you apprehend, as the book was published against my consent, and, in its first appearance in the magazines, totally without my knowledge. I have done all in my power to prevent its coming before the public, because there are several hard and cruel opinions of persons that I would not have them see in a printed book; besides that, Hazlitt, although a man of real abilities, yet had a desire to give pain to others, and has also frequently exaggerated that which I had said in confidence to him.

¹ [Compare what Ruskin says in the Art of England, § 158 (Vol. XXXIII. p. 373).]

² [Several examples of them have been given in this edition: see, e.g., Vol. I. pp. 8, 32, 520.]

³ [See above, p. 76.]

⁴ [That is, in letters and diaries: see Dilecta, below, pp. 589-592.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]