XII. ROSLYN CHAPEL 217

call laudable curiosity, the more I am disposed to regard with thankfulness, and even respect, the habits which have remained with me during life, of always working resignedly at the thing under my hand till I could do it, and looking exclusively at the thing before my eyes till I could see it.

On the other hand, the Academy Turners were too far beyond all hope of imitation to disturb me, and the impressions they produced before 1836 were confused; many of them, like the Quillebœuf, or the “Keelmen heaving in coals,” being of little charm in colour; and the Fountain of Indolence, or Golden Bough,¹ perhaps seeming to me already fantastic, beside the naturalism of Landseer, and the human interest and intelligible finish of Wilkie.

243. But in 1836 Turner exhibited three pictures, in which the characteristics of his later manner were developed with his best skill and enthusiasm: Juliet and her Nurse, Rome from Mount Aventine, and Mercury and Argus. His freak in placing Juliet at Venice instead of Verona, and the mysteries of lamplight and rockets with which he had disguised Venice herself, gave occasion to an article in Blackwood’s Magazine of sufficiently telling ribaldry, expressing, with some force, and extreme discourtesy, the feelings of the pupils of Sir George Beaumont at the appearance of these unaccredited views of Nature.

The review raised me to the height of “black anger” in which I have remained pretty nearly ever since; and having by that time some confidence in my power of words, and-not merely judgment, but sincere experience-of the charm of Turner’s work, I wrote an answer to Blackwood, of which I wish I could now find any fragment.² But my father thought it right to ask Turner’s leave for its publication; it was copied in my best hand, and sent to Queen

¹ [“The Mouth of the Seine: Quillebœuf” was at the Academy in 1833; the “Keelmen” in 1835; the “Fountain of Indolence” and the “Golden Bough” in 1834.]

² [Printed in this edition: Vol. III. pp. 635-640. For particulars of the three pictures by Turner, and extracts from the article in Blackwood, see ibid., p. 636 n.]

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