CHAPTER XXIX.
OPINIONS: NOTES ON REYNOLDS. 1820. [ÆT. 63.]
From internal evidence I judge 1820, or thereabout, to have been the date of the Notes to Reynold's Discourses, already referred to. The present, therefore, is a fit place to give the reader a taste of them, "eminently characteristic as they are of the vehement, one-sided enthusiast. In the same indignant strain as that in which the Notes began, commenting on the patronage of his day, is written on the fly-leaf the following curious doggrel:—
Advice of the Popes who succeeded the Age of Raphael.
Degrade first the Arts if you would mankind degrade;
Hire idiots to paint with cold light and hot shade;
Give high price for the worst, leave the best in disgrace,
And with labour of idleness fill every place.
In plain prose he asks, 'Who will dare to say that "polite Art" is encouraged, or either wished or tolerated, in a nation where the Society of Arts suffered Barry to give them his labour for nothing? A Society composed of the flower of the English nobility and gentry, suffering an artist to starve, while he really supported what they, under pretence of encouraging, were endeavouring to depress! Barry told me that while he did that,'—painted, namely, the
