him at the same time not to let ‘benevolent wishes for his welfare induce a more favourable opinion of his works than they deserved.’ His marriage in the following year, and the birth in rapid succession of three children, the eldest and youngest daughters, and the second the future Lord Lyndhurst, postponed for a time the thought of the visit to Europe. This could not be thought of until money had been earned by his pencil for the expenses of his tour and the maintenance of his family during his absence. The prospect of a troubled future for America, resulting from its uneasy relations with the mother country, was no doubt present to Copley's mind when he left Boston to cross the Atlantic in June 1774, leaving his family behind him. A cordial welcome greeted him in England. Strange (afterwards Sir Robert), the great engraver, and Sir Joshua Reynolds called on him. West took him to see all that was best in art in London, and, along with Sir Joshua, was at pains to find sitters for him during the brief interval between his arrival in London and his departure for the continent. He began portraits of the king and queen for Governor Wentworth. ‘I might,’ he writes to his wife from Rome (26 Oct. 1774), ‘have begun many pictures in London if I had pleased, and several persons are waiting my return to employ me.’ But it was all-important for him to make his visit to the galleries of the continent without loss of time. The relations between England and America were becoming more strained every day, and he could not say how soon he might have to decide between returning to Boston and bringing over his family to England. Leaving England on 21 Aug. he reached Rome in October by way of Lyons, Marseilles, Genoa, Pisa, and Florence. A Mr. Carter, an artist, who could speak French and Italian, which Copley could not, accompanied him. Carter, says Allan Cunningham, was ‘a captious, cross-grained, and self-conceited person,’ and in a journal of his tour which he kept he tried to present Copley in a most disadvantageous light, as selfish and stiff-necked in his opinions. Copley, on the other hand, had a mean opinion of Carter's abilities and breeding, and in later life spoke of him as ‘a sort of snail which crawled over a man in his sleep, and left its slime and no more.’ In person Carter described Copley—and, allowing for a tinge of ill-nature, his description may be trusted—as ‘very thin, pale, a little pock-marked, prominent eyebrows, small eyes, which after fatigue seemed a day's march in his head.’ Copley's letters from Italy to his wife have been preserved, and they may be more safely relied on for a picture of his mind and character than Carter's splenetic caricature. ‘Could I address you,’ he writes from Geneva (8 Oct. 1774), ‘by any name more dear than that of wife, I should delight in using it when I write; but how tender soever the name may be, it is insufficient to convey the attachment I have for you.’ His dominant thought is to get through the studies he has set before him, that their separation may be as short as possible, ‘for till we are together I have as little happiness as yourself. As soon as possible you shall know what my prospects are in England, and then you will be able to determine whether it is best for you to go there or for me to return to America.’ Meanwhile revolution in America had become imminent, and it appears by a letter from Rome (26 Oct. 1774) that Copley had heard from his wife that things were in such a state that she would not regret leaving Boston. This, he says, will determine him to stay in England, where he has no doubt he will find as much to do as in Boston and on better terms. One pang he has, the loss of his property in Boston. ‘I cannot count it anything now; I believe I shall sink it all. … I wish I had sold my whole place; I should then have been worth something. I do not know now that I have a shilling in the world.’ His deep anxiety about his home only quickened his study of the triumphs of art around him. ‘I shall always,’ he writes (Rome, 5 Nov. 1774), ‘enjoy a satisfaction from this tour which I could not have had if I had not made it. I know the extent of the arts, to what length they have been carried, and I feel more confidence in what I do myself than before I came.’ The next letter from his wife satisfied him that England must be his future home. The next few months were devoted to the study of the best works of art in Rome, Naples, Bologna, Parma, Modena, and Venice. With little to learn as a colourist, having already established a distinct and admirable style of his own, his attention was chiefly directed to the masterpieces of ancient sculpture, with a view to correcting his deficiencies as a draughtsman. As he had not time to make all the studies he wished, he purchased casts of a few of the finest statues in Rome, ‘for even in Rome,’ he says truly, ‘the number of the very excellent is not great.’ The casts arrived in England a mass of fragments, having been badly packed, a disappointment which Lord Lyndhurst used to say his father never ceased to mourn throughout his life. War had now broken out in America. Copley had all along maintained that this would be the result of the attempt to tax the colony, and he was
