It was in the year 1810 that Chantrey came first to Pimlico. He began in a very small way, with very little to do and very Poor Townshend, with all his delightful little to do it on. Now it so happens that reminiscences of Jonathan Wild, of Rane- a man may shine truly a poet (nature allagh, Vauxhall, and Hounslow, with his ways consenting) with one pen, a sheet or Lord Burleigh-like shake of the head and two of paper, and a pennyworth of ink. significant toss of cane, he has gone to the That a painter may buy at a very cheap vaults of St. Peter's, Pimlico. Poor Jerry rate both colors and canvass, but a young Abershaw had another fate, for Jerry hung sculptor cannot often afford to work in in chains, and dripped on hot Sundays, marble, and works, therefore, to a very much to the amusement of Cockney sight-great disadvantage. A true poet, without VOL. II. No. III.

the printer's aid, is a poet to few or none; the more fertile his mind in inventing and and a sculptor who cannot afford to cut his supplying wants. Wilkie's converting conceptions in marble is, like a painter, a chest of drawers into an easel, by pulling confined to chalk and outlines. It was so out one of the drawers and resting the head with Chantrey before his name was known. of his canvass against the cornice, is, when His bust of Horn Tooke (one of his very compared with the youthful inventions of early works) he was too poor to have cut others, a silly expedient. The person or in marble. It was sent to the Royal Acad-parties who told the story of Chantrey's emy Exhibition in plaster, and though butter-modelling would prefer the juvenile Nollekens gave it one of his emphatic words of approbation, it was comparatively lost to the world, for the multitude of visitors adopt as their rule in going the round of the sculpture-room to look only at such works as are in marble. When in plaster, they seem to the ignorant many to lack the seal of approbation, which the transfer from plaster to marble would seem to imply. It is not enough to suffer from the opaque material they are in, but they must lie under the double disadvantage of a vulgar prejudice.

We shall not stay to inquire whether marriage made Flaxman an artist, or unmade him, as Reynolds thought and told him; it is enough for us that marriage made Chantrey, for he got money with his wife, could afford to wait for patrons, and had the means of purchasing marble. The first use he made of his wife's money was to transfer the head of Horne Tooke to marble. What was inimitable in clay was matchless in its new semi-transparent material. All the cunning and sagacity of the man are there. The eyes, colorless though they are, look as if scanning you from head to foot. There is no escape from the penetrating survey he is making of you. It was quite a new head in marble, and, if the reason is ever asked of the Royal Academy why they permit the exhibition of the same work twice, in plaster and in marble, this bust of Horne Tooke, if the plaster still exists, is more than sufficient to warrant them in adhering to so excellent a rule.

It is told of Chantrey that he had, when a boy, a greater difficulty to conquer in becoming an artist than the want of marble. It is said he was without clay, and that his first work was made in the butter he was to sell at Sheffield for his father, a farmer near Norton, in Derbyshire. Now, for our own part, we do not believe one word of this; nay, we have the very best authority for saying that it is not in part only, but altogether a lie. When a man dies there are fifty, and more, ready to recollect instances without number of precocious genius in the mighty dead; the greater the man, the greater the obstacles he overcame

labor, if it ever existed, to a better posi tion in the rooms than they would give to the clay of John Rennie or the marble of Sir Walter Scott. We know that Allan Cunningham said the story was a mere pas try-cook's invention, not only untrue, but unlikely.

It has been affirmed, both in conversation and in print, that our young sculptor had other obstacles to overcome than the want of clay or marble; he had, as an apprentice to a carver in wood, to conquer the dislike of his master to his working, even in his leisure hours, in any other line than the mystery he was bound to learn and his mas ter to teach him. This master's name was Ramsay, and he lived in Sheffield. He has been long dead, but has a son still alive, who denies, we understand, that his father discountenanced in any way the juvenile efforts of young Chantrey. Some disagree. ment, however, we have been well assured, took place, and that Chantrey purchased up the remainder of his time from Ramsay before he had been well three years in his service. The poet Rogers has a table actually carved by Sir Francis. Our great sculptor recognized the table when his fame was established, and pleased the poet with the recognition.

Chantrey was designed by his father for the law; accident made him a carver in wood, poverty a painter, and his own ge nius a sculptor. The sight of some figures in the shop window of Ramsay attracted his attention on the very day he was to commence his study of the law. He stopped to examine them, and became irrecov erably a sculptor. Cowley was made a poet, and Reynolds a painter, much in the same way. Allan Cunningham had a por trait in oil of Chantrey from Chantrey's own hand. It was clever and characteristic, a good deal in the manner of Opie-the re sult of a morning's work, when disappointed in a sitter. He had been a second Sir Joshua if he had not been Sir Francis Chantrey, His tact and talent had made him a good country attorney-a Morant, a Gillow, or a Snell, or any other respectable upholsterer, but his own genius made him the first and best sculptor of his age.

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He lost his father when but a mere boy, other Academicians not a little by saying, and his mother married again, much to the that Fuseli was the only decent scholar the dissatisfaction of Francis, their only child. Academy ever had, and that he, indeed, He still, however, continued to entertain a was only a scholar among painters: "Parr filial affection for her, and, though she lived said so," he would add, "and so did Dr. to a great age, she died without the sincere Burney." Sir Martin Shee, in one of his forgiveness of her son, who in all his letters, lectures, or addresses, to the students of and on all his letters, addressed her as Mrs. the Royal Academy, on the distribution of Chantrey, never recognizing her, even in the prizes, raised a question very easily conversation, by her own name. No one has answered, whether Raphael or Reynolds said a word of the cruelties of his step-fa- had painted one whit better with a Winklether, or of any thing injurious to his charac- man, a Walpole, or a Cunningham, to adter. It was the act of his mother that he nev- vise him? At the mention of the name of er overlooked-a step which occasioned, we Cunningham (and Allan was present), a may little doubt, the clause in his will in murmur of approbation ran through the which he ties down Lady Chantrey to a wid-room; but Academical brows began to lowowhood for life. Chantrey always thought er, and Shee was taxed next day, in a counit as something sinful in the widow of Napo- cil summoned for the purpose, with breakleon to marry, and was heard to commend ing one great rule of the Royal Academy, with a shrug of approbation the reply made the rule which prohibits any allusion whatby the great Duchess of Marlborough, That ever to a living individual. Sir Martin she, the widow of John Churchill, would Shee, a poet, got with a good grace out of never consent to become the wife of this seeming difficulty. "I made no referanother. "May a Scotch ensign get her," ence," said Sir Martin, "to Allan Cunningsaid Vanbrugh, in an angry mood. When, at a dinner party in Chantrey's own house, one of the company was heard to allude to the widow of Sir Philip Sydney becoming the wife of the noble Devereux, Earl of Essex, Chantrey, a most attentive listener, did not seem to disapprove; but, when her third marriage was mentioned as a piece of history (for he was no great reader), his face blackened with horror at such forgetfulness of the dead. If our great sculptor had read more, he had thought less of so common an occurrence in the pages of biographical history. But Chantrey was no great reader, and if he had been Rajah of Lahore, or king in Oude, he had burnt his widow on his own funeral pile. It is the Chantrey's excellencies, obvious as they fault, indeed, of all our English artists, that were to the most common observer, were they paint too much, and read and reflect too not at first recognized beyond the discernlittle. Of all classes of men of genius they ing few or the then limited circle of his are the worst informed. The late Sir own private friends. The Royal Academy George Beaumont was always urging Wil- opened its eyes unwillingly to his merits, "You can never have for between 1804, when he exhibited in read too much," wrote Sir George; "War- Somerset House, and 1817, when his burton, with all his reading, had read but a "Sleeping Children" moved the hearts and tithe of what was worth reading in his own fired the tastes of all, there were thirteen days. Our stock of literature has since years of struggle, in which his talents found amazingly increased, and a mere spare a very slender meed of approbation. He hour, or half-an-hour reader can, even after was for many years an inveterate anti-Acaa Methuselah-like length of existence, have demy man, and it is but too true that his read but little." Of Chantrey's great rival, genius forced its own way into the Acadeor predecessor, in busts, Old Nollekens, it is my, and that before he had attained the entold, that the annual extent of his reading vied esquireship, and its further appendage was the annual Academy catalogue; of of R. A., he had ranked as one of the very President West, that he never read more first sculptors of his country, and one of than the passage he had to illustrate. Allan the most original of our island artists. His Cunningham used to vex Chantrey and rise into reputation and Academical honors

kie to read more.

ham; I referred, indeed, to a Cunningham, but my reference was to the Cunningham who wrote upon Shakspeare." Chantrey and the whole council were at once satisfied with the imaginary commentator, and Shee, no doubt, chuckled at home over their ignorant credulity, as Chantrey did over his friend Cunningham, much to Allan's amusement, not his amazement. Allan knew too well the measure and value of the President's approval, and the extent of Academical ignorance. "He supports his want of acquired knowledge by keeping good company," says Evelyn of the great Duke of Marlborough. How true of Sir Francis Chantrey!

was slow beyond example. The modest upon the mind of the artist employed, and, Wilkie found a friend in Sir George Beau- in fact, that the conception and sentiment mont before he had been a year in London, of the group were supplied to the artist in but Chantrey was an Academician before the melancholy fates of the two sisters. that true judge and universal patron of The lady's name was Mrs. Robinson. genius had done more than acknowledge his bow as he met him in the street. Chantrey was a proud man, he has been heard to say, when Sir George Beaumont first set foot within his studio.

The commission given, Chantrey set off to his friend Stothard, and engaged that poetic artist to make two or three sketches of two young girls lying asleep in each other's arms. Stothard made the necessary sketches, and received some fifteen guineas for an evening's labor. From these sketches Chantrey then began his own sketch in clay. He borrowed a bit from one, a bit from another, and the air and position from a third; imbued them all with his own good taste, and composed, after a fashion of his own, the lovely group that lends so great an attraction to Lichfield Cathedral. We have seen the several sketches made by Stothard for this monument; we have seen, moreover, Chantrey's first result, made from an attentive consideration of Stothard's indications, and we

The two "Sleeping Children" made a stir in the dominions of arts: the group was something new in English Sculpture, so unlike the epigrammatic conceits of the great Roubiliac, or the classic conceptions of the still greater Flaxman-a work at once domestic and poetic, having its origin in our very homes, and making its way to every heart. Thousands of eyes have moistened at the sight of this lovely and affecting group; thousands of tongues have dwelt upon its excellencies, and the pen of Mr. Bowles has poetized its tranquil pathos. Yet we have been told, and are told now, that the merit of the work belongs to Sto-have, as it were, the monument at Lichfield thard, and that Chantrey only turned to clay and marble a sketch which that graceful artist had drawn, with some care and much feeling, upon paper.

It is a common cry nowadays, that whatever is excellent is not original. That art can seize upon no new postures, or contrive no new sentiment, that the germ and substance of every thing new has its source and existence in something old. But this cry was found of no avail with the Sleeping Children" of Sir Francis Chantrey; and the merit of a work which all conspired to praise, envy made over to another. We have something to reveal on this point, at once new and interesting.

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before our eyes at this very moment. In Stothard's sketches (they still exist), the children lie very much as they lie in the finished marble, the attitudes of both are very similar; and any one who has seen the monument, and who was totally in the dark about the circumstances we are here relating, would say, we make little doubt, that these sketches were either Chantrey's first conceptions, or some young artist's hasty recollections of the finished marble. Perhaps we shall not go far wrong when we say that the commission gave the first idea of this monument, that Stothard supplied the leading sentiment and story, and that Chantrey, by elongating the figures, adding repose to the action, and all the graces of execution in which he was so great a master, completed the much-talkedof and much-admired monument at Lichfield to the two children. The snowdrops which the youngest had plucked, and which remain undropped from her hand, was a touch of poetic beauty, for which Chantrey was indebted to his friend and assistant Allan Cunningham. Chantrey, indeed, had many hints of a like nature from the same poetic quarter. Chantrey could adopt, if he could not conceive.

Two young and lovely girls, the one about eleven, and the other thirteen years of age, came both about the same time to unnatural ends. The younger, we believe, was accidentally burned to death, and the elder, soon after, when in the midst of health, ruptured a blood-vessel, and the two, who had lain together in the same bed when alive, were laid together, as it were, in one another's arms in the same grave. When time had lessened the severity of her grief, the widowed, and now childless mother, anxious to erect a monument over the grave of her children, visits the studio of Chan- It is not our intention in this paper to trey, and, pleased with what she saw around particularize the more general and wellher, commissions the monument from the known events of Chantrey's life, but to give young sculptor. We are thus particular, such sketches and recollections of our great because we wish to urge that the circum- sculptor as a long acquaintance can readily stances under which the monument was supply. No one knew him intimately but commissioned naturally forced themselves | Allan Cunningham, and he is gone, but not,