BURNING BANKNOTES.

287

When the money

trials of effect for a large sum. (15007. I believe) was paid, the old engraver wrung his hands, and, with tears in his eyes, exclaimed: "Why, good God, I have been burning banknotes all my life." I have heard that many of these proofs, worth large prices, had been used to light the fire.

Mr. Ruskin, who dwells much and truly on the hopelessness and sadness of Turner's mind, says that sunset and twilight, and on ruins too, were his favourite effects. His later drawings were chiefly made to record human power victorious or conquering. Ruined fortresses and mountain-roads were always his special delight. Speaking of the "Liber," he shows that a "feeling of decay and humiliation gives solemnity to all its simplest subjects, even to his view of daily labour. In the pastoral by the brook-side, the child is in rags and lame. In the Hedging and Ditching, the labourer is mean and sickly, the woman slatternly. The Water-mill is a ruin; the Peat-bog dreary.

"Of human pride," says this wonderful writer, "see what records: Morpeth tower, roofless and black. Gate of Old Winchelsea wall, the flock of sheep driven round it, not through it; and Rivaulx choir; and Kirkstall crypt; and Dunstanborough, far above the sea; and Chepstow, with arrowy light through traceried windows; and Lindisfarne, with failing height of wasted shaft and wall; and, last and sweetest, Raglan, in utter solitude, amid the wild wood."

Mr. Wornum says of the "Liber," "No proof set of the plates was ever issued; but at the completion of

the series Turner arranged them in sets and sold them, in 1820, for fourteen guineas. In a set so purchased by Mr. John Pye, the engraver, the earlier plates were invariably bad; the middle ones tolerably good; but towards the end several were proof impressions, and in an excellent state. Since Turner's death, a single good proof has sold for as much as Turner charged for the entire series."

The inference is that the first plates sold best, and that Turner, either from slovenliness or fraud, shuffled together the different states, so that no one could get a perfect copy without buying several copies.

Turner had an awful sense of the sorrow of life and the omnipresence of Death. "There is no form of violent death," says Mr. Ruskin, "which he has not painted; and the noblest of all the plates of the "Liber Studiorum," except the "Via Mala," is one engraved with his own hand, of a single sailor, yet living, dashed in the night against a granite coast, his body and outstretched hands just seen in the trough of a mountain wave, between it and the overhanging wall of rock, hollow, polished, and pale with dreadful cloud and grasping foam."

This is one of the most imaginative of all Turner's figures; and in its extreme despair and touching hopelessness it always strongly reminds me of Cowper's sad but beautiful poem "The Castaway."

CHAPTER XVI.

TURNER'S ART LIFE. (PART II.)

IN 1807 Turner exhibited at the Royal Academy his "Blacksmith's Shop," a picture painted in rivalry of Wilkie's "Village Politicians," exhibited in 1806. It was repurchased by the painter, at Lord de Tabley's sale in 1827, for 1477. Turner called it "A Butcher disputing with a country Blacksmith on the price of iron and the charge made for shoeing his pony." In 1806 Turner had exhibited the "Falls of Schaffhausen," and a view of "Pembroke Castle," at the Academy, and at the British Institution the "Garden of the Hesperides." In his unfinished sketch called the "Harvest Home," years after, Turner again attempted to rival Wilkie's "Village Festival." The figures in the "Shop" are very good, and the fowls, shovel, butcher's tray, &c., are painted with admirable Dutch truth. It has been often said that Turner made this picture a mass of flame colour to destroy the effect of Wilkie's "Blind Fiddler," exhibited this year, and hung between the "Forge" and the "Sun rising through Vapour;" but the "Forge" was No. 135, and the "Blind Fiddler" 147, the other picture No. 162. The scene is a sunshine interior, and there is scarcely any red visible in it. The "Sun rising through

Vapour" was one of the pictures Turner left to the National Gallery on condition it was hung between two of Claude's.

Before 1810 (1807 or 1808) Turner painted the "Wreck of the Minotaur." That admirable writer on art, Mr. Tom Taylor, reviewing this picture when at Manchester, with nineteen others of Turner's, praises the run of the vast waves, the helpless welter of the raft, the cork-like tossing of the boat on the crest of the breaker, the blinding fall of rain and spray and sea, and the storm cloud through which the wrecked hull looms desolately. But in this painting-Turner was still thinking of Vandervelde—it is all grey, where years later there would have been green blackness and creamy foam. There are few reflections, and nobody seems wet.

But even at this period Turner is most varied in the character of his seas-in their character and colour, according to the weather, wind, and depth of water.

The "Saltash" is a painting of this period-perhaps 1806 or 1807-from the half-effaced inscription on the brick wall to the right, "England expects every man to do his duty"-merely a landing-place and shed, a quiet river margin, some lounging soldiers, sailors, fishwomen, and porters, and a passage for carts— steeped in a Cuyp-like afternoon sunshine. The word "Beer" is conspicuous on a signboard.

The "Highland Bridge" and "Old Margate Pier are of this period. The Margate picture represents fishing-boats arriving and unloading at a seaport, and fishermen cleaning and selling fish. The tide is low, and there is a guardship, a two-decker, in the distance.

DEATH OF NELSON.

291

About this scene there is all the repose of middle life. The painter repurchased it at the Tabley sale for 5197., being just 15l. more than he had sold it for. It is a sultry day, with a gentle swell and a sunny ripple on the water. The fishing-boats are high and dry; the fish on the beach are very beautiful and pearly in colour.

In 1808 Turner exhibited his "Death of Nelson" at the British Institution. The battle, October 21st, 1805, is represented with sailor-like knowledge as seen from the mizen starboard shrouds of the Victory. To the right is the Redoubtable, and beyond that the Téméraire, the Bucentaur, and the San Trinidada. Nelson is just falling, and being struck by a bullet from a rifleman in the mizen fore-jib of the Redoubtable, is being carried down from the quarterdeck. The midshipman who afterwards shot the rifleman, is preparing to fire. The "portrait" figures are rather shaky.

The Victory is just discharging her starboard guns into the hull of the Redoubtable; the painter has represented her mainmast as still sound, when, in fact, it was partly shot away at the commencement of the action.

Turner was doubtless at Margate on the 22nd of December, when the Victory arrived there with the body of Nelson. Eventually she became the guardship at Portsmouth, and is now the flag-ship of the port-admiral. The painter took a deep interest in all naval matters, and a victory like Trafalgar must have stirred him to the very heart.

Probably about the same year (1808) Turner painted