CHAPTER V

‘SIMPLE NATURE’--1808-1813

The works of this period an important yet generally neglected aspect of Turner’s art--Turner’s classification of ‘Pastoral’ as opposed to ‘Elegant Pastoral’--The Arcadian idyll of the mid-eighteenth century--The first ‘Pastoral’ subjects in ‘Liber’--‘Windmill and Lock’--The capture of the Danish Fleet in 1807--Turner’s visit to Portsmouth--His return journey--‘Hedging and Ditching’--An attempt to define the mood of pictures like ‘The Frosty Morning,’ ‘Windsor,’ etc.--Distinction between mood and character.

The phase of Turner’s work which we are now to consider seems to me one to which the critics have hardly done justice. The supreme beauty of two of the pictures of this group has certainly been recognised--I allude to the ‘Trout Stream’ and Lady Wantage’s ‘Walton Bridges,’ but these works have been treated mainly on their individual merits, instead of in their connection with a clearly-marked and most significant aspect of the artist’s genius. Chronologically, this period ranges from about the year 1808 to 1813, and it includes, in addition to the two works just mentioned, the ‘Windsor,’ ‘Abingdon,’ ‘Kingston Bank,’ ‘Frosty Morning,’ ‘Union of the Thames and Isis’ and ‘Sandbank with Gipsies,’ all in the National Gallery, as well as Sir Frederick Cook’s ‘Windmill and Lock’ and Mr. Orrock’s ‘Walton Bridges.’ These works all strike me as characterised by a certain mood or standpoint which possesses the profoundest significance for modern art,--a mood, moreover, which has not yet, to my knowledge, been satisfactorily analysed, and which Turner could never afterwards recall in all its essential beauty, though he frequently made the attempt.

I must confess that in spite of all my efforts I am quite unable to find a term that will adequately characterise this phase of Turner’s art. Turner’s own classification of such subjects as those mentioned above is ‘Pastoral,’ as distinguished from the ‘Elegant Pastoral.’ But this description is inadequate, because it seems to refer simply to the objects contained in the works, while it is exactly the mood or emotional standpoint from which the subject-matter is treated that seems to me all-important. The contemporary term for this kind of work, and one which Turner sometimes used himself, was ‘Simple Nature,’ and this description, though inadequate enough, is perhaps as good as any other we might hit upon. It indicated, at least, an antagonism to any artificial way of treating natural scenes, and suggested a certain unsophisticated plainness and directness of approach, and these qualities are certainly contained in the complex and subtle conception we are in search of. It is, then, as a painter of ‘Simple Nature’ that we have now to consider our subject.

In externals, this phase of Turner’s art is occupied with scenes of ordinary rural life; it deals with the country as the home and working-place of the peasantry. This gives us the distinction between the ‘Pastoral’ and the ‘Elegant Pastoral’ subjects in the ‘Liber,’ the elegant pastorals dealing with the country as the imaginative home and background of the stock figures of conventionally imaginative art. The elegant pastoral subjects are generally peopled with nymphs, classical shepherds and shepherdesses, goddesses and peacocks, while the pastoral subjects which are not elegant are peopled with real labouring men and women and unideal-looking children.

But the external subject-matter of a work of art tells us very little by itself. The important point is the universal which binds these objects together or organises them into an individual conception. We must think of our group of pictures as falling within the larger class of strictly pastoral subjects, but characterised by a special method of treatment and conception. One way of approaching this special conception will be to mark off a few of the pastoral subjects in the ‘Liber’ which do not fall within it. And this is all the easier because Turner’s first pastoral subject in the ‘Liber’ is conventional and empty, and he only gradually worked himself into a conception of the full possibilities of the category. That is to say, he first took up this form of art in a

casual and external way, and then gradually took possession of it and mastered it.

The first three plates in the ‘Liber’ are classified as ‘Pastoral,’ ‘Elegant Pastoral,’ and ‘Marine.’ When we compare the marine subject (the so-called ‘Flint Castle,’ which we now know to have been a scene on the French coast[14]) with the two pastoral subjects, we cannot but be struck with the disparity between the two classes of subjects. The marine subject is vigorous and veracious, the pastoral subjects unreal and conventionally poetical. This point of view is in keeping with the conception of the elegant pastoral, but ‘The Bridge and Cows’ (R. 2)--the pastoral subject--is as gentle and pretty as a picture in an idyll of Gessner or Thomson. This, indeed, represents Turner’s point of departure as a painter of rural subjects--the standpoint of the sentimental, affected, and unconvincing Arcadian idyll of the middle of the eighteenth century.

The ‘Straw-yard,’ the second pastoral subject in the ‘Liber,’ strikes me as a cross between a Gainsborough and a Teniers. Gainsborough’s influence is noticeable in the landscape, while the ungainly horses, the awkward men and clumsy farm implements are in the spirit of Dutch realism. These hints of the plainness and toughness of the marine subjects suggest what Turner will do when he feels equally at home in rural subjects, but at present we have merely two incompatible points of view in arbitrary juxtaposition. ‘Pembury Mill,’ the third pastoral, is rather more homogeneous in intention. It is a scene of cheerful industry and plenty, the noise of the millstone mingling with the cooing of pigeons, and lush leaves growing beside the water-wheel. It is a pretty subject, while no conscious attempts have been made to prettify or blink the actual facts of the case. The ‘Farm-Yard with the Cock’ (R. 17) still belongs to the eighteenth-century idyll. It is a pleasing combination of Gainsborough and Morland, or perhaps an echo of Wheatley. In the ‘Juvenile Tricks’ (R. 22)[15] Turner’s bent towards homely realism is clearly marked, but we do not get definitively away from the eighteenth century till we come to the ‘Windmill and Lock’ (R. 27).[16] Here we are in an entirely different world from that of Arcadian poetry. We have now put away childish things, and are face to face with the big real world in which man earns his bread with the sweat of his brow; in which men and women labour and sin, sorrow and repent. It is indeed the real world, the world of common perception and common experience, yet transfigured with the solemn glow of the truest and profoundest poetry.

The engraving of the ‘Windmill and Lock’ was published in June, 1811, but the picture and drawing were made some time before this date. In the part of the ‘Liber’ published immediately before the one which contained this plate, there was a plate of ‘Hind Head Hill’ (R. 25), which bears the date of 1st January, 1811. This subject was sketched in November 1807. It is therefore probable that the two drawings were made soon afterwards, let us say in 1808.

The period of the inception of ‘Hind Head Hill,’ then, marks the commencement of the era of Turner’s deeper and more solemn conception of the poetry of rural life. This subject itself, though classified in the ‘Liber’ as ‘mountainous,’ belongs to all intents and purposes to the phase of art which we are now studying. The bare hills dotted with sheep, with the murderer’s corpse creaking upon the distant gibbet, are quite in harmony with the mood of Wordsworth’s _Lyrical Ballads_. In the same sketch-book are also the first ideas of no less than three other ‘Liber’ subjects, all conceived in the same mood of spiritual exaltation, and all sketched during the same journey from Portsmouth to London.

The events connected with this journey were of a nature calculated to throw Turner’s mind out of its ordinary habits and thoughts, to carry him ‘out of himself,’ and to prepare him for seeing the familiar scenes of everyday life in a fresh light. These events have therefore a special interest for us in this connection.

In May 1807 the Prince Regent of Portugal warned the Prince of Wales that Napoleon was on the point of invading England with the Portuguese and Danish fleets, and that the Emperor of Russia had bound himself by secret articles in the Treaty of Tilsit to support him in this measure. The ministry were informed of the plot, and Canning lost no time in dealing with the situation. An envoy was sent to the Crown Prince of Denmark at Kiel, with the demand that the Danish navy should be delivered over to England, to be taken care of in British ports, and restored at the end of the war. The demand was, of course, indignantly refused. But the situation was so serious that the ministry felt compelled to order the seizing of the Danish fleet, if it was not lent quietly. Denmark held the keys of the Baltic. Napoleon’s troops were ready to overrun it at a moment’s notice, and seize the fleet and all the naval stores, all that he wanted, in fact, for his attack on England. In securing the Danish fleet, the English then were simply taking it from Napoleon, and were merely acting for the purpose of self-preservation. By the 1st of September the French had occupied Stralsund. Copenhagen was immediately bombarded, and on the 8th the British entered the city, and the navy and arsenal were surrendered.

How this blow affected Napoleon is shown from a passage in Fouché’s _Memoirs_, published in 1824. ‘About that time it was,’ says Fouché, ‘that we learned the success of the attack upon Copenhagen by the English, which was the first derangement of the secret stipulations of Tilsit, by virtue of which the Danish fleet was to be placed at the disposal of France. Since the death of Paul I., I never saw Napoleon give himself up to such violent transports of passion. That which astounded him most in that vigorous enterprise was the promptitude with which the English ministry took their resolution.’ (Quoted in Miss Martineau’s _History of England_, 1800-1815, p. 283). At the time the mind of the public was profoundly stirred by this event. But the victors had almost brought the Danish ships within sight of England before the news of the frustration of Napoleon’s plans was made public. Turner must have been as excited as any one, for he set off immediately to Portsmouth, to see the victors sail into the harbour with their prizes and to celebrate the occasion in his own way.

When Turner left London his sketch-books as a rule bear witness of the fact. In the ‘Spithead’ sketch-book there is no record of the journey down from London. The first thirty pages are taken up with sketches of the movements of vessels in Portsmouth harbour, on one of them being a sketch of a boat’s crew recovering an anchor. In the following May, Turner included in his one-man show at his studio in Queen Anne Street West, an unfinished picture ‘of the Danish ships which were seized at Copenhagen, entering Portsmouth Harbour’ (_Review of Publications of Art_, No. 2, June 1, 1808, p. 167). In the foreground a ‘packet with soldiers on board’ is mentioned, and ‘two boats toward the left hand corner of the picture, one of which is heaving or letting go an anchor.’ The whole description, and these details in particular, prove beyond a doubt that this was the picture which, when finished, was exhibited in the following year (1809), at the Royal Academy, under the title of ‘Spithead: Boat’s Crew recovering an Anchor,’ and which hangs now in the National Gallery under this name. The change of title was most probably due to prudential considerations, as, after the first revulsion of popular feeling, the ministry had to endure considerable obloquy on account of this action, Napoleon’s intention of invading the country as well as the existence of the secret articles of the Treaty of Tilsit being stoutly denied, and the government being pledged not to reveal the source of the information on which they had acted.

Our immediate interest in this event is with the effect produced on Turner’s mind by the scenes which he had witnessed in and around Portsmouth. The sight of the united English and Danish fleets was one calculated to stir Turner’s imagination profoundly. The artist’s sensitive nature must also have been deeply affected by contact with the excited and jubilant populace, and with the sailors and fighting men upon whose individual exertions the safety of the country depended.

Such moments of national excitement tend inevitably to dwarf the petty and merely particular interests and prejudices of the individual. The substantive interests of the community, the universal forces that move men and hold them together, then present themselves in all their stark reality and overwhelming importance to every heart and mind. In such a mood, with a mind humbled and humanised, Turner set out to return to London.

As we turn over the leaves of the ‘Spithead’ sketch-book we can see clearly that the sights of the common round of rural life which greeted the artist after he had left Portsmouth behind, had gained a new interest and significance for him, by contrast with the stirring scenes he had just witnessed. He is no sooner clear

of the town than the groups of trees and the peaceful stretch of fields make their tranquillising influence felt. Several pages of sketches remind me forcibly of the scenery of ‘The Frosty Morning.’ Then we find groups of farm hands resting from their labour, some carts and horses, ploughing scenes, a study of horses and pigs, and then the hurried scribble reproduced in Plate XXV., the germ from which the beautiful ‘Hedging and Ditching’ design in the ‘Liber’ was developed. Then come several Hind Head sketches, and before the hill is out of sight, comes the original sketch of another ‘Liber’ subject, the solemn and tender ‘Water Mill’ (R. 37). After this we stop to watch the blacksmith at work, and peep into some cottages, barns, etc. To eke out his hasty hieroglyphs Turner frequently adds a few explanatory words. On the margin of one sketch we read ‘Woman frying. Boy looking. Children at Tub, a girl beating the barrel, etc.’; and on another ‘W.’ (short for woman) ‘cutting Turnips. Interior of a Barn. Cows eating at the Entrance, etc.’ And before we get quite to the end of the book come four sketches of St. Catherine’s Hill, near Guildford, one of which went to the making of another ‘Liber’ subject (R. 33).

The two sketches here reproduced, of the ‘Windmill and Lock’ and ‘Hedging and Ditching’ subjects (Plates XXVII. and XXV.), illustrate admirably Turner’s attitude towards nature at this period. Such sketches are nothing more nor less than memoranda for the artist’s own use. Taken by themselves they are all but meaningless. Even to the artist himself their significance, as memoranda of real scenes, must have been of the slightest. The focus or real nucleus of their meaning is rather the subjective feelings which the scenes and their whole context evoked in the artist, than the particular objects or scenes themselves. This sentiment, the total emotional impression, is, of course, not expressed in the sketches themselves, though now that the completed designs have told us what this is we can hardly help reading some of it into the sketches. But to the artist himself these sketches were useful as preliminary statements, as tentative objectifications of his meaning. The work of ‘carrying out’ these sketches (or ‘working them out’) was simply the process of the further specification of this meaning. And to describe this work as an attempt to realise or reproduce the actual scenes in nature which Turner had sketched, is only in a very limited sense correct. The point of interest is the complex of subjective feeling aroused on a particular occasion by a chance conjunction of objects and circumstances, and in the final design the artist’s aim is to find a particular conjunction of pictorial signs which shall permanently objectify this emotional complex. Hence the actual objects and the particular form of their conjunction in the real scene lose all the importance which they possess as real objects, and become degraded, or at least subordinated, to a purpose which falls entirely outside their own existence. They are now nothing but pawns or counters in the artist’s game of pictorial expression, and as such the artist has absolute power over them, altering them, and annihilating them, as best suits his purpose. The artist is also entirely within his rights when he introduces fresh elements from other and different scenes to enforce and make clear his meaning. That Turner used these privileges to the utmost in the case of both these subjects is evident when we compare the sketches with the finished designs. These points seem to me worth insisting upon, because the real nature of artistic idealisation is so little understood and so generally misrepresented, and the opportunities of studying it genetically are of rare occurrence.

But the very fact that during the period of which we are now treating, the stress in Turner’s work is nearly always upon the subjective sentiment, and that the objective scenes and objects are relegated to a position of subordination detracts very largely from the immediate interest in the sketches from nature which Turner made during this time. Taken by themselves these sketches are in the highest degree vague and incomplete. They are valuable to us mainly for the purposes of comparison with the completed designs, and as illustrations of Turner’s methods of work. And for these purposes I think the two examples we have just studied are sufficient. I have not, therefore, deemed it advisable to illustrate this chapter with any other sketches of the same class. The three further illustrations I have chosen are of a different character. When Turner was called upon to treat subjects of a definite topographical character he was necessarily

restricted in the liberties he could take. In such cases his field of selection was confined within the possible points of view from which his subject could be regarded. In the two drawings of Whalley Bridge here reproduced (Plates XXVIII. and XXIX.) we see him searching for that aspect of the place which shall fit in or harmonise with the mood which was predominant in his own mind at this time. It is only from the point of view of such a subjective emotional attitude that the first drawing (Plate XXVIII.) could have been rejected in favour of the second (Plate XXIX.). As a representation of the actual place, the first drawing is much more adequate than the second. But it is evidently just this topographical and objective adequacy which constituted the defect of this fine drawing from Turner’s point of view. In the other drawing there is far less to occupy the attention. Here the interest is concentrated on a few simple forms. The mind is, therefore, thrown back on itself, and forced as it were to call up its own resources to amplify and fill out the painter’s forms. And this is the mood of poetic contemplation or meditation expressed in the beautiful picture of this subject which Turner exhibited in 1811, and which is now in Lady Wantage’s collection.

The third drawing to which I referred is the study for the picture of ‘London from Greenwich Park,’ now in the National Gallery. There is no trace of the emotional setting of the finished picture in the sketch (Plate XXX.). It is merely a record of the facts. But the artist has already grasped in his own mind the significance of these facts with such clearness that the bare facts even in this memorandum have become eloquent.

The full scope of Turner’s work at this period, then, can only be gathered from his completed works. And as I have said, I do not think this aspect of Turner’s genius has so far had full justice done to it. I will therefore make an attempt to indicate in a few words what I regard as the distinctive qualities of this group of works; and to simplify my task I will centre my remarks round two pictures, both in the National Gallery, and therefore easily accessible to every one, viz., ‘A Frosty Morning’ and the ‘Windsor,’ which seem to me to typify the qualities and merits of the whole group.

After what has gone before I do not think I need say much to combat the opinion that these pictures are simply reproductions of actual scenes. Their relation to the actual sights of nature is exactly the same as that between the two ‘Liber’ designs we have just examined and the sketches upon which they were based. In the designs, and in these pictures, there is indeed a wealth of subtle and penetrating observation of natural forms, habits, and colours, but this material is never there simply for its own sake. These colours and forms of natural beauty are the elements of which the artist’s language is compounded, the pictorial equivalent of the names of natural objects in the verse of a great poet. To fix one’s attention on these factors in the whole complex structure of such works as ‘A Frosty Morning’ and ‘Windsor,’ and to say that these fragments of meaning are all that they contain, seems to me as inexcusable as it would be to isolate the nouns in a poem, and to insist that we must ignore that play of thought and feeling around this common basis in which the real value of even the simplest poem consists. We can, of course, always stop short in our understanding of any statement, and the temptation is very great to stop short at some superficial characteristic in such a highly complex individuality as a work of modern art. In the case of the two pictures with which we are now concerned, these characteristics happen to be not only superficial and obvious, but they happen also to be easily nameable, whereas the complete ideational and emotional structure of the whole work is very far from being easily named or described. Yet it is just this particular and special emotional and ideational whole which constitutes the very being of the work of art, and which alone gives it value. It is because modern art criticism has seized with such avidity upon the primitive sense-factor in pictorial language, and has insisted with so much energy that the art cannot or ought not to attempt any kind of ideational articulation, that it has failed to do justice to this phase of Turner’s art.

To call these pictures, then, imitations or reproductions of natural scenes is not altogether inaccurate. They are this, but at the same time they are so much more. The forms and colours of nature are there, but they are superseded and sublimated in exactly the way that the particular events described in Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal are superseded and sublimated in the poems

which her brother founded upon these events. ‘The array of act and circumstance, and visible form’ becomes exactly what the poet’s or artist’s ‘passion makes them.’[17] In other words, the matter of sense intuition is taken up into the world of intelligence. This matter, which in the first place was something immediate or given, now loses its natural and positive attributes, loses its authority as fact, but gains a wider scope and ampler authority by being taken up into the world of mind and used as a sign. And here again an opportunity presents itself for shallow and wrongheaded criticism. Those who are under the dominion of the theory that art should only represent sensuous facts in their immediacy resent the transformation which the data of sense must undergo before they can take their place in the organised world of meaning. To them, therefore, such pictures as these are defective; the colouring is not sufficiently natural, not bright enough, nor are the contrasts sufficiently strong. These pictures are not painted in ‘the key of nature.’ In a word, they are old-fashioned, because the artist has done something more in them than the theories of impressionism can consecrate.

We have then to avoid two mistaken ways of regarding these works. We must not look upon them (1) as attempts to reproduce the actual brilliancy and colour of natural lighting, nor must we treat them (2) as prosaic and literal imitations of actuality devoid of all the higher poetry of art. That these works are open to--nay, have almost invariably fallen victims to--these two opposite forms of depreciation, is a striking proof of the success with which they have avoided those fatal extremes in which so much of the art of the present lies engulfed.

But it is not enough simply to avoid the dangers which modern theorising throws in the way of the interpreter. A really concrete and fruitful criticism will not stop short till it has made the attempt to grasp, however imperfectly, by thought the full and special significance of each work. And again, when we have made it clear to ourselves that

‘the array Of act and circumstance, and visible form, Is mainly to the pleasure of the mind What passion makes them,’--

when we have agreed that Turner has used the sights of nature as a means to express the emotions or the mood which they aroused in him,--when all this is granted we are still merely at the threshold of the works themselves. A mood, an emotion, a state of feeling, these are all vague and general terms. There is nothing necessarily admirable or beautiful in a mood or a state of feeling, Feeling and emotion may be pleasant or unpleasant, harmonious or jarring, depressing or invigorating. And if the main value and beauty of these pictures resides in the particular and definite mood or state of feeling which they induce, this mood must have distinguishable contents, and it is the business of art criticism to do what it can to define these contents.

In Wordsworth’s ‘Lines, composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey,’ he contrasts his present state of feeling towards nature with that of his youthful days. In the days of his thoughtless youth, he says, the forms and colours of the landscape had haunted him like a passion. He had loved them for themselves. But now, he says, Nature is no longer ‘all in all’ to him. It has now gained a remoter charm supplied by thought, an interest ‘unborrowed from the eye.’ He now hears

‘the still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue.’

Before the sights of nature he now feels the presence of elevated thoughts, a sense of something ‘more deeply interfused,’ a sense of something discernible only with the inner eye; a sense of the Divine that animates both nature and humanity, both what the eye sees and what the heart and mind create,--the spirit ‘whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,’ the spirit

‘that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.’

It is in this mood, it seems to me, that Turner contemplates the scenes and incidents of rural life which he represents in these pictures, and it is this mood which these pictures embody. The ‘Frosty Morning’ is therefore very much more than a representation of a country road, with a little hedging and ditching going on

on one side, an ordinary stage-coach in the distance, and a little sparkling hoar-frost on the ground. The ‘Windsor’ is also much more than a representation of some drovers with their cattle in one of the meadows near Windsor Castle on a summer (or spring) morning. Not only are these bare facts represented, but the mood in which we must contemplate them is also stated. We have not read these pictures aright, we have not really brought them into contact with our own life, until we contemplate the bare external facts in the light of the mood which the artist has prescribed for them. It is, I know, commonly taken for granted that pictorial art is impotent to achieve this kind of determination; that the artist is at the mercy of any chance mood which the spectator may bring to his work; that the artist can only represent objects and spatial relations, and that he can lay no constraint on the spectator to think and feel about these objects in any particular way. And no doubt a large proportion of modern art productions actually do no more than this, and attempt no more. But these are merely the failures of modern art. All the great works of modern art--such as those of Rembrandt and Jean François Millet--not only represent objects and scenes, but lay down the related thoughts and feelings which they are to inspire. Yet it is of course always possible for the spectator to stop short at the bare recognition of the pictorial signs, in the same way that it is possible for the reader of a poem to recognise the meaning of a few prominent words and ignore the context in which they occur.[18] But the point which I cannot hesitate to press home--because I see clearly that the whole question of the value and place of art in modern civilisation depends upon it--is this, that the work of art is nothing less than its full significance. It is only in so far as we master or appropriate this wealth of inner significance that the work of art can be said to exist for us; we must not only read the words of a poem, but we must understand them, and in the same way we must not merely look at such pictures as these of Turner, but we must translate the artist’s signs into their appropriate ideas and feelings.

It is only when we succeed in getting clear of that shallow materialism which clings to the letter, while it ignores the power behind it, that the full scope of pictorial art can dawn upon us. But when we once realise that the mood expressed in such pictures as the ‘Frosty Morning’ and ‘Windsor’ is an essential part--nay, is the very essence of the works themselves, we shall begin to understand how nearly related great art is to religion; how insensibly the one passes into the other. In such pictures as these--and I do not hesitate to rank them among the truest and highest that Christianity has yet produced--in pictures like these the ordinary scenes of rural life and labour are impressed with the quietness and beauty of the best part of the artist’s own nature, and fed with the lofty thoughts that only poets dare utter in words. Such pictures are indeed in the old monkish sense an act of worship. The mood they call up and sustain is a blessed mood in which the mystery and the weight of this unintelligible world are lightened. Such pictures as these are literally an imitation or reminiscence of the great moments of life, and possess life and food for future years.

* * * * *

I will conclude this chapter by answering some objections that I believe are likely to be made to the interpretation I have offered of this group of Turner’s works. These objections would be based on arguments drawn from the commonly received idea of Turner’s personal character. The mood expressed in this group of pictures is, it might be urged, the habitual mood or way of feeling of the perfectly good man; it is only in the perfectly good and religious life that we find this reconciliation of inner Freedom and external Necessity, and Turner, we have reason to suppose, was not a perfectly good and religious man. This objection I admit has force, but I think it is fully met by pointing to the distinction between a mood, a passing state of feeling, and a permanent habit of mind or settled character. It may not have been Turner’s happiness to mature this mood of reconciliation into the master light of his whole life, yet the mood itself is one that few, if any, human hearts are entirely unfamiliar with. It is a mood that sits about us all in our earlier days. The feelings of love and reverence may well be one of the primary facts of human nature.

It may be that Turner, if we examine the whole of his life,

cannot be regarded as a perfectly good and religious man, yet at this particular period of his life his works prove beyond all shadow of doubt that he was capable of feeling towards nature and man in the way that is habitual with the perfectly good man. As an artist these works of his show that at this time he was able to raise himself in the point of feeling to the level of a good and complete man. But this is a very different thing from the demand that the artist shall himself be at that time and for the remainder of his life the kind of man whose momentary state of feeling he represents. The actual behaviour of the artist as an individual has only an indirect bearing on the question of the moral worth of his work. What is important is, that the content of the moral idea shall be present in the state of feeling expressed in his work. He may not have laid firm hold of the good will; he may not have made it a permanent part of his own life. All that is necessary for his immediate purpose is that he shall have grasped it in idea,--a much easier task, and one that constant reading of the poets is quite sufficient to accomplish.

That Turner was always a great lover and reader of poetry is already well known. After he broke away from strictly topographical work, he seldom exhibited a picture without the accompaniment of some poetical quotation. To judge from these quotations Thomson’s _Seasons_ was a favourite book with him, and we also find Milton, Ossian, Akenside, Dr. Langhorne, and Mallet laid under contribution. But the clearest evidence of the place poetry occupied in his mind at this time is afforded by his sketch-books, which contain on the whole even more poetry than drawings. On almost every sheet we find transcriptions or reminiscences of verses that had caught his fancy, or attempts of his own to express himself in metre. These attempts, it must be confessed, are seldom far from failure, for the artist’s command of words was not instinctive, like his power over pictorial signs. Yet the quantity of these attempts and the patient persistence with which he ground out indifferent verse, prove that the art of poetry was one that held at least as high a place in his affections as his own art.

As Turner’s verses were on the whole so unsuccessful, I will only offer the reader one example, and that a short one. It was written in one of his sketch-books about the year 1809. He had gone to Purley on the Thames, near Pangbourne, to indulge himself with a few days’ fishing--his sole form of recreation. But the rain had kept him in all day, and to while away the time he betook himself to poetry. He begins by apostrophising the fair leaves of his sketch-book which ‘Delusion’ tempts him to violate with his pen. The rain seems to have continued, for on the next page he begins again:--

‘Alas, another day is gone As useless as it was begun. The crimson’d streak of early morn Checks the sweet lark that o’er the corn Fluttered her wings at twilight grey; Expectant eyed the moving ray, Twitter’d her song in saddening mood To {calm} her clamorous callow brood {hush} In hope of less inclement skies.

The hapless fisher---- No fly can tempt the finny brood When the wash’d bank gives up its mud. Beneath some tree he takes his stand ---- in doubtful shelter

* * * * *

Anxious to fancy every streak a ray. Not so the cotter’s children at the door, Rich in content, tho’ Nature made them poor, Standing on threshold emulous to catch The pendant drop from off the dripping latch. The daring boy--thus Briton’s early race {To feel the heaviest drop upon his face} {Foremost, must feel the drops upon his face,} Or heedless of the storm or his abode Launches his paper boat across the road-- Where the deep gullies which his father’s cart Made in their progress to the mart Full to the brim, deluged by the rain, They prove to him a channel to the main. Guiding his vessel down the stream Even the pangs of hunger vanish like a dream.’

As poetry these lines have little to recommend them, but they give us a glimpse of the man himself, and they prove that he had something of the poet’s comprehensive sympathies; that he was ‘a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.’