Conversations of James Northcote...

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H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1830 - Art criticism - 328 pages

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Page 79 - Vice thus abused, demands a nation's care ; This calls the Church to deprecate our sin, And hurls the thunder of the laws on gin. Let modest Foster, if he will, excel Ten Metropolitans in preaching well...
Page 139 - The loyalty, well held to fools, does make Our faith mere folly: — Yet he that can endure To follow with allegiance a fallen lord, Does conquer him that did his master conquer, And earns a place i
Page 257 - Vice is undone, if she forgets her Birth, And stoops from Angels to the Dregs of Earth; But 'tis the Fall degrades her to a whore; Let Greatness own her, and...
Page 212 - There are two things I admire in Sir Walter, his capacity and his simplicity ; which indeed I am apt to think are much the same. The more ideas a man has of other things, the less he is taken up with the idea of himself. Every one gives the same account of the author of Waverley in this respect. When...
Page 85 - ... her the triumphs of her youth — that pride of beauty, which must be the more fondly cherished as it has no external vouchers, and lives chiefly in the bosom of its once lovely possessor. In her, however, the Graces had triumphed over time ; she was one of Ninon de 1'Enclos's people, of the last of the immortals. I could almost fancy the shade of Goldsmith in the room, looking round with complacency.
Page 12 - I was doing the figures of Argyll in prison and of his enemy who comes and finds him asleep, I had a great difficulty to encounter in conveying the expression of the last — indeed I did it from myself — I wanted to give a look of mingled remorse and admiration ; and when I found that others saw this look in the sketch I had made, I left off. By going on, I might lose it again. There is a point of felicity which, whether you fall short of or have gone beyond it, can only be determined by the effect...
Page 30 - ... time a Whig and outrageous anti-courtier. One day he came into the room, when Goldsmith was there, full of ire and abuse against the late king, and went on in such a torrent of the most unqualified invective that Goldsmith threatened to leave the room. The other, however, persisted ; and Goldsmith went out, unable to bear it any longer. So much for Mr. Burke's pretended consistency and uniform loyalty ! When...
Page 79 - ... that it was like health coming into the room. He was a most agreeable companion, quite natural and unaffected. His reading was the most beautiful I have ever heard. I remember his once reading Moore's fable of the Female Seducers with such feeling and sweetness that every one was delighted, and Dr. Mudge himself was so much affected that he burst into tears in the middle of it. The family are still respectable, but derive their chief lustre from the first two founders, like clouds that reflect...
Page 61 - It was easier to look in the glass than to make a dull canvas shine like a lucid mirror ; and as to talking, Sir Joshua used to say, a painter should sew up his mouth. It was only the love of distinction that produced eminence ; and if a man was admired for one thing, that was enough. We only work out our way to excellence by being imprisoned in defects. It requires a long apprenticeship, great pains, and prodigious self-denial, which no man will submit to, except from necessity, or as the only chance...

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