to delineate the Passions, as personified by Gray, more particularly "Moody Madness laughing wild amidst severest woe,"→ he opened his portfolio, and pointing to the principal figure in the eighth plate of "The Rake's Progress," exclaimed, “If I had never seen this print, I should say it was not possible to paint these contending passions in the same countenance. Having seen this, which displays the poet's idea with the faithfulness of a mirror, I dare not attempt it. I could only make a correct copy; a deviation from this portrait in a single line would be a departure from the character." Neither books nor tradition enable me to say much more of Mortimer. He came from Aylesbury to his house in Norfolk Street some time in September, 1778; he appeared to ail little; was cheerful; talked of his future prospects in art; his expectation of being admitted into the Royal Academy; spoke of his own many-coloured career; and, laughing, declared he would write it in Hudibrastic verse. He wrought little, and seemed on the point of wearing through the winter, when he was attacked by a fever, with such violence that his constitution, weakened by early excesses, sunk in the struggle, after a few days of great suffering. Mortimer died in the arms of his attached friend, Dr. Bates, on the 4th of February, 1779, in the thirty-eighth year of his age, and was buried beside the altar in the church of High Wycombe, near his great picture of St. Paul preaching to the Britons. From the amount of reputation acquired by Mortimer in his day, posterity has made no gentle deductions. Fame is, indeed, hard to win; and the most gifted spirit cannot be sure of either achieving or retaining it for a moment. Like quicksilver in fickle weather, the fame of living men is continually rising and falling: nor is it a certain thing with the dead. Fashions, manners, faces, and events, on the depicting of which the hope of reputation was founded, wear out, are forgotten, or cease to interest: some colossal genius steps into the path perhaps, and throws the humbler wayfarer into the shade; or some stern critic, armed in the triple mail of art, learning, and authority, writes or lectures a reputation down--because perhaps he has heard it compared with his own. That genius may be considered as singularly fortunate who escapes both the sarcasms of the severe and the high-flown praise of the indiscriminating: but the fame of Mortimer has had to contend against this double pressure. Pilkington rates him too high; Fuseli too low: the former commiserated his fate, and admired the wildness of his conceptions; the latter liked none of the eminent masters of the English school,spoke with contempt of Hogarth, Gainsborough, and Romney, and was much disposed to consider every one a personal enemy who presumed to paint either poetry or history, which he presumptuously claimed as a province wherein he was sole monarch. He, whose taste was so sublime that he accounted Milton and Shakspeare the only poets of our island, and whose notions of excellence in art were so lofty that he could endure little save the finest works of Greece or - Italy, was not a man to sympathise with such productions as those of Mortimer. a Fuseli accuses him of weakness in conception; he might more properly have charged him with extravagance. There is a continual bustle desire to be doing more than is necessary feverish animation and convulsive strength in most of his groups but little that can be But then this a called mean or commonplace. perpetual effort in muscular action, and continual straining after vigorous mental expression, is so apparent, that we soon see it is unnatural: we feel that noble actions require to be done with more ease and grace. It is true that hot and heady fights, and feats of smugglers and banditti, cannot be achieved in tranquillity and repose: but it is also true, that the animation of nature should not be exceeded. It is the province of heroes to perform noble actions without ungraceful efforts, and of great minds to think with calmness and dignity. All Mortimer's fine drawing, and wonderful ease and freedom of touch, cannot conceal the hectic flush and convulsive vigour of his heroes. The weak are always struggling to look strong; and when the heavy-headed try to think, there must needs be wrinkles on the brow to show the pain it costs. With all his defects, however, Mortimer was an artist of true original powers, entitled to the approbation of posterity, much more than any of those whose chief merit is the absence of gross faults. and as such is RAEBURN. SIR HENRY RAEBURN was born at Stockbridge, then a separate suburb, but now a portion of Edinburgh, on the 4th day of March, 1756. His ancestors, according to the family account, lived on the border, and were husbandmen in peace and soldiers in war, till the days of disorder ended with the union of the crowns, upon which they laid aside the helmet and sword, and peacefully cultivated the ground during succeeding generations. One of their descendants, Robert Raeburn, removed to Stockbridge, —married Ann Elder,-commenced manufacturer,became the proprietor of mills, and father of two sons, William and Henry; of whom the former continued the business at Stockbridge, and the latter became that eminent artist, the story of whose life and labours I am about to relate. This unpretending descent, however satisfactory to the painter, was less so, it seems, to a northern antiquarian, who, unwilling to believe perhaps that any thing high could be done by one lowly born, resolved to find him a loftier origin; and accordingly set up a genealogical tree, which averred, in the mystic language of allegorical biography, that he was a direct descendant from the Raeburns of Raeburn, a family distinguished in the Scottish wars, who had won worthily the honours of knighthood, and were allied, moreover, in blood and by marriage to many of those martial names "Who found the beeves which made their broth Whether this lineage be rooted in reality or romance I know not, nor is it very material in the history of one whose fame arises from his being the Reynolds of the north, and the worthy companion in art of some of the most eminent men of the British school of painting. When only some six years old, Raeburn was unhappily deprived of both parents: his father, a most worthy man, died first; his mother, whose tenderness was sorely missed by one so young, survived her husband but a few months, and the two orphans were left to Providence and their own good fortune. William, the elder by a dozen years or more, supplied, as far as kindness and attention would go, his father's place; and friends were found, who so far compassionated the youngest that he was placed in " Heriot's Wark," the Christ's school of Edinburgh, where he was trained with all solicitude both in morality and learning. To classical proficiency, indeed, he at no time ever laid claim, yet his education had been such as enabled him to maintain without reproach an intercourse by letters with some of the first literary men of the age; and his manners had been so well cared for, that he was never found wanting |