Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., R.A.

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Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, 1830 - 328 pages
 

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Page 149 - 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 89 - 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 265 - 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 she's mean no more: Her Birth, her Beauty, Crowds and Courts confess, Chaste Matrons praise her, and grave Bishops bless: In golden Chains the willing World she draws, And hers the Gospel is , and hers the Laws...
Page 220 - 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 95 - ... 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 40 - ... 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 22 - 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 7 - I said Hunt had been spoiled by flattery when he was young. " Oh, no !" he said, " it was not that. Sir Joshua was not spoiled by flattery, and yet he had as much of it as anybody need have ; but he was looking out to see what the world said of him, or thinking what figure he should make by the side of Correggio or Vandyke — not pluming himself on being a better painter than some one in the next street, or being surprised that the people at his own table spoke in praise of his pictures.
Page 71 - 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...
Page 7 - I would say anything sooner than agree to the nonsense or affectation I heard. You then set yourself against what you think a wrong bias in another, and are not like a wall, but a buttress — as far from the right line as your antagonist; and the more absurd he is the more so do you become.

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