and not because it proceeds from a ploughboy. Elliott of Sheffield proved that good poetry wins fame for a blacksmith as for a nobleman or gentleman; but the self-made men among the poets are, and will be, fewer and of a higher order than formerly. We do not look for a Burns twice over; but of Bloomfields and Clares we shall hear less than our fathers did; and mere rhymesters, like some who made a great noise in the last century, are obliged to withdraw their pretensions, as we see in the instance of Close of Kirkby-Lonsdale, who would once have been a great man for life after the Prime Minister had spoken of him as being “in the same category with Burns.”
The same change has taken place about Art. More knowledge is now necessary to cause a man to be considered a painter than our fathers dreamed of before the Art-treasures of the Continent were open to our study. In America, a man rises to fame and fortune presently if he can give on canvas a lively representation of the woods or prairies which surround him, or the daily life which passes before his eyes; and not only does he think and say that Europe can teach him nothing, but his patrons are too apt to be of the same opinion. So were many people in England when Dr. Wolcot (Peter Pindar) brought Opie up from a Cornish cottage, and exhibited him in London as a heaven-born genius. Opie had the sense to perceive, in course of time, the importance of study; but the want of it kept him below his capacity as a painter, and spoiled him in a way which could scarcely happen again.
He was the son of a journeyman carpenter in Cornwall; and his genius manifested itself in what his industrious father considered idle tricks of scrawling likenesses of people and things with chalk on every surface he could reach. A sketch of this sort on a barn-door struck the eye of Dr. Wolcot, a physician in the neighbourhood. He found on inquiry that the boy had taken likenesses—wasting his time in that way, as his father said. The Doctor engaged him as his foot-boy, in order to encourage and improve his talent, and then let him travel as a portrait-painter, finally introducing him in London as an artist. He was then only twenty; and it could be no wonder if his head was turned when the street was crowded with carriages of great people, who came to stare and flatter. He was rough and rude in appearance and manner, and so unlikely to improve under the circumstances, that it was well that his popularity declined, leaving him rich enough to command opportunities of study. He married first for wealth, but suffered great misery till freed by a divorce. His second wife was a woman of some literary capacity and cultivation; and during the nine remaining years of his life she was devoted to him, and his mind expanded and became enriched by study. As his wife’s piquant face appears in all the heroines of his later pictures, her mind may be traced in a disappearance of incongruities such as were very common before. One of his most ambitious pictures is Jephtha’s Daughter; and in it occurs a mistake too flagrant to have been perpetrated by any eminent painter of our time. The victim is represented at the moment of sacrifice, with eyes bound, and the knife uplifted over her: and the sacrificer is actually the High Priest of the Jews, with breastplate and robes complete! It did not occur to the Cornish artisan that the Jews did not offer human sacrifices, and that it was a mistake of his own to suppose that Jephtha was a Jew who could bring his child for slaughter at the altar of Jehovah. Such are the drawbacks of self-made men in the career of the Fine Arts. Opie did his best latterly to supply himself with knowledge enough to fill the professorship of painting at the Royal Academy; and he attained his object just before his death. The four lectures he had delivered were published by his widow. When new to fame, he trusted his genius for everything. Being asked how he mixed his colours, he answered “With my brains:” and he might fairly remain satisfied with his own ways in regard to colour, which was his strong point. But, when he took to painting history, he must have become aware of his disadvantages from his want of education. Half a century later, it would have been easier for him to obtain both general and special knowledge: and he would certainly have been better informed or less famous.
This disadvantage belonging to a low origin applies less to music than to the other arts; and the means of a scientific musical training are becoming more and more accessible and abundant; so that we, or the next generation, may hope to see, as one of the results of the extended cultivation of music in England, the rise of some lark, springing from the low furrow, and mounting on high to win the world’s ear with music, fresh as the morning. Musical genius is a matter of organisation in which there is no respect of persons; it is like mathematical genius,—mainly inherent, while susceptible of incalculable enlargement of application by the knowledge of what has already been done, and by a general cultivation of the intellect. Still, from the course now taken by the progress of society in England, it seems as if we might for some time longer look for self-made men chiefly among the improvers of the arts of life.
I do not know that a fairer example could be found during such a period than Richard Grainger, who died on the 4th of July last, leaving a name which will be immortal in his native place. If his fame has not reached all his countrymen, it must be for reasons which time will remove. Not only have his services merited national respect, but they are of a kind which it is good for us to study. Some of my readers may possibly remember what the town of Newcastle-upon-Tyne was like in the early part of the century. I took in the impression of it in early childhood, in 1809; and the impression remains distinct as the pictures in children’s memories are apt to be. It was then a remarkably shabby and ugly town. Its moor, with shining ponds scattered on the grassy surface, and a black road running straight across it to the north, where the outline of the Cheviots might be seen on a clear day, was one striking feature. The Tyne, winding through the vale on the one hand and to the sea on the other, afforded other walks. A steep hill, covered with buildings, rose from the river, and sank into a ravine behind, which, with a second hill, was partly filled
