Joseph Severn and His Correspondents

THE following letters have been selected from the unpublished correspondence of the late Joseph Severn, a name familiar to all lovers of Keats. The first three have been chosen for a special reason, though written by different persons and at wide intervals; for they have this in common, that each is the first letter written in Venice, respectively, by a notable sculptor, an eminent painter, and the foremost art writer of our time.

Westmacott, the first in order, the son of Sir Richard Westmacott, was then a young man, as he was born in 1799. He went to Italy in 1820 to study at Rome, where he became acquainted with Severn shortly before the death of Keats; and from that time forward their friendship was an intimate one. Severn never actively sought academical honors, and to the day of his death was an outsider, though, long before, Westmacott, Thomas Uwins, Charles Eastlake, Sir George Hayter, and others of his “circle ” obtained ample official recognition. Westmacott, who became Associate in 1838, R. A. in 1849, and Professor of Sculpture in 1857, died seven years before his older friend. He is now perhaps best known by his excellent Handbook on the Schools of Sculpture ; for his finest works in his particular art are mostly in private hands, as notably in the instance of The Cymbal Player, his chef-d'œuvre, in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire.

In the early part of the century visitors were fortunate in having to approach Venice from the Paduan mainland by water, — a route, however, as Westmacott adds in a postscript to his letter, “ not to be recommended to ladies.”

I. FROM RICHARD WESTMACOTT.

VENICE, May 20, 1824.

MY DEAR SEVERN, &emdash;Eccomi quà at last, full of wonder and admiration of the famed though fallen spouse of the Adriatic. I have always studiously avoided looking at views or reading or listening to descriptions of Venice, wishing to come upon it at once without any prejudice, and if possible to save myself a disappointment upon seeing the original after reading some account of it like Eustace’s and Piranesi’s of Rome, which we all agree are humbugs, and only lead one astray. I have been well repaid for waiting for the reality, — any description must fall short of it. My imagination sometimes gets upon stilts, and I had of course fancied a sort of city in the water, with latticed windows, orange-trees, gondolas, etc., but I had not neared the original. I came from Ferrara by water, and I think few things can be more beautiful than the scene that presented itself as soon as we entered the principal canal of Venice. It was about four o’clock in the evening, and the weather, though the sky was not quite Italian, very fine. I can’t tell you how I felt as we cut through the water. I was full of Desdemona, Shylock, Pierre, Belvidera, old Dandolo, and fifty other delightful and interesting associations; but you have seen it all, and are just the sort of chap to enjoy it, so I need not tease you with any details of the what nor the why I admired. As soon as I could I saw the Rialto, then S. Mark, then the Bridge of Sighs, “ on either side a Palace and a Prison ; ” in fact, from the time of my arrival I have been running about devouring whatever came in my way. I am now driven in by darkness and fatigue, and before going to my couch have resolved to keep my promise of writing to my dear Giuseppe.

Mr. Brown told me he had written to you. I suppose he told you of my having proceeded almost immediately on my arrival at Florence to Carrara. I returned in a few days, and was glad to avail myself of his kind offer of an introduction to Mr. Leigh Hunt. I saw but little of him, unfortunately for me, but that little made me regret that our acquaintance was so lately made and so soon to be interrupted. I spent much of my last day in Florence with him and Mr. Brown in the Vale of the Belle Donne, which we all enjoyed very much. Could I have remained longer in dear Tuscany we should have spent many pleasant days together, I dare say, for Mr. Brown is just the man to be happy with, and I feel I should have liked Mr. Hunt more and more every time I met him.

I saw the Brunino, and think him a very fine little fellow; your miniature is certainly very like him. He speaks nothing but Italian, and his papa, like all papas, is not a little proud of him. I thought our old plague Johnny Hunt looked very ill. I think he must be improved, for although he tried to bolt up to me with his taking, innocent-sounding " Ah ! how d’ ye do, sir ! ” I saw he made himself scarce as soon as possible. Poor child ! or rather, poor parents ! I suspect a bad child is a curse of which we single gentlemen can’t even imagine the bitterness. God save us from it if ever we become Benedicts. . . .

I meant to stay here seven or eight days, in which time they tell me I may see Venice pretty well. I am still with Mr. Critshell, and it is probable we may make a long journey together. I wish I had a brother artist here, such as yourself or Kirkup. A sculptor ought not to go picture-hunting alone ; he loses half the things worth seeing, or frequently passes by a non ce male work just for want of knowing where and how to take it. I however think myself very fortunate in having found so gentlemanly and agreeable a companion as Mr. Critshell. I never could feel happy nor enjoy anything alone, solus. Had I not had companions from Rome I don't know what I should have done. You recollect what a weeping, miserable, mourning day we had to start on by way of helping me to recover my spirits, Gesu Maria ! but Mr. Brown made us all merry, after a fashion, in spite of ourselves.

Well, I won’t imagine I am not to return to Rome next year. A letter lately received from my father is neither one thing nor the other, but in my mind full of unintelligibles. Sto sperando. . . .

God bless you. Yours truly,

RICHARD WESTMACOTT.

Some seven or eight months earlier Severn had himself made his first visit to Venice, in company with the friend who was his most intimate and loyal comrade, as well as of Keats, — Charles Armitage Brown, the Mr. Brown of the foregoing letter. The visit had a material effect upon his practice in painting, and then and afterwards he held the beautiful city on the Adriatic to be the true Mecca for the painter.

Though nominally resident in Rome from the time when he went thither with Keats till he left it, for a prolonged period, in 1841, Severn went to England on a short visit in 1837. When in London he made the acquaintance of a young artist of rare accomplishment as well as promise, the late George Richmond, R. A. All readers of Præterita (vol. ii. chap, ii.) will remember Mr. Ruskin’s tribute to Mr. Richmond, and how the writer first stumbled upon the two artists as he was ascending the stairs of Severn’s house in the Via Rasella, on his way to present a letter of introduction to the elder. After his stay in Rome George Richmond went on to Venice, in July, 1839. Shortly thereafter Severn received the following letter from him. The Lord Clifford alluded to at the close of the letter was a remarkable man. As a Roman Catholic and the nephew of Cardinal Weld, he was persona grata at the papal court. The story of his devotion to the people during the frightful visitation of cholera earlier in the thirties is one of dauntless heroism.

II. FROM GEORGE RICHMOND.

VENICE, July 24, 1839.

My DEAR SEVERN, — I promised you a letter, so here goes; but you must not expect a fine critique on Venetian art, ravings about their glazing, or any wonderful discoveries about gray grounds, for I am sorry to say I have made none, but have looked, when I have not been at work (which has been seldom), with much such eyes as others, I expect, bring, quite willing to be pleased, and therefore have not been disappointed. Here nature has triumphed over art, or rather nature and art have combined, in the evening of every fine day, to beat everything that ever was or will be for splendor and gorgeousness of effect in the view from the water, at sunset, of S. Mark’s and all the rich accompaniments about it. I pay you an honest compliment in saying it has often reminded me of the beautiful sketch you made of this as a background to your picture of Venice.

Well, I must say I have not been so surprised as I expected by the works I have yet seen, for the Palazzo S. Marco I have not yet visited. In Rome I was thunderstruck at the first view of its treasures; in Venice I have been less astonished than delighted, and I find its treasures grow on me daily. One thing is to be said in explanation of this : that out of Rome one can hardly know Raffaello or Michael Angelo at all, but out of Venice one may be perfectly acquainted with Titian and Paolo Veronese. Tintoretto is the man whom one sees for the first time here, and truly I have been astounded by the magnificence and daring character of his works, both in design and color. He puts me often in mind of Rembrandt, but he is immensely stronger in invention; indeed, some of the works in the Scuola of San Rocco rank him with the great designers of the Roman and Florentine schools. What a group of women that is, in the great picture of the Crucifixion, at the foot of the cross ! I very much doubt if Volterra’s so much celebrated one in S. Trinità di Monte surpasses it. Art seems but a plaything in his hands, and this overboldness has often betrayed him into errors, not to say signal failures, for such a man. The Assumption of Titian’s is a surprising picture, full of greatness of intention and in the execution ; but the figures strike me as no more or less than picturesque books, excepting the children and angels, some of which equal anything I have seen. But the picture of pictures, to my taste, is the large Paolo Veronese, which for vivacity and freeness of execution united to a most enchanting tone over the whole is one of the wonders of art. I don’t think anything can be finer or more simply painted. It strikes me as a far more agreeable whole than the large picture in the Louvre.

I have just begun a copy of two figures the size of the originals. They stand before a pillar something such [sketch follows], and I think for intensity of character nothing I ever saw surpasses them. The great fat fellow with the hanging - looking Moor beside him is worthy of Michael Angelo. Do you not think, for style, that Paolo is even better to study than Titian ? By the bye, what curious works the later ones of Titian! They put me something in mind of old Northcote’s painting, they look so muddled and pottered over, just what one would look for as the result of extreme old age. A work they show of his early youth gives promise of all that followed.

To have been in order, I should have told you that we stayed a whole day at Bologna, so that I had at least one hearty good look at the gallery there, which surprised me by its riches ; although small, it is very perfect. All the pictures are good, and many of them are first-rate specimens of the masters. What a sober, subdued, and grand tone pervades the works of their school! I certainly think they went very far towards achieving their object of uniting to the tone and color of Venice the gusto in design of Rome and Florence. I made a number of little sketches while I stayed, just taking the plan of some of the finest works, and I shall do this now wherever I go. Since I came here I have made ten water-colors of the best pictures in the Belle Arti, which I think will be of use to me. I am sure you are right in recommending a sketch whenever it may be got, for it remains, while mere impressions are fugitive as the day. What rascally cheats these Venetians are! and yet very good people in their way, wonderfully civil, and at the galleries (oh, what a contrast to Rome!) they are perfection ; one has but to apply, and entrance to study is obtained instantly.

Pray give my love to the illustrissimo blackguard Agricola when you see him. I speak of his maldirection wherever I can, for such a man ought to be removed from his post. As I did not see Lord Clifford when I called the last day I was in Rome, will you be so kind as to present my most respectful remembrance to him, and offer my very best thanks for the many favors I received at his hands ? . . .

Ever your truly obliged and faithful friend, GEORGE RICHMOND.

Some four years later Severn was the fortunate recipient of a long letter giving Mr. Ruskin’s first impressions of Venice. The allusion in the second sentence is to Severn’s having gained one of the premiums at the Westminster Hall Cartoons Competition, and in reply, also, to a long letter concerning his hopes for fresco-painting in England, and his own determination to succeed in this genre, if success could be obtained at any cost. At a later date, I may add, he gained his wish in a commission from the dowager Countess of Warwick to paint a series of frescoes at her beautiful place in Surrey, which was presented to her by her son. It is doubtful, for reasons unnecessary to go into here, whether fortune would have further favored him in this. All his artistic projects in England were arrested when, in 1860, he applied for and ultimately gained the vacant office of British consul at Rome. This post he held till 1872, seven years before his death; ¹ and it was in the second year of his tenure (1863) that he wrote for the Atlantic Monthly his now famous article On the Vicissitudes of Keats’s Fame.

This letter from Mr. Ruskin is psychologically significant as well as interesting in other respects, for it shows that the writer was in 1843 essentially the same man that we know to-day.

III. FROM JOHN RUSKIN.

VENICE, September 21, 1843.

MY DEAR SIR, — I am sure you will excuse my not having answered your kind letter before when I tell you that I have been altogether unhinged by the condition in which I have found Venice, and that every time I stir out-of-doors I return too insensible to write or almost to speak to any one. But I cannot longer defer expressing my sincere gladness at your well-deserved success, and my sympathy in all the enthusiasm of your hopes so far as regards your own aims and prospects; and I am also glad, for the sake of our national honor, that you are to be one of its supporters. But with your hopes for the elevation of English art by means of fresco I cannot sympathize. I have not the remotest hope of anything of the kind. It is not the material nor the space that can give us thoughts, passions, or powers. I see on our Academy walls nothing but what is ignoble in small pictures, and would be disgusting in large ones. I never hear one word of genuine feeling issue from any one’s mouth but yours and the two Richmonds’; and if it did, I don’t believe the public of the present day would understand it. It is not the love of fresco that we want: it is the love of God and his creatures ; it is humility, and charity, and self-denial, and fasting, and prayer ; it is a total change of character. We want more faith and less reasoning, less strength and more trust. You neither want walls, nor plaster, nor colors, — ça ne fait rien à l'affaire ; it is Giotto and Ghirlandaio and Angelico that you want, and that you will and must want until this disgusting nineteenth century has — I can’t say breathed, but steamed its last. You want a serious love of art in the people and a faithful love of art in the artist, not a desire to be R. A. and to dine with the Queen ; and you want something like decent teaching in the Academy itself, good training of the thoughts, not of the fingers, and good inpouring of knowledge, not of knocks. Never tell, or think to tell, your lank, cockney, leaden-headed pupil what great art is, but make a great man of him and he ’ll find out. And a pretty way, by the bye, Mr. Eastlake takes to teach our British public a love of the right thing, going and buying a disgusting, rubbishy, good-fornothing, bad-for-everything Rubens and two brutal Guidos, when we have n't got a Perugino to bless ourselves with! But it don’t matter, not a straw’s balance. I see what the world is coming to. We shall put it into a chain armor of railroad, and then everybody will go everywhere every day, until every place is like every other place ; and then when they are tired of changing stations and police they will congregate in knots in great cities, which will consist of club-houses, coffee-houses, and newspaper offices ; the churches will be turned into assembly rooms ; and people will eat, sleep, and gamble to their graves.

It is n’t of any use to try and do anything for such an age as this. We are a different race altogether from the men of old time : we live in drawing-rooms instead of deserts, and work by the light of chandeliers instead of volcanoes. I have been perfectly prostrated these two or three days back by my first acquaintance with Tintoret; but then I feel as if I had got introduced to a being from a planet a million of miles nearer the sun, not to a mere earthly painter. As for our little bits of R. A.’s calling themselves painters, it ought to be stopped directly. One might make a mosaic of R. A.’s, perhaps, with a good magnifyingglass, big enough for Tintoret to stand with one leg upon if he balanced himself like a gondolier. I thought the mischief was chiefly confined to the architecture here, but Tintoret is going quite as fast; the Emperor of Austria is his George Robins.

I went to the Scuola di San Rocco the other day, in heavy rain, and found the floor half under water, from large pools from droppings through the pictures on the ceiling,—not through the sides or mouldings, but the pictures themselves. They won't take care of them, nor sell them, nor let anybody take care of them.

I am glad to hear that the subjects for our frescoes are to be selected from poets instead of historians ; but I don’t like the selection of poets. I think in a national work one ought not to allow any appearance of acknowledgment of irreligious principle, and we ought to select those poets chiefly who have best illustrated English character, or have contributed to form the prevailing tones of the English mind. Byron and Shelley I think inadmissible. I should substitute Wordsworth and Keats or Coleridge, and put Scott instead of Pope, whom one does n’t want with Dryden. I think The Ancient Mariner would afford the highest and most imaginative method of touching on England’s sea character. From Wordsworth you get her pastoral and patriarchal character ; from Scott her chivalresque ; I don’t know what you would get from either Dryden or Pope, but I suppose you must have one of them. However, anything is better than history, the most insipid of subjects. One often talks of historical painting, but I mean religious always, for how often does one see a picture of history worth a straw ? I declare I cannot at this instant think of any one historical work that ever interested me.

I beg your pardon very much for this hurried sulky scrawl ; but conceive how little one is fit for when one finds them covering the marble palaces with stucco and painting them in stripes !

Allow me again to thank you exceedingly for your kind letter and to express my delight at the good news it contains, and believe me, with compliments to Mrs. Severn,

Ever most truly yours,

J. RUSKIN.

In a short article which appeared recently, it was asserted that, with all his good qualities, Severn was singularly lacking in common sense. The writer could have known little of Severn, and still less of his correspondence. A remarkably acute and straightforward common sense was, as it happens, one of his most characteristic traits. Scores of his letters, from youth to old age, might be selected to bear out this counter-assertion, but a single one will suffice. It is taken from his correspondence with his friend Uwins, and was written in his thirty-third year, a time when, though by temperament and habit youthful in aspect and tastes to a remarkable degree, his character was developed. Thomas Uwins was his elder by about ten years, and, like himself, began his art life as an engraver’s apprentice. In 1824 he went to Italy, and stayed there till 1831. He gained his position both as an Associate and Royal Academician as a painter in water - colors ; nevertheless, when, in 1850, he began to paint in oils, it was with marked success. He was elected surveyor of the Queen’s pictures in 1845, and two years later was appointed keeper of the National Gallery. One of his best works in watercolors is The Hay Harvest, now in the South Kensington Museum, and in oils The Vintage in the Claret Vineyards, in the Dundee Gallery. After some preliminaries Severn proceeds:—

I think it is a most important defect in any one to be entirely without vanity, because there is nothing brings out and applies so well all the inner man. I mean all the grasping and achieving comes of this; for, you see, a man with this feels his own importance (he overfeels it, but what of that?), and tries grand things and succeeds, when another may have the greatest talents, but nothing to bring them out. I know you will call this by some fine name, as laudable ambition, aspiring virtue, and so forth; but, as the preacher says, " all is vanity ” at bottom, so we will be honest and let it stand as vanity. The Germans are a people making little figure and doing little good in the world, on this account. They have the highest talents and morals, but pursue their intellectual aims only as solitary pleasures, and so society is nothing the better for them. Then your English, who have the vanity to seek perpetual notice, are always benefiting the world with useful intuitions or innocent pleasures, and all this with but a small part of the talent of the Germans. When a man underrates himself he blunts his talents and minces his steps in life; and, on the contrary, if he overrates, although it may make his manners displeasing at the moment, yet if there is genuine talent in his matter he will sink into that at last, with his first presumption modified into something useful or pleasing. Such a man as — , for instance, would never have done anything but from his vanity; his talents are very mediocre, but he has humbugged himself into the same high notion of his genius with which he has humbugged others, and produced works of some stamp, whereas his energy is all he has. Now I would contrast you with him. You have the finest talents, and even advantages of gentlemanlike accomplishments, but withal such a shameful way of underrating yourself that I always doubt if you have ever truly exercised your powers to their true extent in anything; nor can you while you have not the vanity of an aim. I can well remember the days (some three or four years back) when I thought myself a very poor creature; but yet I was too vain to tell it to all, and my little vanity kept up a show, even in abortions, and even lost more than putting my shoulder to the wheel; and now I have persuaded myself into my fancied capability, like one who, loving an untruth and telling it oft, makes such a sinner of his memory as to credit his own lie. Here lies the mystery: you will consider yourself the “ wax taper,” and not the gaslight, when you can say that you have turned on your gas to the full.

Now all this means that you should undertake a work to the full extent of your power; not a great ugly mess, but something dictated by your own feeling of beauty and splendor. Let us have some of your magnificent Neapolitan background, with equally magnificent groups upon it, — only one picture as a trial, and then you ’ll see.

I must tell you that I don’t quite estimate your praises about my talent in painting, since you judge so ill of your own ; for a true taste would also extend to the judging its own productions, or how do they come forth? Now take up your brush and answer all this, and prove me right, and truly your friend and admirer, J. SEVERN.

The following letters are not only readable in themselves, but are further interesting as coming from so distinguished a man as Seymour Kirkup. He was for long the most notable English resident in Florence, and even in earlier days ranked only second to Walter Savage Landor, with whom and the Brownings and many others, from first to last, he was intimate. He was a painter of singular delicacy, and as a student of art was as thorough and conscientious as his lifelong friend Charles Eastlake. In his later years he devoted much time to literary studies, and in particular to occult problems and speculations. No doubt he is best known to the present generation as the discoverer of the now famous youthful portrait of Dante, — a discovery for which, as he tells us in one of these letters, he was created a baron (count?) of the Italian kingdom.

These letters may be read as representative examples of his long-continued correspondence with Severn. The second was written after an interval of a year’s silence on the part of Severn, which was broken at last by a letter narrating the circumstances of Mrs. Severn’s death, in April, 1862. Late in the fifties Kirkup turned his attention to Spiritualism, and erelong became a confirmed believer in the actuality of spiritualistic phenomena. The Miss Ironsides to whom he alludes as a medium was a young American artist of great promise, whose early death prevented her making a name as a painter, like Kirkup’s “ old friend William Blake,” or as a more conventional illustrator of “ worn - out Bible subjects.” It is strange to learn that, in the early part of our century, not only William Blake, but Flaxman, Fuseli, and even artists such as Stothard and Varley, were looked upon as in some degree mad.

IV. FROM SEYMOUR KIRKUP.

FLORENCE, August 18, 1861.

My DEAR SEVERN, — I never thought Overbeck a fine intellectual creature, but an ignorant humbug. Gibson described his great picture to me with admiration and equal ignorance. The subject was a bad one, a collection of portraits of old painters, taken, as you say, from prints, — all the schools, — the English represented by an infant. This dauber of brick dust and pewter, without drawing, presumed in his ignorance to despise such giants compared to him as Reynolds, Opie, Stothard, West, Lawrence, Fuseli, Turner, Flaxman, etc., etc., — ignorance and vanity. As for his imitation of the ancients, he should have looked at the works of Giotto here for color, and he would not have abounded in such detestable lead-color as I have seen. In fact, he has only copied the defects of the old time, namely, hardness, meagreness, and sameness. Nay, he may look at the Florentine M. Angelo in the Sistine, and he will see effects of color worthy of Venice, — the Jerome, Daniel, Zechariah, Sibyls, etc. You say he is devout to the political church. So is many a solemn ass and many a Jesuitic knave.

What is your Gothic or Christian treatment of The Marriage ? What would you call that of Paul Veronese ? Neither, but the princely magnificence and worldly splendor of Venice, eclipsing even the story itself. Wealth, luxury, palaces, concerts, and a blaze of color, so fine in its way as to make the subject commonplace, and leave it beyond the reach of any follower. You have no chance, nor Miss Ironsides, who is all wrong, and has mistaken her vocation. Scripture subjects are worn out. They make no impression, like old-fashioned music or sermons. The public sleep over them, like the bedstead of Baucis that was turned into pews,

The Venetians sacrificed their Christianity, if they had any, to worldly magnificence. That fine picture of Bonifazio, Dives and Lazarus, is another example of it. Lazarus is disgusting, and therefore eclipsed by the prevailing wealth of Dives pervading all the scene, but The Marriage at Cana has one contradiction beyond this. Here is a wedding dinner of poor country people, so poor that even the wine falls short. Then think of the scene of Paul Veronese ! An absurdity, but such execution conquers all. Who can hope to surpass that? I do not like sacred subjects in general, nor costume painters. David was a failure, but the classic is not exhausted by him. There is still a field open : drawing from nature, with the help of the antique, and color like Titian’s. Our Bacchus and Ariadne and the Spanish Sleeping Ariadne are the models of a new school, which somebody will find out. We are too old. There are other specimens and hints even in Rome (the Borghese). Etty might have done much if he had hit on it, or Haydon. A combination of great talents in those two elements, and then a genius of imagination worthy of the rest. Who can bear to think of the poor child’s-play of the solemn Mr. Overbeck, and you, coming from England, and I suppose Paris ! But I am in the dark about them in the present day. I fear they are wofully gone down. Eastlake had better have stuck to his palette than the study of after-dinner speechifying ! Detestable ! By the bye, they said that you had been favored by him at the expense of Haydon in the affair of the cartoons. . . . Take care of yourself. You talk a new Jerusalem of art, and speak of breathing in company of “ its immortal spirits.” Now, real Spiritualism is a science that requires the greatest exercise of reason. You are afraid of being carried off your feet.

I hate the cant about art and artists, So-and-So’s art and my art, artistic gossip of art and artists, and early art and primitive art, etc., etc. I never called myself an artist. I said painter at once. I had rather have added " glazier ” than “ artist.” All the tea-drinking old maids were full of their pretty artists, and all the little drawing - masters, daubers, and parasites of art were full of the name, while " the great ” were always sneering at it. One told me he had a clever artist traveling with him. It was his cook. A lady bestowed the title on her hairdresser. It is not that I care for such classification, for I am very democratic ; but I am sick of the vulgar cant, and find that others are so too. So if you publish anything avoid it. The word is prostituted and blackballed.

Your " pergola ” is better than columns [that is, in the composition of Severn’s picture of The Marriage at Cana], and your idea of the water in the act of changing is new, but I fear it is not enough to be "the making of it,” even if it can be done, which is difficult.

I have a drawing of Miss Ironsides’ of an angel and a child which she saw in a crystal of mine. It is not much, but it is enough to prove that she has the faculty, a rare one, and more valuable than worn - out Bible pictures ! I have some wonderful and curious drawings of visions. I have only wished to succeed, myself, as has been done in America, but I have not the power ; I have only that of bringing it out in others.

I know no one to carry books to Rome. They won’t do it, — they are afraid; and I have lost so many books that I have lent, or commissions sent, that I have long refused, and have a paper pasted in my library many years ago to say so. I am a collector, and have many thousand. I have a hundred and more of Dante, and seven manuscripts of his; many on our English Round Table, in all languages ; a great many on occult sciences, literature, antiquities, painting, etc. They amuse me more than painting. . . .

Yours sincerely, S. KIRKUP.

V. FROM THE SAME.

FLORENCE,April 12, 1863.

MY DEAR SEVERN, — Your sad news is the history of a great affliction, and I condole with you most sincerely. I suppose the illness must have been a long one for a landlord to claim so large an indemnity. Time is the great consoler, and your children. Have you none of them with you? Your continual occupation is now a benefit, if it is not too much for your health. That is the first thing. All the benevolence that you are engaged in will be a comfort to you. I supposed you were too busy to be able to write. You must have an immense deal to do in your present difficult and unusual station, and more than unusual; it is what has never happened till now.

You say the Roman finances are tottering to a close. What will be the consequence ? Will there be a great number of innocent and ignorant people ruined by a national bankruptcy ? Will it affect the finances of the kingdom of Italy ? I have put all the money I could raise into these funds to provide for my little Italian daughter, and they give a good interest, — about double what the English funds afford.

I found an old letter of yours of forty years ago. The handwriting is the same as now, and so are the thoughts. Strange it is, for your whole carcass has been renewed thirteen times in that period. I look on that as a greater sign of the immortality of the soul than all the nonsense of an old Jewish book of forgeries and falsifications. But I have more positive proofs than either. You should see the life of my friend Daniel Home, just published. Books are no proof, for they lie as much as living men ; but I know that a part of that book is true. If you had the means of knowing the truth that Home has, I make no doubt you would see, hear, and feel with joy that your poor wife is often with you. A satisfaction of that sort I have often had, and it continues.

You say your letter is egotistic. It is its greatest merit. Real friends wish for such letters only. I know nobody else in Rome but Gibson and Miss Ironsides. Oh, yes, little Ewing, if he is still alive ? All our little clique are dispersed, and the greatest part of them in the land of spirits, freed from this temporary exile called life, which leaves not a wreck behind, — or a few pictures to be soon destroyed by cleaners, etc. ! Vanitas vanitatum ! Alas, poor Titian, etc.!

I don’t know any person alive who can even remember either of my grandfathers, and they were remarkable men. One was the first Latin scholar in England, and the other had a museum of arts and antiquities, — all dispersed and gone, like their dust. But we never really die; twenty minutes of insensibility in a trance is all. We awake and find ourselves in the midst of our dearest old friends. The bad man avoids them from an instinct of shame, and seeks his equals, by whom he is persecuted until he is saved and relieved by good spirits. We are all sons of God, even the worst assassin. We are not responsible for our constitutions or our education, and there are no eternal pitchforks, brimstone, or hell, nor any such successful rival to God as Monseigneur le Diable. This rests on better authority than any book. It is curious that Moses, in all his books, never says one word about a future state. Of what use is religion without it ?

I am writing you a sermon instead of a letter. A nap will do you good. Do you remember Dean Swift’s pews, in his Baucis and Philemon ? — and I often laugh at the remembrance of Dennis Brulgruddery, the pew-opener, who was turned away because he snored so loud that he woke all the congregation.

I remember how that old Westmacott used to retail his good things at Rome, — is he always the same ? — and you at Torlonia’s masquerades, and the farces you used to play on dear old Gibson,² and his tortoises, and my adventures at Poli in the midst of the brigands with Mary Graham, née Dundas, afterwards Lady Callcott. Lord and Lady Normanby were a good deal here and had grown detestable, — he with his black ringlets, and she a porpoise ; and detestably he has signalized his hatred of Italy. The Jockey Club of Florence has expelled him, and his prating twaddle goes on in that House of Humbug, temporal and spiritual.

We have the King here at the Pitti. I expect to see Sir J. Hudson. He generally comes here with the King. One can’t judge from portraits, but I should think that our new princess will wear the breeches. The Guelph face is not promising, — jowl and goggle eyes ; but our Queen has been an exception to the vile race. The melancholy sight of her at the marriage would have given me more pain than the pleasure of all that procession. I suppose she was not acting a part. There is many a waitingwoman knows more than we do. She does not part with her son as she was obliged to do with her daughters. That was one comfort for her.

Trelawny used to say, " There are but two passions of love, the mother’s and the lover’s. By God, they ’ll go through fire for you ; all the rest is humbug.”

My affection for my little girl is much increased. She is nine and a half, and more of a friend. At first she was only a baby. You have had more experience. They want me to send her to England, but I won’t part with her, and she knows not a word of the language. She would be as bad as deaf and dumb, and with none but strange faces, troppo trista ! I want to secure her here with a good guardian after me. She goes to school daily. I care less for learning than happiness.

Adieu, my dear old friend.

Yours ever, S. KIRKUP.

VI. FROM THE SAME.

FLORENCE, PONTE VECCHIO 2,

June 23, 1864.

MY DEAR SEVERN, — Your last letter was answered so long ago that I don’t remember what it contained. I should have written again, but supposed that you were so engaged in diplomacy that you would find me troublesome. I wanted to recommend to you my friend Daniel Home, but I was sure if he wanted protection he would be sure to find it in you, who have done so much good to your countrymen and others, and I foresaw he would need it to defend him against the Jesuits and priests, who are, of course, omnipotent in Rome ; and so it turned out, and I saw from the newspapers that you had done all you could for him. I can answer for his being neither an impostor nor a sorcerer (which is absurd), and I have found him a man of honor, by actions, not by words of his or hearsay of others, and I know him to be very generous though poor, and good-hearted. All which is in his favor, and so likewise are the phenomena that spontaneously accompany him, and of which I have had sufficient experience in my own house, watched and guarded with the most suspicious incredulity, which is stronger with me than with most people, as perhaps you may remember, for I was always so.

My own proofs of our existence after death are entirely independent of Home, and began before I knew him or the works of Judge Edmonds, which confirmed them, and they settled my creed, very far from a canonical one, either Roman or Calvinistic, which, entre nous, are about equally blasphemous and Jewish. But I will not write all I could, for fear this should never reach you. I doubt if all your letters have come to me, and the one I have just received was left for me (I was out) by a priest!

I know the Frescobaldis and Mr. Hart.

Do you ever see Miss Ironsides ? A friend of hers lately came to see me. Miss Ironsides was gifted as a medium, but her weak vulgar mother extinguished her, and encouraged her in commonplace studies under the direction of snobs when she might have been a painter of the imagination, like my old friend William Blake, who I thought was mad, though I don’t think so now.

Flaxman, Stothard, and Fuseli were all suspected, and so were Danby, Varley, and even Martin. Anyhow they were original, and showed mind ; and even old West was sometimes a mystic, and Barry and Loutherburg.

After I proved the truth of Spiritualism, which I scouted for a long time, I was induced to follow up my experiments in hopes of some day seeing something worthy to paint. I longed for a good vision, and do still, but I am not enough of a medium. I have only seen, heard, and felt enough to be sure of the existence of spirits. Neither books nor men were enough for me, and I sought witnesses of my experience, and would not rely on my own impressions alone, which might have been effects of imagination, waking dreams !

But when half a dozen people were present, they could not all be dreaming of the same thing. A lady wrote to me the other day that Home had been raised in the air a hundred times since he came to London, and had been seen by a thousand people. Besta ! you have doubtless heard enough about it, and I have seen enough in my own house.

What are you doing in painting ? Bible subjects are worn out, and were never interesting to me. I have an Italian book that says the Madonna ought to be painted ugly, as she was sixty when she died. Young John lived to a hundred, and was buried, but never died ; his grave moves. He is waiting for the last day to fulfill the prophecies. Read Sir John Mandeville’s travels in the East in 1345,—an orthodox Englishman!

I have been long an admirer of Dante, but I think Shakespeare a greater poet. Dante has been much with me in this room. His poem is not true, and Beatrice was not a Portinari, as it has proved. The Pope has forbid the title of " La Divina Commedia.”

Here is too long a yarn for a busy man like you. I wonder if you could get for me the report of a trial in Rome, printed about fifteen years ago, of a Count Alberti, for forging and selling some manuscripts of Tasso. If you could secure me a copy, I will take care to repay you and let you have the reading of it before you send it me, either by the post or private hand. It is very curious and would amuse you. Tasso was in favor with good spirits like Socrates. Adieu, dear Severn.

Yours affectionately,

S. KIRKUP.

VII. FROM THE SAME.

FLORENCE, 2, PONTE Vecchio, primo p°, April 4, 1868.

MY DEAR SEVERN, — The sight of your handwriting gave me great pleasure. I knew it again directly. After so many years that I have known you,— about fifty, I think ! How strange it is that the writing and the mind remain the same, though our carcasses have been entirely changed and renewed above sixteen times in that period ! So says Liebig, the greatest physiologist of the age. I have been following that study lately, having been too long engrossed by that of psychology, and I have found them both full of wonders.

Have you heard that the King has made me a knight and a baron ? For some discoveries I made in Florence respecting Dante, so I suppose ; all that is said in my diploma and other papers is, “ In considerazione di particolari benemerenze. " I never knew more, and the minister who recommended me to him died of the cholera in Sicily. He was a Sicilian, and I had never heard his name till then (Natoli), or knew any of his friends. It was a perfect surprise to me, always the same poor devil of a painter, — on which account I only call myself chevalier. I am not rich enough to live in baronial state. Poor knights are common enough, even at Windsor ! Painters never get beyond the rank of knight,—Sir Peter Paul, Sir Anthony, Sir Peter, Sir Godfrey, down to Sir Joshua, etc., etc.

In Paris I knew three painters in 1816 whom Napoleon I. had created barons, David, Gros, and Gérard, whose sons are now senators, diplomats, etc. Marochetti, who lately died in England, was an Italian baron, and there is a landscape painter, whose name I forget.

I have no news to tell you. The government and the chambers are all engrossed by the reform of the finances. They have a difficult task, and have neglected it too long. If they don’t succeed now it will soon be too late. What think you of Bonaparte’s dodge to keep Italy divided, by offering the Venetians their ancient republic, and their refusal of it in order to join Italy ? We live in strange times. I have always observed Monseigneur Bonaparte, now his Eminence, next his Sanctity. That is what they are aiming at. Besides that, a king of Rome is looming in the distance, and at one time a King Murat was in view for Naples. A friend of yours said the other day, You have only changed masters, — French instead of Germans. Bastea ! one must not talk politics to you. Your position is delicately neutral, and you have enough to do in your official capacity with your benevolence.

I was very sorry to hear of Miss Ironsides’ death. Her mother came to me on her way to England. I showed her a drawing of a vision she (Miss I.) had drawn in my house, which vision she saw in a crystal ball. The mother kissed it and shed tears. It was remorse for taking her from Florence to Rome, to paint vulgar, worn-out Bible subjects that nobody cares for any longer, they are so commonplace in Catholic churches, and excluded in Protestant ones; whilst the Catholics forbid the Bible, of which they are afraid, and perhaps ashamed, like our poor friend Charles Brown, whose son is, I believe, alive. Do you know ? I heard a long time ago that he was very prosperous in New Zealand. Brown had been a good friend of Keats. They wrote a tragedy together (Otho).³

I hear that Keats’s monument is already in ruin. The English in Rome might subscribe a trifle to restore it. Shelley’s is in fine preservation. We were together at his funeral. I should have attended Keats’s, but I was in bed with the fever. Old Morgan died here not long ago. He was near ninety, Landor ditto, and one old English painter, Giacomo Smith, one hundred and sixteen.

If you see Mrs. Trelawny, remember me to her. She is a very superior woman, and her daughter a fine creature. Is Desoulavy alive and in Rome ? An excellent fellow, sincere and unaffected. What became of Ewing, Evans, Lane, Renny, McDonald, Tenerani, Agricola, Minardi, Snetz, and all the Frenchmen ? I met Madame Terlink the other day, and the Genoese miniature-painter, whose name I forget. I think he married Moschi’s sister.

I am living now with a little daughter. She is now fourteen. Her maid is an ex-nun, — very good, and glad to be free. They are both mediums, the former ever since she was two years old. If you have ever been photographed, send me one. I shall value it. Adieu, my dear old friend.

Yours very sincerely,

SEYMOUR KIRKUP.

Seymour Kirkup first met Severn at the interment of Shelley’s ashes in the old cemetery of Monte Testaccio, in Rome, and he died before his friend was laid beside the other great poet with whom his name is so closely associated. Charles Brown, who died at Taranaki, New Zealand, in 1842, was not “ ashamed ” of the Bible ; but he was a deist, and to the last refused to have anything to do with official exponents of Christianity. Though he died at that then remote settlement, his burial was attended by two men of a different stamp from his fellow pioneer-colonists : John George Cooke, an intimate friend of Trelawny’s, and the late Alfred Domett, so much better known, doubtless, by the name of “ Waring,” conferred upon him by Robert Browning. Among the Severn manuscripts is a long letter from Mr. Domett, in which he states that he purchased at Buffalo, N. Y., so long ago as 1826, an American edition of Keats’s and Shelley’s poems. This was about the same time that the youthful poet Browning tried in vain to obtain a copy of Shelley’s writings in his part of London, where no booksellers kept such an unsalable book as the poems of unknown John Keats.

William Sharp.