Monthly Review; Or New Literary Journal

ART. I.-Memoirs of the Life and Works of George Romney, including various letters and testimonies to his genius, &c.; also some particulars of the life of his brother, a young artist of great genius and promising talents, but of short life. By the Rev. John Romney, B.D. formerly Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. 4to, pp. 332. London: Baldwin and Co. 1830.

THAT once fashionable, very pompous and very rapid writer, Hayley, has given to the world, what he called a life of Romney, the well known painter. Cumberland has in his memoirs also preserved some anecdotes of that artist, and in most of the biographical dictionaries, mention is made of his talents, his eccentricities, and errors. The author of the present volume complains, not without some appearance of reason, that in most, if not all of these accounts, the character of Romney is not done justice to; and in some of them, that by Hayley particularly, his memory is seriously injured upon points of great delicacy and importance. Under these circumstances a son comes forward, though rather tardily, yet in a most natural and becoming manner, not only to vindicate the reputation of his father from the aspersions that have been cast upon it, but also to show that his success in his profession deserved a wider and more enduring celebrity than it has yet obtained. Romney having belonged exclusively to the last century, is little known to the present generation, his works never having been exhibited much in public. But the delay of his son in producing the present testimonial to his merits is satisfactorily accounted for. Sickness seems to have been the chief cause of it; perhaps the res angusta domi had also something to do with it; but however this may have been, we are pleased with the work, and with the manner in which it has been executed. There is a raciness and vigour in the style which we found extremely engaging.

Indeed, we do not know when we read a piece of biography with greater satisfaction; it was a positive enjoyment, and a rare one too, considering the flimsy productions in this department of literature, which have been recently poured upon the town.

There is more than one point of coincidence between this work and the memoirs of Mr. Curran. The subjects of both were men of distinguished genius, they were both enthusiastically fond of music, both had highly romantic dispositions, both had, either with or without cause, separated themselves from their wives, after having had families, and the best biographies of both have been written by their sons. To those sons the highest credit is due, for this merit at least, that they have forgotten their own personal wrongs and privations, and merged every feeling in the desire to have the memories of their parents stand well in the estimation of posterity. It is impossible to refuse our sympathies to a writer engaged, like the Rev. Mr. Romney, in defending the tomb of his father from violation, and in exposing the ignorance or malignity of those who, under the mask of friendship, exaggerated his personal failings, and reduced to the rank of mediocrity his claims to professional distinction. No doubt we must be prepared to meet with a fault of an opposite description in the work before us. It is to be expected, as a matter of course, that the son would speak more highly of his father's talents than, perhaps, they deserve, and would extenuate, as much as possible, the blameable passages in his personal career. But allowance may easily be made by every reader on both these points, and, at all events, it is much safer as well as more agreeable, to extricate the probable truth from overrated praise than from unpitying censure.

Besides the superior authenticity of his memoir as compared with any that we have yet possessed, the Rev. Mr. Romney has treated the professional portions of his subject with a degree of taste and enthusiasm for the arts, not unworthy of his sire. We collect little of instruction or entertainment from the life of an eminent painter, which gives a mere dry catalogue of his works. Mr. Romney has not contented himself with doing any such thing. He has discussed, perhaps magnified, the perfections of his father's pictures, but he generally discusses their merits with tact and knowledge. His criticisms are well written, and serve to vary the thread of a biography, which would, otherwise, have had but slender materials to rest upon for its interest.

It was unnecessary, and by no means discreet, in our author to commence his memoir with an attack upon the pride of pedigree. That feeling is not altogether so silly as he would represent it. Happy are those who, to a long line of ancestry, can add the sanction and ornament of their own virtues and acquirements; happy are those who, unable to count beyond their grandfathers, have become, by their own successful industry, the head of an honoured family. It would as little become the former to despise the well

earned station of the latter, as it would the latter to ridicule the transmitted dignity of the former. Both have causes for just and laudable pride, and in either case the preferable rule is to set out with a bare statement of the sources of descent. In our opinion it reads equally well, to say that B, who raised to so high a pitch the celebrity of his name, was born of a family well known and respected for ages in the northern part of England, or that C, who was eventually so distinguished in his profession, was the son of a weaver in Spitalfields.

The father of Romney was a cabinet-maker, possessed of a small estate near Lancaster, a man of unaffected piety, moral in his conduct, inoffensive in his manners. He is called a second Triptolemus, for the improvements which he introduced into the agriculture of his neighbourhood. He is said to have constructed a plough that went by wind! Of the model of this curious implement, our author has forborne to favour us with any description. It is certain that he made some useful alterations in the plough, which are still respected. He had a head for mechanics; he made the first mahogany chest of drawers ever seen in Lancashire, and the best fiddles in all the country round. He would have died a rich man had he not been a projector, and forgotten to keep any books. He gave his children, however, a good education, and, on his death, bequeathed to his eldest son, George, a small estate in Furness, near which the said George was born in December, O. S. 1734.

As many of the first eleven years of our hero's life as could be devoted to that purpose, were spent at school, where, however, he made but an indifferent progress. The succeeding ten years he idled at home, his genius struggling in obscurity and labouring under every disadvantage.' It is conjectured that his genius received its first impulse from drawings of ornaments and architecture which he had seen made by his father. From an early age he became strongly attached to music. He carved a violin for himself, which is still preserved as an ingenious piece of workmanship. He was taught to play upon it by a watchmaker, of Dalton, of the name of Williamson. On hearing Giardini perform at Whitehaven, such was young Romney's transport that he was for a while divided between the muses of music and painting, hesitating to which he should devote his life. The watchmaker was enough of a philosopher to instruct his pupil in the wonders of the camera obscura, which may have assisted in opening his fancy. The science of alchymy had, moreover, its charms for Williamson, who imparted his acquirements to his young associate, without, however, leaving any other impression on his mind than a desire, long cherished, of writing a melo-drama on the subject, and of representing, in a series of drawings, the progress of an alchymist in search of the mystic stone,-neither of which intentions was ever reduced to practice.

Our biographer repudiates the assertion of Cumberland, that his father conceived his first idea of painting from copying the cuts in

the Universal Magazine. This honour is with more probability assigned to Leonardo da Vinci's Treatise on Painting, illustrated by a great number of excellent engravings, which young Romney possessed before he was apprenticed, and which contained a life of the author and a preface by the translator, both calculated to fill his mind with admiration for the art. It is said, also, that he was master of two other elementary books, "Le Brun's Passions," and "Art's Master-piece," from which he might have derived practical as well as theoretical knowledge.

After giving several striking indications not only of his love for the art, but of considerable progress in it by his own unassisted exertions, it was deemed adviseable that he should be allowed to follow the bent of his genius. He was accordingly articled for four years, in March, 1755, to an itinerant painter of some celebrity, then high in vogue at Kendal, of the name of Steele, nicknamed the Count, being a fellow of showy appearance and a Frenchman in the style of his dress. At first our hero was condemned to mix the colours and act the drudge in all things: nevertheless, he learned much from the Count, who had been the pupil of Carlo Vanloo. It is proved by many facts that men of genius are exceedingly prone to fall over head and ears in love at a very early period of life. A young witch of Kendal, Mary Abbot by name, ran away with his heart before he knew what he was about. Her mother was a widow in impoverished circumstances; nevertheless the young painter, having been ordered to follow his master to York, and not being able to bear the thought of separation from his mistress, secretly married her, and defended this step with great plausibility. "If you consider every thing deliberately," he says, writing to his father," you will find it to be the best affair that ever happened to me; because, if I have fortune, I shall make a better painter than I should otherwise have done, as it will be a spur to my application and my thoughts being now still, and not obstructed by youthful follies, I can practise with more diligence and success than ever." I have no doubt myself,' adds the biographer, but it was highly advantageous to his professional pursuits, and contributed essentially to his future excellence. His affections and feelings being thus gratified and his mind at ease, he devoted himself to his art with the most determined industry. From the time of his marriage till he finally quitted Kendal, his application was incessant; and having no models to study from but those of nature, he acquired a style peculiar to himself, which, though much refined and improved by future study and practice, he never afterwards entirely changed.' It was no cold trait in his wife's character, that although far from being overburthened with the good things of this life, she occasionally contrived to send him, while he was in York, half a guinea covered under the seal of a letter. He sent her his own portrait, the first he ever drew in oil, a hard and laboured performance.

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