Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ... XI DICK WILSON had taken very kindly to Jeffray's hospitality, having discovered a warmth and sincerity in the master of Rodenham that was welcome to this rough philosopher who had suffered from the treachery of fashion. He loved the lad for his enthusiasm, his modesty, and the frank chivalry of his boyish heart. Though contrasting in the outer man there was much similarity of soul between Jeffray and the painter. To strangers Wilson often appeared a coarse, ungainly, and ill-bred person, too much enamoured of using a somewhat scathing tongue on occasions, a man who drank porter and delighted in cheese. Wilson had already set to work to paint a portrait of the Lady Letitia. The dowager appeared to have become even more enamoured of honest Dick, confessing to Richard that she had but rarely met a man possessed of so much wit, wisdom, and sterling commonsense. Jeffray respected his aunt for admiring Wilson, and was heartily glad that the poor fellow should make a friend of one whom he believed to be of influence in fashionable circles. Wilson had described to Jeffray the many ignominies and trials of a painter's life. Since he had been persuaded by Zucarelli to abandon portraiture for landscape-painting he had discovered that he was dropping from the notice of the polished patrons of the age. Nature smiled upon his canvases, but she could not give him guineas in return. The English gentleman of that period believed that he could see trees, clouds, and rivers anywhere, and was by no means inclined to waste good gold on studies of prosaic hills. Well might Gay's Trivia stand for the tastes of the age, Pope-ridden pedantry, cramped, stilted, and precise. An absurd and pompous classicalism clogged the mind. Affectation was everywhere; the very...