Intentions

IT has constantly been made a subject of reproach against artists and men of letters that they arelacking in wholeness and completeness of nature. As a rule this must necessarily be so. That veryconcentration of vision and intensity of purpose which is the characteristic of the artistictemperament is in itself a mode of limitation. To those who are preoccupied with the beauty ofform nothing else seems of much importance. Yet there are many exceptions to this rule. Rubensserved as ambassador, and Goethe as state councillor, and Milton as Latin secretary toCromwell. Sophocles held civic office in his own city; the humourists, essayists, and novelists ofmodern America seem to desire nothing better than to become the diplomatic representatives oftheir country; and Charles Lamb's friend, Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, the subject of this briefmemoir, though of an extremely artistic temperament, followed many masters other than art, beingnot merely a poet and a painter, an art-critic, an antiquarian, and a writer of prose, an amateur ofbeautiful things, and a dilettante of things delightful, but also a forger of no mean or ordinarycapabilities, and as a subtle and secret poisoner almost without rival in this or any age.