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. 1892 edition. Excerpt: ... In poetry and painting, things are not to be represented as they positively exist, for there ix not an entire pleasure in them in that view; but they should be embellished to the utmost, always however in taste, and in the feeling of the subject. Those who object to your boys, should, on the same principle, object to so many beautiful women assembled at the same moment in the same vintage--both are improbable, only the boys are less so. God has given us a real world and an imaginary one--both lovely and both perfect; and-He has also given us the power to relieve our minds by flying from one to the other, and by mingling them at our will for our delight. The last belongs especially to the poet and the painter; when they fail to take advantage of it, they become matter-of-fact gentlemen, who use their fine words and their fine colours to no purpose. Your man is a matter-of-fact; your boys a touch of poetry. The former a disagreeable reality, the latter a brilliant probability, a threading of the imagination through the dull course of common events. Your own natural feeling led you to the beautiful, the poetic, and your fear of infringing on the usual mode, the common one, has startled you. Have I satisfied you? " It was about this time that Severn met, and was at once strongly attracted by Miss Elizabeth Montgomerie, Lady Westmorland's ward. In one of his ' Reminiscences' he speaks of this events as having occurred towards the end of 1825, but other evidence, together with an allusion in a letter from Brown, written in August of the same year, and hints in his home-letters, prove that he must have met Miss Montgomerie during or shortly after the Christmas season of 1824--25, if not, indeed, earlier. " It was in the early winter of 1825, ..".
