Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/12

 Musée Français and the Musée Royal, a notice of which may be found in vol. iii., page 302, of this work. He trusts he may soon be able to present the first numbers to the public. These, and his other achieved undertakings, have made his life one of the most untiring industry. In order to find time for these enterprises, and still attend to the calls of his profession, he has been obliged to deprive himself of repose and relaxation; and during the five years he was engaged in publishing Boydell's Illustrations of Shakspeare, and in preparing his Dictionary for the press, he spent but one evening out of his study, except those of the Sabbath, relinquishing his toil only at midnight, to be resumed at dawn.

These self-imposed labors have not been assumed through any mercenary or selfish motives. His experience has taught him the precarious results of literary and publishing enterprises of the nature undertaken by him, in the present state of the Fine Arts in our country. The amount of capital and labor he has invested has been enormous, and the risks proportionate; his books admonish him that he has already embarked many thousands of dollars which he can never hope to regain. Still, what he has accomplished is to him a theme of pride and exultation; it has also been a labor of love. His reward is the consciousness of having done something toward awakening a love for, and an interest in art and artists, and that he will leave to his countrymen, for their delight and instruction, so many world-renowned and world-approved specimens of the highest art. Posterity must be his judge; but he cannot forbear to add, that can he now succeed in restoring the great works before mentioned, and leave them as a rich legacy to his country, for the promotion of the Fine Arts in coming time, he will have accomplished his every earthly aspiration.