Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 130.djvu/99

Rh but the sight of a fine picture had a contrary effect, and I went back and set to work with reboubled ardor.

The direct connection between Reynolds and Northcote ended in 1775, when Northcote was twenty-nine years old. They parted on good terms, Reynolds saying that Northcote had been very useful to him, more so than any other scholar that had ever been with him, and adding, "I hope we shall assist each other as long as we live." Northcote now went back to Plymouth for a time, and painted portraits until he had made enough money to fulfil his purpose—that of going to Italy to study the great masters—to steal from them, as he afterwards described the process. He spent three years in Italy, not knowing a word of the language, or indeed of any language but his own. This proved no hindrance. He said to Hazlitt, speaking of this journey, "There may be sin in Rome, as in all great capitals, but in Parma, and the remoter towns, they seem all one family. Their kindness to strangers is great. I travelled from Lyons to Genoa, and from Genoa to Rome, without speaking a word of the language, and in the power of a single person, without meeting with the smallest indignity; everywhere, both in inns and on the road, every attention was paid to my feelings, and pains taken to make me comfortable." In the "Conversations" Hazlitt sums up Northcote's impressions of this period:—

Raffaelle, Titian, and Michael Angelo—the last-named especially—were the great objects of attraction to him. He told Reynolds, on his return, "For once that I went to look at Raffaelle, I went twice to look at Michael." He made good use of those studies. You must use the great masters, not imitate them: that was his conclusion. It is easy, he says, to imitate one of the old masters, but repetitions are useless.

Northcote, as this passage shows, was a sound critic. He could also describe a fine picture so as to bring it bodily before us. Speaking of Titian, he said to Hazlitt:—

Here is another criticism, on Velasquez.

When a work seems stamped on the canvas by a blow, you are taken by surprise, and your admiration is as instantaneous and electrical as the impulse of genius which has caused it. I have seen a whole-length portrait by Velas-