Page:Nollekens and His Times, Volume 2.djvu/456

 444 resided, as one of the Collectors for the Watch-rate; and I have often seen him, with an ink-bottle in his button-hole, collecting the rate. I also recollect reading in some newspaper the following paragraph: "We understand that Flaxman, the Sculptor, is about to leave his modest mansion in Wardour-street for Rome." In 1787, he left England, and studied in Rome, where he increased his friends and his fame, and returned to England in 1794; Upon his arrival, he took the premises in Buckingham-street, Fitzroy-square, where he died; and perhaps no man of such high and distinguished abilities had fewer enemies, nor a greater number of friends.

I cannot suffer the uninformed reader to conclude, that the carver's powers are not absolutely requisite to the fame of the designer and modeller; for, without his tasteful finishing, the most exquisite model may be totally deprived of its feeling, by the want of that fleshiness, which must ever charm the eye accustomed to dwell upon the fine productions of ancient Sculpture. The expression of a feature,—an eye for instance, so fascinating to the beholder, in which the very focus and soul of the modeller is seated,—if carelessly finished, might be lost for ever, particularly if too much of