hold up the examples of Heyne, and Winckelman, and the other illustrious conquerors of fortune whom we have named, as guides and encouragements. To none besides are they fitted to be either the one or the other. With regard to the great mass of mankind, any counsel or exhortation which would attempt to raise them above the rank in which they have been born and reared must, from the nature of things, be totally inoperative. But it is right that the individual who, although poor, and unknown, and uneducated, longs for education as his chief earthly good, and feels within himself the strength and resolution to undergo all things for the sake of obtaining it, should be shown, by the example of those who, under the same impulse, have surmounted difficulties as formidable as his own, that no difficulties, however great, are any reason for despair.

ARTISTS

CHAPTER IV.

RISING FROM THE LOWER ΤΟ THE

HIGHER BRANCHES:B. CELLINI; Q. MATSYS; IBBETSON; KENT; TOWNE; KIRBY; SCHIAVONI; HOGARTH; SHARP; THEW; CASLON. — LATE LEARNERS:CROMWELL; SIR W. JONES; CATO THE CENSOR; ALFRED; MOLIERE; VALERIANUS; VONDEL; PITOT; PAUCTON; OGILBY.

THERE is one mode in which ingenious and aspiring workmen have sometimes raised themselves above the trade they were bred up to, which does not imply any violent abandonment of their original occupation, but on the contrary arises naturally out of pursuits into which it has led them. We allude to cases of the mere working mechanic elevating himself into an artist, in a department kindred to that of his first exertions; and of the artist himself making his way from a lower to a higher department of his art. Thus, in Italy especially, it has not been uncommon for working goldsmiths, or those of them at least who have been employed in copying designs in the metal, to carry the study of their profession so far as to attain more or less proficiency in the art of design itself; and some individuals, thus educated, have become eminent painters or sculptors. BENVENUTO CELLINI is one instance, who, while serving an apprenticeship to a goldsmith, acquired a knowledge not only of chasing, but also of drawing, engraving, and statuary ; and afterwards became one of the greatest sculptors of his age; and several others might be mentioned.-Workers in gold and silver, however, are not the only sort of smiths who have in this way attained to a proficiency in the fine arts. The old Dutch painter, QUINTIN MATSYS, was originally a blacksmith and farrier, on which account he is often called

the Blacksmith of Antwerp, the town where he pursued this humble vocation. Having, when a young man, been attacked by a disorder which left him too much debilitated to return to the heavier work of his trade, which was his only means of support for himself and a widowed mother, he was forced to turn his attention to the fabrication of such light and ornamental articles as it was then fashionable to construct of wrought iron; and he obtained considerable reputation, in particular, by an enclosure and covering of this description, which he made for a well in the neighbourhood of the great church at Antwerp. He began, however, at length, to find even such work as this too laborious; and was in great difficulties as to what he should do, when the thought occurred to him, or rather to one of his friends, that, as he had shown considerable talent for the art of design in many of the ornamental articles he had been in the habit of making, it might be worth his while to try what he could accomplish in a simple style of drawing; for example, in painting a few of those small pictures of saints which were wont to be distributed by the religious orders of the city to the peopie, on occasion of certain of their solemn processions. The idea was adopted, and Matsys succeeded in his new attempt to the admiration of everybody. From that time painting became his profession, and he devoted himself to it with so much zeal and success, as not only to acquire a great deal of reputation in his own day, but to leave several works which are still held in considerable estimation. Among them is one at Windsor, "The Misers," which has been often engraved, and it deserves its popularity better, perhaps, than it does its name. It consists of two figures eagerly employed in counting money. The extreme satisfaction in the countenances of each of these persons is most happily expressed; but the expression indicates a more genial feeling than belongs to the character of the "Miser." The probability is, that the picture represents two bankers, or usurers, of Antwerp, who derive that "sunshine of the breast" from a contemplation of their riches-their gold, their bills, and their bonds—of which even virtue itself is hardly more productive than the secure possession of wealth with our ordinary human nature. The accessories of the picture—the candlestick, the rolls of paper, the parrot-are delineated with a fidelity rarely excelled. At any rate the work has excellence enough to be considered the chefd'œuvre of the artist, and such as might fairly have won him the hand of his mistress—who is said to have accepted the "painter," after having rejected the "blacksmith."

The late JULIUS CÆSAR IBBETSON was originally a ship-painter; but by the cultivation of his talents he became so eminent a painter of landscapes, that Mr. West used to compare him to the Dutch Berghem, one of the greatest artists his country has produced in that department. WILLIAM KENT, another English artist of the earlier part of the last

century, who practised both history and portrait painting, but is better known for his architectural designs, and the graceful and picturesque style of ornamental gardening which he was the first to introduce among us, had acquired the rudiments of his art while serving his apprenticeship to a coach-painter. FRANCIS TOWNE, a landscape painter of great taste and unrivalled industry, who acquired a handsome fortune in the exercise of that art, and as a teacher of drawing, commenced his career under similar auspices. JOHN JOSHUA KIRBY, who, about the middle of the last century, distinguished himself by a series of drawings of the monumental and other antiquities of the county of Suffolk, and was elected a member both of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies, was originally a house painter. So was the celebrated Italian painter, SCHIAVONI, whose parents were so poor, that, although he early showed a propensity for the art in which he afterwards so eminently excelled, they were unable to afford him any better initiation into it; but who, even in this humble situation, cultivated his talents with so much success, that he recommended himself by his performances to the notice of the great Titian, and was employed by him to paint the ceilings of the Library of St. Mark. The famous HOGARTH acquired his knowledge

of drawing while serving his apprenticeship to an engraving silversmith, and commenced his professional career by engraving coats-of-arms and shop-bills. The late WILLIAM SHARP, whose eccentricities are so well known, but who was certainly also one of the ablest engravers England ever produced, was educated only to the subordinate branch of the profession called bright engraving, or that which is occupied with such articles as dog-collars, and door-plates. From this he raised himself chiefly by the print of Reynolds's picture of John Hunter, which thus well repaid the year of hard work he bestowed upon it. ROBERT THEW, another English engraver of eminence, originally employed himself merely on visiting-cards and shop-bills. Finally, to omit other instances for the present, WILLIAM CASLON, the celebrated type-founder, began life

only as an engraver of the ornaments on gun-barrels; from which he proceeded, in the first instance, to attempt cutting letters for the bookbinders. Some of his performances in this line having been accidentally seen by Mr. Bowyer, the printer, that gentleman sought him out; and after forming an acquaintance with him, took him one day to a foundry in Bartholomew Close, where, after having shown him something of the nature of the business, he asked him if he could now undertake to cut types himself. Caslon requested a day to consider the matter; and then answered that he thought he could. Upon this, Mr. Bowyer and two of his friends advanced him a small capital; and with no other preparation he set up in his new business. In this he speedily acquired such reputation, that instead of the English printers importing their types any longer from Holland, as had before that time been the custom to a considerable extent, those cast by him were frequently exported to the Continent.

A chief disadvantage which had to be surmounted by some of the individuals we have just mentioned, and others similarly situated, was the time they had lost before commencing the pursuit to which they eventually dedicated themselves. This circumstance involved the necessity of acquiring an acquaintance sometimes even with the most elementary principles of their art at a period of life when their habits were already formed, and a certain degree of aversion contracted for what we may call the discipline of apprenticeship in the rudiments of any art or profession. Considerable as this disadvantage must have been, we see how completely it was overcome by their perseverance and honourable ambition. So, in another field of enterprise, OLIVER CROMWELL, who never fought a battle that he did not win, was forty-two years old before he entered the army; and his contemporary (born, indeed, the same year with himself), the immortal BLAKE, who not only stands in the very front rank of our naval heroes, but may be considered as the founder of the modern system of naval tactics, and who was the first of our commanders that ventured to attack a battery with ships, was in his fiftieth year when he first went to sea. In the pursuit, too, of literature and science, we have many instances of persons who, in the same manner, have become schoolboys, as it were, in their manhood or old age; and, undismayed by the reflection that their spring, and sometimes their summer likewise, of life was already spent and gone, have given themselves with as much alacrity of heart to the work of that education of which circumstances, or their own heedlessness, had prevented the earlier commencement, as if they had been yet as much children in years as they were in learning. Life is short, certainly; and a youth lost in idleness makes a fearful subtraction from its scanty sum; but this is the true way, if there be any way, to repair that loss, and to make our few years many.

We do not comprehend, however, among those who have distinguished

themselves by acquisitions made late in life, all such as may have merely familiarized themselves with a new branch of knowledge after the regular period of education was over. The history of any devotee of learning is

the history of a series of acquisitions, which terminates only with his life itself, and which will very often embrace much that may, in one sense, be termed elementary study, even in its latest stages. Thus, the student of languages, for example, if he proposes to survey any considerable portion of his mighty subject, must lay his account with being obliged to learn vocabularies and grammar rules to the end of his days. Our countryman, Sir WILLIAM JONES, who, in addition to great acquirements in various other departments of knowledge, had made himself acquainted with no fewer than twenty-eight different languages, was studying the grammars of several of the oriental dialects up to within a week of his death in 1794, at the age of forty-eight. At an earlier period of his life, when he was in his thirty-third year, he had resolved, as appears from a scheme of study found among his papers, "to learn no more rudiments of any kind; but to perfect himself in, first, twelve languages, as the means of acquiring accurate knowledge of history, arts, and sciences." These were the Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, German, and English. When he was afterwards induced, however, from the situation he held