. He was, for a time, patronized by one or two of those judicious persons who make a virtue of being singular, and of pitching their own opinions against those of the world in matters of taste and criticism. But they soon tired of poor Tinto, and laid him down as a load, upon the principle on which a spoilt child throws away its plaything. Misery, I fear, took him up, and accompanied him to a premature grave, to which he was carried from an obscure lodging in Swallow Street, where he had been dunned by his landlady within doors, and watched by bailiffs without, until death came to his relief. A corner of the Morning Post noticed his death, generally adding, that his manner displayed considerable genius, though his style was rather sketchy; and referred to an advertisement, which announced that Mr. Varnish, the well-known printseller, had still on hand a very few drawings and paintings by Richard Tinto, Esquire, which those of the nobility and gentry, who might wish to complete the collection of modern art, were invited to visit without delay. So ended Dick Tinto, a lamentable proof of the great truth, that in the Fine Arts mediocrity is not permitted, and that he who cannot ascend to the very top of the ladder, will do well not to put his foot upon it at all. 128 REVIEW OF THE PUBLIC EXHIBITIONS, ART. XII. Exhibition of Mr. HAYDON'S Picture of FOR the four years, and upwards, that our work has been established, and during great part of our former labours, have we run a perpetual gauntlet for asserting the right of Haydon to the title of an historical painter of the highest order. Letters, anonymous, imploring and threatening, with and without caricatures; friends and acquaintances, and people with whom we were only on speaking terms; artists with shrugs of shoulders, critics with expressions of regret, and actors with squeezes of condolence at our infatuation, blindness and ignorance, have been firing at our devoted heads, and shaking their own-and yet—can it be?—we are alive-our work is in being, increasing in favour and in sale-andHaydon's picture done. Our triumph is now complete. Wait till the picture be finished was our reply,—it is finished-it is before the public, the first judges in the country have stamped it with their sanction, the public feeling has sanctioned the connoisseurs-we are satisfied-we are proud of every word or syllable that we have ever written upon the subject, and the pledge is redeemed that one friend said we had engaged too deep for redemption. The way in which the public press has burst forth in praise of Haydon's picture, will be an everlasting honour to its spirit and taste. Our readers will recollect how we were taunted for mentioning his name in conjunction with the great men of other ages, whereas the public journals have joined his name with almost every one of them in succession; and as we are convinced, even now, whatever we might say of this picture would be looked upon more as an effusion of friendship than of judgment, we shall quote a capital account from the " Observer," to show our readers that there are others in the world who, though totally unknown to Mr. Haydon, think as highly of him as we do that have that pleasure. MR. HAYDON'S PICTURE. "Mr. Haydon has been, for some years, known to the public by an enthusiasm for his art, singular even among painters-by his fine studies of the Elgin marbles, and by his unwearied application to the highest class of history. He has now completed a capital work, and may congratulate himself upon the time and labour that it has absorbed. They have been well expended; and whatever may be the duration of the British school, or the dignity to which it may rise, we can foresee no period at which it will not reckon this picture among its claims to distinction. Short as the period of its exhibition has been, it has been so generally noticed by the daily papers, that we feel some reluctance in giving a description which may tell so little untold already. But the painter's own language has a value that makes it worth a more careful preservation than that of his little pamphlet; and as we, with the habitual vanity of journalists, expect to have our files looked into by the great and the wise, by the philosophers and the painters, of a thousand years to come, we give Mr. Haydon's description of, as he gracefully says, his intention in his noble work. We look upon this little document as very important, and without making any of those comparisons which Mr. Haydon's modesty would be the last to suffer, must feel how delightful it would be to have such illustrations of their own pencils from the great painters of the past ages. How delightful to have VOL. V. NO. 16. K Salvator Rosa giving us the history of his wandering clouds and sunless valleys, and helmed and cuirassed banditti in their fastnesses of the Apennine, and the whole glorious and living complication of the savage, the solemn, and the sublime. Then to follow Titian's mind as it created his gorgeous pictures-his Danae, or his Peter Martyr; or Raphael, as his hand flung life, like flashes of lightning, among his saints and sages; to hear him as he stood over the cartoon of " Paul preaching," or the "Beautiful Gate," revealing the whole rich mystery of his genius. Why was this countenance bowed to the earth in such deep humility? Why was the next lifted up in such beaming admiration? How he willed that eloquence should burn on the lips of the apostle, and excess of worship make the hearer awed and pale? How malignity should lour in the eye of the Jew, and philosophic doubt sit in the inquisitive aspect of the Greek? Those would be precious as fragments of the mighty minds that in all their shapes were mighty, as excursions of the eagle pinion into a new region, and developing new and consummate nerve. But their great value would be in their illustration of the matchless works that were like the pillars of the Israelites in their march through the promised land-to remain to posterity not simply evidences of early triumphs, but memorials of a time when they lived under influences that had since seemed to have gone from them-influences like the immediate impression of a power superior to man. The pencil is not the mind: it is slow, feeble, and narrow, compared to the splendour, variety, and rapidity of imagination. The canvass may be covered with glorious beauty, and yet it may contain but the relicks and remnants of the power that has conceived its beauty; a thousand visions of the sublime and the lovely have passed over the mind that coloured the canvass; and of them all, not one may have been fully embodied. The thoughts of day and night, the dreams and inspirations of years, have been summoned up and busied round the story; and how few of these crowding and brilliant phantoms can find room upon that narrow ground. The intentions of the great painter for one picture would make a succession of mighty pictures. What value could be too high for the intentions of Raphael meditating on the Transfiguration, or Michael Angelo fixing his intense eye on the vault of the Sistine Chapel? We wish to see Mr. Haydon's example adopted by our leading artists, and we can conceive few memorials more gratifying to their contemporaries, and more instructive to the future, than such details of what they had intended to accomplish in the work which they added to the treasures of the civilized world. We leave Mr. Haydon to explain his own objects in the conduct of his story-none could do it with more moderation, and few could do it in language at once so vigorous and so graceful. 66 DESCRIPTION &c. "The verses from which the subject of this picture is more immediately taken, are from St. Luke, chap. xix. and from St. John, chap. xii. 15. Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass's colt.' And as he went, they "St. Luke, chap. xix. v. 36. spread their clothes in the way.-37. And when he was come nigh, even now at the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice, for all the mighty works that they had seen.-38. Saying, blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord, peace in Heaven, and glory in the highest.-39. And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, |