his year's works. Their subjects are taken from
abstracts from a MS. poem, of which Mr Turner is, we presume, himself
the author; for though somewhat more distinct and intelligible than his
paint, they are obscure enough, and by their feet are as much out of the
perspective of verse, as his objects are of that of lines. "The opening
of the Wallhalla," is by far the best, indeed it has its beauties;
distances are happily given: most absurd are the figures, and the
inconceivable foreground. The catalogue announcement of No. 129 startled
us. We expected to see "Bright Phoebus" himself poetically personating
a doge, or a midshipman; for it points to the "Sun of Venice going to
Sea." His "Shade and Darkness; or, the Evening of the Deluge," is the
strangest of things--the first question we ask is, which is the shade
and which the darkness? After the strictest scrutiny, we learn from this
bit of pictorial history, that on the eve of the mighty Deluge, a
Newfoundland dog was chained to a post, lest he should swim to the ark;
that a pig had been drinking a bottle of wine--an anachronism, for
certainly "as drunk as David's sow," was an after-invention: that men,
women, and children, (such we suppose they are meant to be) slept a
purple sleep, with most gigantic arms round little bodies; that there
was fire that did not burn, and water that would nearly obliterate, but
not drown. But more wonderful still is the information we pick up, or
pick out bit by bit, as strange things glimmer into shape. "Light and
Colour, (Goethe's Theory)--The Morning after the Deluge--Moses writing
the book of Genesis." Such is the unexpected announcement of the
catalogue. But further to account for so remarkable a jumble as we are
to behold, Mr Turner adds the following verses:--

"The ark stood firm on Ararat: th' returning sun
Exhaled earth's humid bubbles, and, emulous of light,
Reflected her lost forms, each in prismatic guise,
Hope's harbinger, ephemeral as the summer fly,
Which rises, flits, expands, and dies."

_Fallacies of Hope, MS._

This is unquestionably one of the "Fallacies of Hope"--for it is quite
hopeless to make out, the sun smoking his cigar of colour, and exhaling
earth's humid bubbles; yet we do see a great number of "bubble" heads,
scratchy things, in red wigs, rolling and floating out of nothing into
nothing. There must indeed have been very wondrous giants in those days;
for here is an enormous leg, fa