with a collier brig and a
fast-sailing boat. In the present view he returns to his early thought,
dwelling, however, now with chief insistence on the ship of the line,
which is certainly the most majestic of all that he has introduced in
his drawings.

It is also a very curious instance of that habit of Turner's before
referred to (p. 27), of never painting a ship quite in good order. On
showing this plate the other day to a naval officer, he complained of
it, first that "the jib[U] would not be wanted with the wind blowing out
of harbor," and, secondly, that "a man-of-war would never have her
foretop-gallant sail set, and her main and mizzen top-gallants
furled:--all the men would be on the yards at once."

[U] The sail seen, edge on, like a white sword, at the head of the
ship.

I believe this criticism to be perfectly just, though it has happened to
me, very singularly, whenever I have had the opportunity of making
complete inquiry into any technical matter of this kind, respecting
which some professional person had blamed Turner, that I have always
found, in the end, Turner was right, and the professional critic wrong,
owing to some want of allowance for possible accidents, and for
necessary modes of pictorial representation. Still, this cannot be the
case in every instance; and supposing my sailor informant to be
perfectly right in the present one, the disorderliness of the way in
which this ship is represented as setting her sails, gives us farther
proof of the imperative instinct in the artist's mind, refusing to
contemplate a ship, even in her proudest moments, but as in some way
over-mastered by the strengths of chance and storm.

The wave on the left hand beneath the buoy, presents a most interesting
example of the way in which Turner used to spoil his work by retouching.
All his truly fine drawings are either done quickly, or at all events
straight forward, without alteration: he never, as far as I have
examined his works hitherto, altered but to destroy. When he saw a plate
look somewhat dead or heavy, as, compared with the drawing, it was
almost sure at first to do, he used to scratch out little lights all
over it, and make it "sparkling"; a process in which the engravers
almost unanimously delighted,[V] and over the impossibility of which
they now mourn, declaring it to be hopeless to engrave after Turner,
since he cannot now scratch their plates for them. It is quite true that
these small lig