of landscape art, he had been
able at once to see his way to the attainment of his ultimate ends; or
if, seeing it, he had felt himself at once strong enough to defy the
authority of every painter and connoisseur whose style had formed the
taste of the public, or whose dicta directed their patronage.

98. But the period when he both felt and resolved to assert his own
superiority was indicated with perfect clearness, by his publishing a
series of engravings, which were nothing else than direct challenges to
Claude--then the landscape painter supposed to be the greatest in the
world--upon his own ground and his own terms. You are probably all aware
that the studies made by Claude for his pictures, and kept by him under
the name of the "Liber Veritatis," were for the most part made with pen
and ink, washed over with a brown tint; and that these drawings have
been carefully facsimiled and published in the form of mezzotint
engravings, long supposed to be models of taste in landscape
composition. In order to provoke comparison between Claude and himself,
Turner published a series of engravings, called the "Liber Studiorum,"
executed in exactly the same manner as these drawings of Claude,--an
etching representing what was done with the pen, while mezzotint stood
for color. You see the notable publicity of this challenge. Had he
confined himself to _pictures_ in his trial of skill with Claude, it
would only have been in the gallery or the palace that the comparison
could have been instituted; but now it is in the power of all who are
interested in the matter to make it at their ease.[32]

[Footnote 32: When this lecture was delivered, an enlarged copy of a
portion of one of these studies by Claude was set beside a similarly
magnified portion of one by Turner. It was impossible, without much
increasing the cost of the publication, to prepare two mezzotint
engravings with the care requisite for this purpose; and the portion of
the Lecture relating to these examples is therefore omitted. It is,
however, in the power of every reader to procure one or more plates of
each series; and to judge for himself whether the conclusion of Turner's
superiority, which is assumed in the next sentence of the text, be a
just one or not.]

* * * * *

99. Now, what Turner did in contest with Claude, he did with every other
then-known master of landscape, each in his turn. He challenged, and
vanquished, each in h