on the practices of men as if they were the laws of nature, but
that which is ready to appreciate the power, and receive the assistance,
of every mind which has been previously employed in the same direction,
so far as its teaching seems to be consistent with the great text-book
of nature itself. Turner thus studied almost every preceding landscape
painter, chiefly Claude, Poussin, Vandevelde, Loutherbourg, and Wilson.
It was probably by the Sir George Beaumonts and other feeble
conventionalists of the period, that he was persuaded to devote his
attention to the works of these men; and his having done so will be
thought, a few scores of years hence, evidence of perhaps the greatest
modesty ever shown by a man of original power. Modesty at once admirable
and unfortunate, for the study of the works of Vandevelde and Claude was
productive of unmixed mischief to him; he spoiled many of his marine
pictures, as for instance Lord Ellesmere's, by imitation of the former;
and from the latter learned a false ideal, which confirmed by the
notions of Greek art prevalent in London in the beginning of this
century, has manifested itself in many vulgarities in his composition
pictures, vulgarities which may perhaps be best expressed by the general
term "Twickenham Classicism," as consisting principally in conceptions
of ancient or of rural life such as have influenced the erection of most
of our suburban villas. From Nicolo Poussin and Loutherbourg he seems to
have derived advantage; perhaps also from Wilson; and much in his
subsequent travels from far higher men, especially Tintoret and Paul
Veronese. I have myself heard him speaking with singular delight of the
putting in of the beech leaves in the upper right-hand corner of
Titian's Peter Martyr. I cannot in any of his works trace the slightest
influence of Salvator; and I am not surprised at it, for though Salvator
was a man of far higher powers than either Vandevelde or Claude, he was
a wilful and gross caricaturist. Turner would condescend to be helped by
feeble men, but could not be corrupted by false men. Besides, he had
never himself seen classical life, and Claude was represented to him as
competent authority for it. But he _had_ seen mountains and torrents,
and knew therefore that Salvator could not paint them.

One of the most characteristic drawings of this period fortunately bears
a date, 1818, and brings us within two years of another dated drawing,
no less characteristi