could
do nothing after it. When he dined out he had to drink nothing but water,
so as not to compromise his reputation for temperance. He spoke four
languages, and all badly, and could not even write his native tongue with
correctness; and yet he claimed perfection for his grammar and
orthography, as for all his other qualities. While I was staying with him
I became acquainted with some of his weak points, and endeavoured to
correct them, at which he took great offence. The fellow writhed under a
sense of obligation to me. Once I prevented his sending a petition to the
Court, which the king would have seen, and which would have made Mengs
ridiculous. In signing his name he had written 'el mas inclito', wishing
to say your most humble. I pointed out to him that 'el mas inclito' meant
the most illustrious, and that the Spanish for the expression he wanted
was 'el mas humilde'. The proud fool was quite enraged, telling me that
he knew Spanish better than I, but when the dictionary was searched he
had to swallow the bitter pill of confessing himself in the wrong.

Another time I suppressed a heavy and stupid criticism of his on someone
who had maintained that there were no monuments still existing of the
antediluvian period. Mengs thought he would confound the author by citing
the remains of the Tower of Babel--a double piece of folly, for in the
first place there are no such remains, and in the second, the Tower of
Babel was a post-diluvian building.

He was also largely given to the discussion of metaphysical questions, on
which his knowledge was simply nil, and a favourite pursuit of his was
defining beauty in the abstract, and when he was on this topic the
nonsense he talked was something dreadful.

Mengs was a very passionate man, and would sometimes beat his children
most cruelly. More than once I have rescued his poor sons from his
furious hands. He boasted that his father, a bad Bohemian artist, had
brought him up with the stick. Thus, he said, he had become a great
painter, and he wished his own children to enjoy the same advantages.

He was deeply offended when he received a letter, of which the address
omitted his title of chevalier, and his name, Rafael. One day I ventured
to say that these things were but trifles after all, and that I had taken
no offence at his omitting the chevalier on the letters he had written to
me, though I was a knight of the same order as himself. He very wisely
made no answer; but h