manners were gentle, complying and bland;
Still born to improve us in every part,
His pencil our faces, his manners our heart.
To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering
When they judged without skill, he was still hard of hearing.
When they talked of their Raphaels, Correggios and stuff,
He shifted his trumpet and only took snuff.
By flattery unspoiled ...

The end is missing, for while Goldsmith was versifying so feelingly
about his friend, death overtook the writer, eighteen years before
the subject of the epitaph.

CHAPTER XIV

TURNER

I wonder which of you, if seeing this picture for the first time, will
realize that you are looking at the old familiar Thames? It would seem
rather to be some place unknown except in dreams, some phantasy of
the human spirit that we ourselves could never hope to see. And yet,
in fact, this is what Turner actually did see one evening as he was
sailing down the Thames to Greenwich with a party of friends. Suddenly
there loomed up before his eyes the great hull of the _Temeraire_,
famous in the fight against the fleet of Napoleon at Trafalgar, and
so full of memories of glorious battle, that it was always spoken of
by sailors as the _Fighting Temeraire_. At last, its work over as a
battleship, or even as a training-ship for cadets, dragged by a doughty
little steam-tug, it was headed for its last resting-place in the
Thames, to be broken up for old timber. As the _Temeraire_ hove in
sight through the mist, a fellow-painter said to Turner: 'Ah, what
a subject for a picture!' and so indeed it proved. The veteran ship,
for Turner, had a pathos like the passing of a veteran warrior to his
grave.

[Illustration: THE FIGHTING TEMERAIRE
From the picture by Turner, in the National Gallery, London]

Turner loved the sea, and was very sensitive to its associations with
the toils and triumphs of mankind. Born beside the Thames, he grew
up among boats and fraternized with sailors all his life. It was
impossible for him to be the beholder of such a scene as the
_Temeraire's_ approach to her last moorings, save as a poet-painter;
and stirred to the putting forth of all his powers, this _Fighting
Temeraire_ is his surpassing poem.

It was in 1775, while Reynolds was at the height of his fame, that
Turner saw the light, born of obscure parents in an obscure house,
but with a gift of vision that compelled him to the palette and the
pencil his whole life long. Yet, wh