Flocks and herds, or pigs and cows, are not bad themes for talk, if anyone can handle themes judiciously and keep them in their place--flocks and herds are not like golf. But in reality they may be burdensome. My grandfather notes with pleasure, 13 December 1841, “My cows are regularly fed, three times a day, unlike farmer’s cows which catch what they can,” and then rather wearily, 10 August 1869, “My farm is a trouble and expense.” And the lesson is, never have a hobby that you cannot cast aside. You want no needless worries at a time when you have one foot in the grave and then get the gout in the other one.
In my father’s diary of his first visit to London he speaks of pictures at the Royal Academy and National Gallery and elsewhere, but the only artist whom he mentions by name is Benjamin West. This was in 1832, and West had died in 1820; he had been President of the Academy for nearly thirty years and was still in high repute. There are two wash drawings here signed, ‘B. West, 1785’ and ‘B. West, Windsor, 1788.’ The latter is one of his designs for the friezes at the Queen’s Lodge, built by George the Third and since destroyed. It is four feet long and seven inches high, with thirty-three figures personifying arts and sciences; the fine arts in the middle, the peaceful arts and sciences on one side and the warlike on the other. The earlier drawing is of Segestes giving his daughter to Germanicus as a hostage for Arminius. This was a favourite subject then, and West painted several pictures of it, the earliest in 1772.
West’s drawings are generally a great deal better than his paintings, and Galt gives the reason in his _Life of West_, II. 204.--In drawing and colouring he was one of the greatest artists of his age, but his powers of conception were far higher; “and it is this wonderful force of conception which renders his sketches so much more extraordinary than his finished pictures.” West is in oblivion now with most of the Academicians of his time, except the portrait painters. (There is a picture by one of those Academicians in Teign Grace church, a Madonna by James Barry, quite unnoticed now.) But repute depends on fashion, not on merit; and many artists of less merit are extolled.