We have had such a
spring (bating the last ten days) as would have satisfied even you with
warmth. And such verdure! white clouds moving over the new-fledged tops
of oak-trees, and acres of grass striving with buttercups. How old to
tell of, how new to see! I believe that Leslie's "Life of Constable" (a
very charming book) has given me a fresh love of spring. Constable loved
it above all seasons: he hated autumn. When Sir G. Beaumont, who was of
the old classical taste, asked him if he did not find it difficult to
place _his brown tree_ in his pictures, "Not at all," said C, "I never
put one in at all." And when Sir George was crying up the tone of the
old masters' landscapes, and quoting an _old violin_ as the proper tone
of colour for a picture, Constable got up, took an old Cremona, and laid
it down on the sunshiny grass. You would like the book. In defiance of
all this, I have hung my room with pictures, like very old fiddles
indeed; but I agree with Sir George and Constable both. I like pictures
that are not like nature. I can have nature better than any picture by
looking out of my window. Yet I respect the man who tries to paint up to
the freshness of earth and sky. Constable did not wholly achieve what he
tried at: and perhaps the old masters chose a soberer scale of things
as more within the compass of lead paint.
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