Needs no testimony either to his intellectual accomplishments or his
moral worth; nor, thanks to his own virtuous diligence, does he need
any patronage. He has been fortunate enough to secure a respectable
establishment in the _studio_ of a great artist, who is not less
good than great, and would thus be sufficiently in the eye of the world,
even were his literary talents less industriously exercised than they
have hitherto been. His recent Lives of the British Painters and
Sculptors form one of the most agreeable books in the language; and it
will always remain one of the most remarkable and delightful facts in
the history of letters, that such a work--one conveying so much valuable
knowledge in a style so unaffectedly attractive--so imbued throughout,
not only with lively sensibility, amiable feelings, honesty and candour,
but mature and liberal taste, was produced by a man who, some twenty
years before, earned his daily bread as a common stone-mason in the
wilds of Nithsdale. Examples like these will plead the cause of
struggling genius, wherever it may be found, more powerfully than
all the arguments in the world.--_Ibid._
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