_Chantrey's Sleeping Children_ (Vol. ii., p. 70.)--Your correspondent
PLECTRUM is anxious to know on what grounds I attribute to Stothard any
part of the design of the monument in Lichfield Cathedral known as
Chantrey's "Sleeping Children?" I will endeavour to satisfy him.
The design, suggested, as it were, by the very nature of the commission,
was communicated by Chantrey to Stothard with a request that he would
make for him two or three sketches of sleeping children, at his usual
price. What Stothard did, I have heard my father say, was very like the
monument as it now stands. The sketch from which Chantrey wrought was
given to me by my father a few months before his death, and is now
suspended on the wall of the room in which I write.
It is a pencil-sketch, shaded with Indian ink, and is very Stothard-like
and beautiful. It wants, however, a certain sculptural grace, which
Chantrey gave with a master feeling; and it wants the snow-drops in the
hand of the younger sister,--a touch of poetic beauty suggested by my
father.
The carver of the group (the person who copied it in marble) was the
late Mr. F.A. Legé, to whom the merit of the whole monument has been
foolishly ascribed.
I should be sorry to impress the world with the belief that I mean in
any way to detract from the merit of Chantrey in making this statement.
I have divulged no secret. I have only endeavoured to explain what till
now has been too often misunderstood.