Conversations of James Northcote R A Author:James Northcote Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HAZLITT'S CONVERSATIONS WITH NORTHCOTE CONVERSATION THE FIRST Called on Mr. Northcote; had, as usual, an interesting conversation. Spoke of some account of... more » Lord Byron in a newspaper, which he thought must be like. " The writer says, he did not wish to be thought merely a great poet. My sister asked, ' What then did he wish to be thought 1' Why, I'll tell you; he wished to be something different from everybody else. As to nobility, there were many others before him, so that he could not rely upon that; and then, as to poetry, there are so many wretched creatures that pretend to the name, that he looked at it with disgust; he thought himself as distinct from them as the stars in the firmament. "It comes to what Sir Joshua used to say, that a man who is at the head of his profession is above it. I remember being at Cosway's,1 where they were recom- 1 Richard Cosway, R.A. (1740-1821), perhaps the most fashionable painter of the generation succeeding that of Reynolds. [ED.] mending some charitable institution for the relief of decayed artists ; and I said I would not be of it, for it was holding out a temptation to idleness, and bringing those into the profession who were not fit for it. Some one who wanted to flatter me observed, ' I wonder you should talk in this manner, who are under such obligations to the art!' I answered immediately, 'If I am to take your compliment as I believe it is meant, I might answer, that it is the art that is under obligations to me, not I to it. Do you suppose that Rubens, Titian, and others were under obligations to the art—they who raised it from obscurity and made it all that it is ? What would the art be without these 1' "The world in general, as Miss Reynolds used to say, with reference to her brother, think no more of a painter th...« less