ABSTRACT
199 Turner will not be duly estimated nor take the rank he merits under the present generation. Ho was too original, and ventured to think and act too independently for the middle level in art. To live in a mode foreign to the conventional ideas of the mass in any profession in heterodoxy to its brotherhood. His reserve, retiring habits, plain person, and absorption in the great pursuit of his life, made him the theme of many an ungenerous remark, and frequently subjected him to a sneer for closeness in money matters, with which envy was not 200always unminglcd. Wliile Lis eminence was partially admitted, his later attempts in art, far from being placed to the account of a great genius nobly endeavouring, became the burthen of attacks from raw newspaper critics and the petty fry of affected connoisseurs. Most of these gentry had been born since Turner executed his finest works and had probably never beheld one of them. In proportion as this great artist trod in the footsteps of those who, above their contemporaries, built up a name for posterity and were less understood by the multitude that surrounded them, was he less comprehended by every-day people and mediocre art-tastcrs.
