We have another glimpse of the artist--mad with drink, and up all night,
alarming the neighbourhood by firing off pistols out of the window to
testify his devotion to his patrons of the house of Cavendish, his joy
that an heir had been born to the titles and honours of the dukedom of
Devonshire--and then he falls, disappears. Invitations no longer come
from Sir Brook Boothby and other grand friends; or, if they come, they
don't find Mr. Sherwin at home. As long as he can he keeps his creditors
at bay; then takes to flight--hides to escape arrest. He binds himself
to work for a publisher who harbours and supports him. But it is too
late; he cannot work now if he would. He is greatly changed, his
constitution has yielded at last to his repeated and reckless attacks
upon it. His sight is dim, and his hand is palsied. He has yielded all
claim to be accounted an 'exquisite;' the fashions are nothing to him
now; he is simply a broken-down, worn-out, prematurely old man. His
courage has left him, his gay air of confidence has quite gone; he
cannot look his misfortunes in the face; he shrinks from, shivers at,
and, in his weakness and despair, exaggerates them wildly; they prey
upon him, go near to driving him mad. Pursued and tracked to his
publisher's house--or is it merely his fears that mislead him?--he quits
his place of refuge, breaks cover, and flies he hardly knows whither.
George Steevens, the editor of Shakespeare, wrote on the first October
1790 to a correspondent at Cambridge: 'I am assured that Sherwin the
engraver died in extreme poverty at "The Hog in the Pound," an alehouse
at the corner of Swallow Street; an example of great talents rendered
useless by their possessor.' Miss Hawkins follows this narrative, and
the artist's decease is announced in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ of the
same year. It is proper to state, however, that Mr. Smith, his pupil,
has recorded a less melancholy account of Sherwin's death, which took
place, he says, 'at the house of the late Mr. Robert Wilkinson, the
printseller in Cornhill, who kindly attended him, afforded him every
comfort, and paid respect to his remains, his body having been conveyed
to Hampstead and buried in a respectable manner in the churchyard, near
the east corner of the front entrance.'
He was barely forty when he died. Prints from his engravings are still
highly esteemed by collectors. If his talent was not of the very first
class, it was still of too valuable a kind to be flung in the
kennel--utterly degraded and wasted.
SIR JOSHUA'S PUPIL.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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