Turner continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1793 and 1794. He sold his drawings readily, and, although I cannot discover any public references to his work before 1796, he must have attracted notice, as in 1793 he received a commission--his first--for drawings for engraving. The “Copper-plate Magazine” (afterwards known as “The Itinerant”) was one of many serials then in vogue which were illustrated by the water-colour painters--“draftsmen” they were usually called--and in one of its five volumes he is alluded to as “the ingenious Mr. Turner.” He is said to have been paid two guineas apiece for these drawings, with a very small allowance for travelling expenses, it being stipulated that every subject should be drawn on the spot. With his slender wardrobe and his painting materials on his back, carrying usually also his fishing-rod, he tramped the country; he found his way into Kent, across Wales, through Shropshire and Cheshire, on to Cumberland, and returned by the Midlands. A reproduction of one of the “Copperplate Magazine” drawings--_Peterborough Cathedral from the North_--will be found here (Plate III.). Although on a small scale, it is typical of his work of this period, and it shows the strong influence on him of his contemporaries, Rooker, Hearne, and Dayes; yet there is always a decided individuality of his own. As the late Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse[A] has well remarked of these early drawings:-- “The great fact in comparing Turner and the other water-colour painters of his own time is this, that while each of the best of the others is remarkable for one or two special beauties of style or effect, he is remarkable for all. He could reach near, if not quite, to the golden simplicity of Girtin, to the silver sweetness of Cozens; he could draw trees with the delicate dexterity of Edridge, and equal the beautiful distances of Glover.... He was not only technically the equal, if not the master of them all, but he comprehended them, almost without exception.”