cannot be regarded as a perfectly good and religious man, yet at this particular period of his life his works prove beyond all shadow of doubt that he was capable of feeling towards nature and man in the way that is habitual with the perfectly good man. As an artist these works of his show that at this time he was able to raise himself in the point of feeling to the level of a good and complete man. But this is a very different thing from the demand that the artist shall himself be at that time and for the remainder of his life the kind of man whose momentary state of feeling he represents. The actual behaviour of the artist as an individual has only an indirect bearing on the question of the moral worth of his work. What is important is, that the content of the moral idea shall be present in the state of feeling expressed in his work. He may not have laid firm hold of the good will; he may not have made it a permanent part of his own life. All that is necessary for his immediate purpose is that he shall have grasped it in idea,--a much easier task, and one that constant reading of the poets is quite sufficient to accomplish. That Turner was always a great lover and reader of poetry is already well known. After he broke away from strictly topographical work, he seldom exhibited a picture without the accompaniment of some poetical quotation. To judge from these quotations Thomson’s _Seasons_ was a favourite book with him, and we also find Milton, Ossian, Akenside, Dr. Langhorne, and Mallet laid under contribution. But the clearest evidence of the place poetry occupied in his mind at this time is afforded by his sketch-books, which contain on the whole even more poetry than drawings. On almost every sheet we find transcriptions or reminiscences of verses that had caught his fancy, or attempts of his own to express himself in metre. These attempts, it must be confessed, are seldom far from failure, for the artist’s command of words was not instinctive, like his power over pictorial signs. Yet the quantity of these attempts and the patient persistence with which he ground out indifferent verse, prove that the art of poetry was one that held at least as high a place in his affections as his own art. As Turner’s verses were on the whole so unsuccessful, I will only offer the reader one example, and that a short one. It was written in one of his sketch-books about the year 1809. He had gone to Purley on the Thames, near Pangbourne, to indulge himself with a few days’ fishing--his sole form of recreation. But the rain had kept him in all day, and to while away the time he betook himself to poetry. He begins by apostrophising the fair leaves of his sketch-book which ‘Delusion’ tempts him to violate with his pen. The rain seems to have continued, for on the next page he begins again:--