[Transcriber's Note: Footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the end.]
Lectures on Art
By
Washington Allston
Edited by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
MDCCCL.
Preface by the Editor.
Upon the death of Mr. Allston, it was determined, by those who hadcharge of his papers, to prepare his biography and correspondence, andpublish them with his writings in prose and verse; a work which wouldhave occupied two volumes of about the same size with the present. Adelay has unfortunately occurred in the preparation of the biographyand correspondence; and, as there have been frequent calls for apublication of his poems, and of the Lectures on Art he is known tohave written, it has been thought best to give them to the public inthe present form, without awaiting the completion of the wholedesign. It may be understood, however, that, when the biographyand correspondence are published, it will be in a volume preciselycorresponding with the present, so as to carry out the originaldesign.
I will not anticipate the duty of the biographer by an extended noticeof the life of Mr. Allston; but it may be interesting to some readersto know the outline of his life, and the different circumstances underwhich the several pieces in this volume were written.
WASHINGTON ALLSTON was born at Charleston, in South Carolina, on the5th of November, 1779, of a family distinguished in the history ofthat State and of the country, being a branch of a family of thebaronet rank in the titled commonalty of England. Like most youngmen of the South in his position at that period, he was sent to NewEngland to receive his school and college education. His school dayswere passed at Newport, in Rhode Island, under the charge of Mr.Robert Rogers. He entered Harvard College in 1796, and graduated in1800. While at school and college, he developed in a marked mannera love of nature, music, poetry, and painting. Endowed with sensescapable of the nicest perceptions, and with a mental and moralconstitution which tended always, with the certainty of a physicallaw, to the beautiful, the pure, and the sublime, he led what manymight call an ideal life. Yet was he far from being a recluse, or frombeing disposed to an excess of introversion. On the contrary, he wasa popular, high-spirited youth, almost passionately fond of society,maintaining an unusual number of warm friendships, and unsurpassed byany of the young men of his day in adaptedness to the elegancies andcourtesies of the more refined portions of the moving world. Romancesof love, knighthood, and heroic deeds, tales of banditti, and storiesof supernatural beings, were his chief delight in his early days. Yethis classical attainments were considerable, and, as a scholar in theliterature of his own language, his reputation was early established.He delivered a poem on taking his degree, which was much admired inits day.
On leaving college, he returned to South Carolina. Having determinedto devote his life to the fine arts, he sold, hastily and at asacrifice, his share of a considerable patrimonial estate, andembarked for London in the autumn of 1801. Immediately upon hisarrival, he became a student of the Royal Academy, of which hiscountryman, West, was President, with whom he formed an intimate andlasting friendship. After three years spent in England, and a shorterstay at Paris, he went to Italy, where he spent four years devotedexclusively to the study of his art. At Rome began his intimacy withColeridge. Among the many subsequent expressions of his feeling towardthis great man, none, perhaps, is more striking than the followingex