Current Literature THE FARINGTON DIARY. By Joseph Farington, R.A. Volume
VII.: 1811 to 1814. (Hutchinson. 21s.)- All readers of the first six volumes of Joseph Farington's diary will welcome the seventh. The years covered by the present book are from 1811 to 1814. The friendly landscape painter, who knew the Royal Academy from its formation, and later on played so large a part in it3 government, is growing old. Never a great painter himself, he has known the great painters of his day, and is still the intimate friend of Lawrence and Turner. But Farington's acquaintance was not only among artists. He knew people of all classes, but he writes chiefly and with most sympathy of what he calls " the upper part of the middle," where he thinks that he sees the most " energy of mind." He has heard, and he obviously believes, that the greater part of " the nobility " have no pursuit or study " sufficient to exercise their understanding," with the result that their " ideas arise with a very gradual progress." By nature homely and domestic, he is much interested in health, and reports many intimate talks with doctors. Nervous breakdown seems to have been as common in what we think a leisurely age as it is now. A symptom which was called " extreme hurry of mind," leading not infrequently to " disorders seated in the head," was for ever balking the physicians. Farington is a past master of terse descriptions ; almost every person to whom he introduces us makes a distinct impression. We are immediately interested in the Bishop who was " not a pious man but a man of principle," and the eminent Counsel " whose temper is the only thing against him, it being sour." Sometimes his sitters paint themselves. He quotes Lawrence as saying " a desire to excel in my profession and a_desire for_ease are everything to me,". but no one quite believes what a man says of "hhoseif. This landscape painter was a true lover of London. He liked, he admits, the noise and bustle of the streets. In country towns the quiet strikes him as melancholy, causing " a sensation similar to that which arises from being in a desolate situation." " Everything is too long, except life," sighed Sheridan one day, when he and Farington were together, but this diary is not too long, though when the eighth and last volume appears the whole will take up very considerable book-space.
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