as soon as I get quite well, which I hope to do in about another fortnight; and then I hope you will come up by the coach as fast as the horses can carry you, for I long mightily to be in your ladyship’s presence—­to vindicate my character.  I think you had better sell the small house, I mean that at 4.10, and I will borrow L100.  So that we shall set off merrily in spite of all the prudence of Edinburgh.  Goodbye, little dear!

TO HIS SON

Marriage, and the choice of a profession

[1822.]

...  If you ever marry, I would wish you to marry the woman you like.  Do not be guided by the recommendations of friends.  Nothing will atone for or overcome an original distaste.  It will only increase from intimacy; and if you are to live separate, it is better not to come together.  There is no use in dragging a chain through life, unless it binds one to the object we love.  Choose a mistress from among your equals.  You will be able to understand her character better, and she will be more likely to understand yours.  Those in an inferior station to yourself will doubt your good intentions, and misapprehend your plainest expressions.  All that you swear is to them a riddle or downright nonsense.  You cannot by any possibility translate your thoughts into their dialect.  They will be ignorant of the meaning of half you say, and laugh at the rest.  As mistresses, they will have no sympathy with you; and as wives, you can have none with them.

Women care nothing about poets, or philosophers, or politicians.  They go by a man’s looks and manner.  Richardson calls them ’an eye-judging sex’; and I am sure he knew more about them than I can pretend to do.  If you run away with a pedantic notion that they care a pin’s point about your head or your heart, you will repent it too late....

If I were to name one pursuit rather than another, I should wish you to be a good painter, if such a thing could be hoped.  I have failed in this myself, and should wish you to be able to do what I have not—­to paint like Claude, or Rembrandt, or Guido, or Vandyke, if it were possible.  Artists, I think, who have succeeded in their chief object, live to be old, and are agreeable old men.  Their minds keep alive to the last.  Cosway’s spirits never flagged till after ninety; and Nollekens, though nearly blind, passed all his mornings in giving directions about some group or bust in his workshop.  You have seen Mr. Northcote, that delightful specimen of the last age.  With what avidity he takes up his pencil, or lays it down again to talk of numberless things!  His eye has not lost its lustre, nor ’paled its ineffectual fire’.  His body is but a shadow:  he himself is a pure spirit.  There is a kind of immortality about this sort of ideal and visionary existence that dallies with Fate and baffles the grim monster, Death.  If I thought you could make as clever an artist, and arrive at such an agreeable old age as Mr. Northcote, I should declare at once for your devoting yourself to this enchanting profession; and in that reliance, should feel less regret at some of my own disappointments, and little anxiety on your account!