song-books, and old numbers of the "Covent Garden Magazine," betrayed the
tastes of the artist, and accounted for the shaking hand and the bloated
form. A jovial, disorderly, vagrant dog of a painter was Tom Varney. A
bachelor, of course; humorous and droll; a boon companion, and a terrible
borrower. Clever enough in his calling; with pains and some method, he
had easily gained subsistence and established a name; but he had one
trick that soon ruined him in the business part of his profession. He
took a fourth of his price in advance; and having once clutched the
money, the poor customer might go hang for his picture. The only things
Tom Varney ever fairly completed were those for which no order had been
given; for in them, somehow or other, his fancy became interested, and on
them he lavished the gusto which he really possessed. But the subjects
were rarely salable. Nymphs and deities undraperied have few worshippers
in England amongst the buyers of "furniture pictures." And, to say
truth, nymph and deity had usually a very equivocal look; and if they
came from the gods, you would swear it was the gods of the galleries of
Drury. When Tom Varney sold a picture, he lived upon clover till the
money was gone. But the poorer and less steady alumni of the rising
school, especially those at war with the Academy, from which Varney was
excluded, pitied, despised, yet liked and courted him withal. In
addition to his good qualities of blithe song-singer, droll story-teller,
and stanch Bacchanalian, Tom Varney was liberally good-natured in
communicating instruction really valuable to those who knew how to avail
themselves of a knowledge he had made almost worthless to himself. He
was a shrewd, though good-natured critic, had many little secrets of
colouring and composition, which an invitation to supper, or the loan of
ten shillings, was sufficient to bribe from him. Ragged, out of elbows,
unshaven, and slipshod, he still had his set amongst the gay and the
young,--a precious master, a profitable set for his nephew, Master Honore
Gabriel! But the poor rapscallion had a heart larger than many honest,