without mentioning the employment in which he had been engaged. In the
afternoon he again retired to his study in the garret; and for several
days successively he thus withdrew and devoted himself to painting. The
schoolmaster, observing his absence, sent to ask the cause of it. Mrs.
West, affecting not to take any particular notice of the message,
recollected that she had seen Benjamin going up stairs every morning, and
suspecting that the box occasioned his neglect of the school, went to the
garret, and found him employed on the picture. Her anger was appeased by
the sight of his performance, and changed to a very different feeling. She
saw, not a mere copy, but a composition from two of the engravings. With
no other guide than that delicacy of sight which renders the Painter's
eye, with respect to colours, what the Musician's ear is with respect to
sounds, he had formed a picture as complete, in the scientific arrangement
of the tints, notwithstanding the necessary imperfection of the
pencilling, as the most skilful Artist could have painted, assisted by the
precepts of Newton. She kissed him with transports of affection, and
assured him that she would not only intercede with his father to pardon
him for having absented himself from school, but would go herself to the
master, and beg that he might not be punished. The delightful
encouragement which this well-judged kindness afforded to the young
Painter may be easily imagined; but who will not regret that the mother's
over-anxious admiration would not suffer him to finish the picture, lest
he should spoil what was already in her opinion perfect, even with half
the canvass bare? Sixty-seven years afterwards the writer of these Memoirs
had the gratification to see this piece in the same room with the sublime
painting of "Christ Rejected," on which occasion the Painter declared to
him that there were inventive touches of art in his first and juvenile
essay, which, with all his subsequent knowledge and experience, he had not
been able to surpass.