I don’t know if you have read much of ‘The Life of Wilkie.’ All Cunningham’s part seems to be wretched, but in the ‘Italian and Spanish Journals and Letters’ Wilkie shines out in a comparatively new character. He is a very eloquent and, I fancy, a deep and instructive critic on painting; at all events, Vol. ii. is full of very high interest . . . Is there anywhere a good criticism on the alteration that Wilkie’s style exhibited after his Italian and Spanish tours? The general impression always was, and I suppose will always be, that the change was for the worse. But it will be a nice piece of work to account for an unfortunate change being the result of travel and observation, which we now own to have produced such a stock of admirable theoretical disquisition on the principles of the Art. I can see little to admire or like in the man Wilkie. Some good homely Scotch kindness for kith and kin, and for some old friends too perhaps; but generally the character seems not to rise above the dull prudentialities of a decent man in awe of the world and the great, and awfully careful about No. I. No genuine enjoyment, save in study of Art, and getting money through that study. He is a fellow that you can’t suppose ever to have been drunk or in love—too much a Presbyterian Elder for either you or me.
