[174] unavoidable, I hope will not be annoying to you. I refer to the criticisms of people knowing nothing of art. In Europe, an artist is judged at once, in a certain sense, by his peers. With us, all are critics. The people will not hesitate to judge your work; and some will, perhaps, complain that Washington is naked; that he has not a cocked hat and a military coat of the Continental cut; that he is not standing, &c. The loungers in the Rotunda, not educated in views of works of art,—many never before having seen a statue in marble,—will want the necessary knowledge to enable them to appreciate your ‘Washington.’ Should you not prepare them, so far as you can? And you can do a great deal. Publish in ‘Knickerbocker's Magazine,’ or such other journal as you may select, some of the papers you read me during my visit to Florence,—particularly that on the ‘Nude;’ for there, I think, you will encounter a deal of squeamish criticism. The law maxim, cuilibet in sua arte perito est credendum,will hold strongly in your case; and what you publish with your name (‘Horatio Greenough, sculptor’) will be extensively read, and I think exercise a great influence on the public mind. I cannot conceive that any motives of delicacy should make you hesitate. I think it particularly important that what is written should be from you,—first, because it is your theme, and you can manage it so much better than anybody else; and second, because whatever you write will be read, and have weight.I have not seen Allston for some weeks. Longfellow and myself passed an evening with him then. We rose to go: he took out his watch, and saw that it wanted twenty minutes of twelve o'clock,—‘Do make it even,’ said he. I hope you may realize your dream. Allston would bud anew in Italy. He is now laboring sedulously upon his ‘Belshazzar's Feast,’—admitting nobody into his studio. I have a brother who has been a wanderer for some years. Upon last advices, he was in Florence. I hope he saw you. Remember me most kindly to Mr.Everett and Mrs. Everett, who are Florentines now, like yourself. I saw Wilde in New York, on his arrival. He was in fine spirits, and made himself most agreeable in society. He was full of Dante. I like to see a man instinct, as it were, with his subject.
Believe me ever sincerely yours,
P. S. A friend of mine saw your ‘Abdiel’ in New Haven, and was very much pleased with it. You kindly ask after my own petty doings. I moil at law, sit in my office; but visions of Europe will flash upon me.
To Dr. Francis Lieber.
Boston, March 23, 1841.my dear Lieber,— . . . You will see the defeat of Talfourd's bill, and that by a semi-treacherous stab from that rhetorician, Macaulay. The ‘Examiner’—Fonblanque's of Feb. 28, I think—contains an admirable refutation of Macaulay's speech. Poor Talfourd will be enraged. It is the bill he has
