f many of its readers. The
difference resulted, however, from the simple fact, that the first was
written in great haste and indignation, for a special purpose and
time;--the second, after I had got engaged, almost unawares, in
inquiries which could not be hastily nor indignantly pursued; my
opinions remaining then, and remaining now, altogether unchanged on the
subject which led me into the discussion. And that no farther doubt of
them may be entertained by any who may think them worth questioning, I
shall here, once for all, express them in the plainest and fewest words
I can. I think that J. M. W. Turner is not only the greatest (professed)
landscape painter who ever lived, but that he has in him as much as
would have furnished all the rest with such power as they had; and that
if we put Nicolo Poussin, Salvator, and our own Gainsborough out of the
group, he would cut up into Claudes, Cuyps, Ruysdaels, and such others,
by uncounted bunches. I hope this is plainly and strongly enough stated.
And farther, I like his later pictures, up to the year 1845, the best;
and believe that those persons who only like his early pictures do not,
in fact, like him at all. They do _not_ like that which is essentially
_his_. They like that in which he resembles other men; which he had
learned from Loutherbourg, Claude, or Wilson; that which is indeed his
own, they do not care for. Not that there is not much of his own in his
early works; they are all invaluable in their way; but those persons who
can find no beauty in his strangest fantasy on the Academy walls, cannot
distinguish the peculiarly Turneresque characters of the earlier
pictures. And, therefore, I again state here, that I think his pictures
painted between the years 1830 and 1845 his greatest; and that his
entire power is best represented by such pictures as the Temeraire, the
Sun of Venice going to Sea, and others, painted exactly at the time when
the public and the press were together loudest in abuse of him.

Turner. Tintoret.
Massaccio.
John Bellini.
Albert Durer.
Giorgione.
Paul Veronese.
Titian.
Rubens.
Correggio.
Orcagna.
Benozzo Gozzoli.
Giotto.
Raffaelle.
Perugino.

I desire, however, the reader to observe that I said, above, _professed_
landscape painters, among whom, perhaps, I should hardly have put
Gainsborough. The landscape of the great figure painters is often
majestic in the highest degree, and Tintoret's especially s