ood," Decamps fumed and fretted at the
supposed systematic neglect of the Government, which did not give him a
commission. "You paint with a big brush, but you are not a great
painter," said Sir Joshua to a would-be Michael-Angelo. To Gabriel
Decamps the idea of being allowed or invited by the State to cover a
number of yards of canvas or wall or ceiling was so attractive that he
positively lost his sleep and his appetite over it. It was, perhaps, the
only bitter drop in his otherwise tolerably full cup of happiness, but
that one drop very frequently embittered the whole. He had many good
traits in his character, though he was not uniformly good-tempered.
There was an absolute indifference as to the monetary results of his
calling, and an inherent generosity to those who "had fallen by the
way." But he was something of a bear and a recluse, not because he
disliked society, but because he deliberately suppressed his sociable
qualities, lest he should arouse the suspicion of making them the
stepping-stone to his ambition. No man ever misread the lesson, "Do well
and fear not," so utterly as did Decamps. He was never tired of
well-doing; and he was never tired of speculating what the world would
think of it. There is not a single picture from his brush that does not
contain an original thought; he founded an absolutely new school--no
small thing to do. The world at large acknowledged as much, and yet he
would not enjoy the fruits of that recognition, because it lacked the
"official stamp." When Decamps consented to forget his real or fancied
grievances he became a capital companion, provided one had a taste for
bitter and scathing satire. I fancy Jonathan Swift must have been
something like Gabriel Decamps in his daily intercourse with his
familiars. But he rarely said an ill-natured thing of his
fellow-artists. His strictures were reserved for the political men of
his time, and of the preceding reign. The Bourbons he despised from the
bottom of his heart, and during the Restauration his contempt found vent
in caricatures which, at the moment, must have seared like a red-hot
iron. He had kept a good many of these ephemeral productions, and, I am
bound to say, they struck one afterwards as unnecessarily severe. "If
they" (meaning the Bourbons) "had continued to reign in France," he said
one day, "I would have applied for letters of naturalization to the
Sultan."

Decamps was killed, like Gericault, by a fall off his horse,