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the high confidence that was already reposed in his
talents. This admirable production, which was
finished at the close of 1806, and was the result of
intense study and labour, justified, by its excellence
and the reputation it acquired, the pains which had
been bestowed upon it. It was at this time that
Benjamin West declared of him, "Never in my
whole experience have I met with a young artist like
Wilkie: he may be young in years, but he is old in
the experience of his art. I consider him an honour
to his country." Thus rich in reputation, although
still poor in purse, for it was almost wholly for fame
that as yet he had worked, the artist paid a visit to
his native country, in May, 1807, chiefly for the
purpose of recruiting his health, which had suffered
by the intensity of his labours. After languishing
in the manse of Cults till October, when he had only
partially recovered, he hurried back to his little par-
lour-studio in London, which was now beome his
true home; and there his first effort was to finish
"The Card-players," a painting for the Duke of
Gloucester, which he had left on the easel at his
departure.
"The Card-players" was succeeded by "The Rent
Day," one of Wilkie's best productions. It was
painted for the Earl of Mulgrave, who allowed him
to choose his own subject; and that the selection was
a happy one has been well attested by the excellence
of the picture itself, and the admiration it excited.
Of the various figures, indeed, which severally tell
their tale with unmistakable distinctness, who can
forget the harsh, overbearing, money-calculating, and
money-counting factor, ready either to flatter or
explode, as the rent may be forthcoming or not?—
the old tenant seized with a fit of coughing, which
actually seems to ring from the canvas?—the farmer
eating, or rather cramming at the well-furnished table,
and apparently mindful of the adage that fingers
were made before knives and forks?—the butler,
who struggles with the rebellious cork, which refuses
to quit its hold?—the fortunate tenants who have
paid up in full, and are regaling themselves at the
table with beef and pasty; and the luckless tenants
whose business is not yet despatched, and who either
are unable to pay, or are prepared to pay with a
protest? Even the little fat pug dog of the mansion,
and the lean hungry dog of the rent-racked farmer,
indicate the wealth and luxury of the landlord, and
the means by which all this profusion is supplied.
As soon as "The Rent Day" appeared, it was gene-
rally declared to be equal, if not superior, to any-
thing that Wilkie had hitherto produced. And as
yet, with all this full-grown celebrity, he had only
reached the age of twenty-three! But the four years
he had spent in London had been years of constant
occupation and steady progress; and now that he
had attained such excellence in his art, and so high
a reputation, he was the same modest, unassuming,
and painstaking student which he had been at his
first entrance into the metropolis; and not a day, no,
not an hour of abatement could be perceived in the
diligence with which he still continued at his task
of self-improvement, or the docility with which he
received every suggestion that tended to promote it.
All this is fully attested by the extracts that have
been published from his London journal of this
period. From these we find that he still attended
the Academy, and took lessons as a pupil. At home
he usually painted five hours a day; and if visited in
the midst of work he conversed with his visitors,
while his hand and eye were still busied with the
canvas. Every kind of model also was used in his
occupation; for he was of opinion, that however
imagination might aggrandize the work of the painter,
nature must be his authority and exemplar. When
the day's work of the studio was finished, his ramble
for recreation or pleasure was still in subservience to
his pursuits; and thus his visits were to picture-
galleries and artists; his rambles into the country were
in quest of picturesque cottages and their simple
inhabitants; and even his walks in the streets were
turned to profitable account, with here a face and
there an attitude, amidst the ceaselessly revolving
panorama. His chief indulgence in an evening was
to repair to the theatre, where he enjoyed a rich
treat, not merely in the play itself, but in the atti-
tudes of the best performers, where grace and nature
were combined in the living delineations of the drama.
And still, go where he might, his affectionate heart
never seems to have lost sight of his native home;
and it may be fairly questioned, whether the delight
which his success occasioned in the manse of Cults
was not as high a recompense, in his estimation, as
anything that fame could bestow. There is some-
thing beautiful and touching in the fact, that while
he was fighting his up-hill way in London, through
the difficulties of scanty payments, his chief anxiety,
besides that of becoming a great painter, was to be
able to present his sister Helen with a pianoforte.
The year 1808 was a busy year with Wilkie, as
he was then employed upon three paintings, each
excellent in its kind and well fitted to advance his
reputation. The chief of these, known as "The
Sick Lady," was in a higher style of art than he had
hitherto attempted, as well as of a very different
character; it was an entire abandonment of humble
and Scottish life and quiet humour, in which he had
hitherto been without a rival, in favour of the grace-
ful, the sentimental, and pathetic. The pains which
he bestowed upon this picture, the anxiety with which
he touched and retouched it, and the time that was
suffered to elapse before it was completed, were the
proper accompaniments of this bold attempt in a
new field. It is enough to say, that this production,
while equal to all its predecessors in point of artistic
excellence, was not regarded with the same admira-
tion. And how could it be otherwise? It was in
Scottish life that the secret of Wilkie's strength lay,
for there he painted as no other man could paint;
but when he left this walk, of which he was so exclu-
sively the master, and entered into that of the English
artist, he could even at the best do nothing more
than others had done before him. It was Burns
abandoning his native streams and native dialect,
for the banks of the Thames and the diction of Pope
or Addison. ''The Jew's Harp," which was his next
production, was less ambitious, and more in his own
natural manner. The same was also the case with
"The Cut Finger," in which an old cottage matron
is performing the part of chirurgeon to a bluff blubber-
ing boy, who has cut his finger in the act of rigging
a toy-boat. In the following year (1809) Wilkie,
who had hitherto been contented to rank as a pupil
of the Royal Academy, was made one of its associ-
ates. At the next exhibition of the Academy, how-
ever, he sustained such a slight, as somewhat damped
the satisfaction he enjoyed in his election. He had
painted a picture which he called "A Man Teasing
a Girl by putting on her Cap," and sent it to the
exhibition, but was requested by the members to
withdraw it. The only cause they stated was that
it was inferior to his other productions, and would
therefore be likely to diminish his reputation. It
was suspected, however, that the true reason was
professional jealousy, and that the academicians were
impatient that a Scotsman, who only dealt in the
"pan-and-spoon style," as they scornfully termed it,
should have maintained the ascendency so long.