Copy 1, Volume 3

The doctor &c / [Robert Southey].

  • Robert Southey
Date:
1834-1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The doctor &c / [Robert Southey]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    72/384 (page 38)
    SB Serve, no critical sagacity recover. The pictures of the old masters, suffer much when removed from the places for which,, (and in which, many of them,) they were painted. It may happen that one which has been conveyed from a Spanish palace or monastery to the collection of Marshal Soult, or any other Plunder-Master- General in Napoleon’s armies, and have past from thence,—-honestly as regards the pur¬ chaser,-—to the hands of an English owner, may be hung at the same elevation as in its proper place, and in the same light. Still it loses much. The accompaniments are all of a dif¬ ferent character 5 the air and odour of the place are different. There is not here the locality that consecrated it,—no longer the religio loci. Wealth cannot purchase these; power may vio¬ late and destroy, but it cannot transplant them. The picture in its new situation is seen with a different feeling, by those who have any true feeling for such things. Literary works of imagination, fancy or feel¬ ing, are liable to no injury of this kind; but in common with pictures they suffer a partial de-