... I visited Mr. Copley a few
days since. He is very old and infirm. I think his age is upward of
seventy, nearly the age of Mr. West. His powers of mind have almost
entirely left him; his late paintings are miserable; it is really a
lamentable thing that a man should outlive his faculties. He has been a
first-rate painter, as you well know. I saw at his room some exquisite
pieces which he painted twenty or thirty years ago, but his paintings of
the last four or five years are very bad. He was very pleasant, however,
and agreeable in his manners.
"Mr. West I visit now and then. He is very liberal to me and gives me
every encouragement. He is a very friendly man; he talked with me like a
father and wished me to call and see him often and be intimate with him.
Age, instead of impairing his faculties, seems rather to have
strengthened them, as his last great piece testifies. He is soon coming
out with another which Mr. Allston thinks will far surpass even this
last. The subject is Christ before Pilate.
"I went last week to Burlington House in Piccadilly, about forty-five
minutes' walk, the residence of Lord Elgin, to see some of the ruins of
Athens.
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