'But I never could get my price for
it; and here it hangs in my own room. Igh art won't do in this country,
Colonel--it's a melancholy fact.'
"'High art! I should think it is high art!' whispers old Smee; 'fourteen
feet high, at least!" And then out loud he says 'The picture has very
fine points in it, Gandish, as you say. Foreshortening of that arm,
capital! That red drapery carried off into the right of the picture very
skilfully managed!'
"'It's not like portrait-painting, Smee--Igh art,' says Gandish. 'The
models of the hancient Britons in that pictur alone cost me thirty pound
--when I was a struggling man, and had just married my Betsey here. You
reckonise Boadishia, Colonel, with the Roman elmet, cuirass, and javeling
of the period--all studied from the hantique, sir, the glorious
hantique.'
"'All but Boadicea,' says father. 'She remains always young.' And he
began to speak the lines out of Cowper, he did--waving his stick like an
old trump--and famous they are," cries the lad:
"When the British warrior queen,
Bleeding from the Roman rods"--
"Jolly verses! Haven't I translated them into alcaics?" says Clive, with
a merry laugh, and resumes his history.
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