BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOHN JERVIS, EARL OF ST. VINCENT, KNIGHT OF THE MOST HONOURABLE ORDER OF THE BATH, AND ADMIRAL OF THE WHITE SQUADRON

Summary

—Then you fill'd

The air with shouts of joy, and did proclaim,

When Hope had left them, and grim-look'd Despair

Hover'd with sail-stretch'd wings over their heads,

To me, as to the Neptune of the Sea,

They ow'd the restitution of their goods,

Their lives and liberties.

Massinger.

It is difficult to pourtray with truth the characters of living persons. They may be compared to pictures drawn from the life, in which every feature must be somewhat heightened to obtain the reputation of similitude. The exaggeration of beauties and of deformities are, it is true, equally and alternately censured by friends and enemies; but if the likeness were exactly correct, it would be admired by none. The artist prefers, therefore, the approbation of half the world to the censure, or at least the cold neglect, of the whole; and sacrifices the fidelity of his portrait to the incorrigible passions and inveterate prejudices of partial spectators. Time, however, the great corrector of all faults, softens down those asperities which the pencil had left, spreads a sober tint over the brilliant lights, and mellows the shadows to a milder hue. A cool recollection of the original, and the comparison with other representations of the same object, aid us still further in the discovery of the truth, and the whole is at length exhibited to posterity with a degree of correctness which is almost always denied to contemporaries.