To a man who labored like poor
Blyth, with the steadiest industry and the highest aspirations, such
whispered calumnies as these were of all mortifications the most cruel,
of all earthly insults the hardest to bear.
Still he worked on patiently, never losing faith or hope, because he
never lost the love of his Art, or the enjoyment of pursuing it,
irrespective of results, however disheartening. Like most other men of
his slight intellectual caliber, the works he produced were various, if
nothing else. He tried the florid style, and the severe style; he was
by turns devotional, allegorical, historical, sentimental, humorous. At
one time, he abandoned figure-painting altogether, and took to
landscape; now producing conventional studies from Nature,--and now,
again, reveling in poetical compositions, which might have hung
undetected in many a collection as doubtful specimens of Berghem or
Claude.
But whatever department of painting Valentine tried to excel in, the
same unhappy destiny seemed always in reserve for each completed
effort. For years and years his pictures pleaded hard for admission at
the Academy doors, and were invariably (and not unfairly, it must be
confessed) refused even the worst places on the walls of the Exhibition
rooms.
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