"Let us be DOING something," was his oblique mode of rebuking the
loquacious and admonishing the idle. He once related to his friend
Constable that when he studied at the Scottish Academy, Graham, the
master of it, was accustomed to say to the students, in the words
of Reynolds, "If you have genius, industry will improve it; if you
have none, industry will supply its place." "So," said Wilkie, "I
was determined to be very industrious, for I knew I had no genius."
He also told Constable that when Linnell and Burnett, his fellow-
students in London, were talking about art, he always contrived to
get as close to them as he could to hear all they said, "for," said
he, "they know a great deal, and I know very little." This was
said with perfect sincerity, for Wilkie was habitually modest. One
of the first things that he did with the sum of thirty pounds which
he obtained from Lord Mansfield for his Village Politicians, was to
buy a present--of bonnets, shawls, and dresses--for his mother and
sister at home, though but little able to afford it at the time.
Wilkie's early poverty had trained him in habits of strict economy,
which were, however, consistent with a noble liberality, as appears
from sundry passages in the Autobiography of Abraham Raimbach the
engraver.
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