MORLAND.

GEORGE MORLAND, the pupil of his father, Robert Morland, an indifferent portrait-painter, &c. was born in 1764; and at a very early period exhibited so strong an inclination to painting, that he very soon surpassed his teacher and assisted in the maintenance of his family, then involved in poverty.

The parents of Morland being people of irregular habits, and obliged to labour as they could for a certain supply of bread, the young artist was soon initiated into the arcana of the public house, the gin-shop, and the stable. In these abodes of low life and misery, he unfortunately made his selection of existence, and of study. Though so far irregular; yet, aided by a natural power to perceive the beauties of colour, and having acquired by his early practice a ready hand in the exercise of his pencil, he produced a number of works possessing very striking beauties. His favourite subjects were, the interior of stables, pig-sties, farm-yards, doors of public houses, &c. These he touched with great freedom and ease, and frequently with very beautiful colour. Some of his smaller pictures of pigs wallowing, or surrounded by young ones playing or sucking, are master-pieces of their kind. The agreeable hue he gave to them, and the familiarity of his subjects, procured him considerable employment, but which only administered to the means of dissipation, in which he unhappily indulged too much; and so far surpassed those means, that he fell in debt and underwent his first confinement in the king's bench prison. Here his talents were laid under contribution by frame-makers, picture-dealers, and others, who, meanly taking advantage of his weak addiction to liquor, indulged both his caprice and his wants, taking in return the ingenious productions of his pencil. These they sold again to great profit; and, when some of them, more speculative than the rest, released him from imprisonment, it was only to immerse him in a private house, and take to themselves all the benefit of his labours, by concealing his place of residence from the knowledge of the world.

It could not be expected that the vital spark could long be preserved under such a mode of existence as this: he consequently fell into decay at an age, when, in men of better conduct, the physical and mental powers are in a state of vigour and maturity. A premature dissolution closed his mortal career in October 1804, in the fortieth year of his age. Thus, taste and all its sensibilities; genius, with all its vivacity; talent, and all its opportunities to enrich the possessor; were lost or exchanged for disgusting eccentricities, gross licentiousness, and vicious indulgences.

Morland died in the very extreme of wretchedness, penury, and distress; a striking example that no abilities, nor even the high qualities of an artist, will ever shield the possessor from misery, unless accompanied by that prudence, temperance, and integrity, which can only ensure respect, esteem, and admiration.

Had Morland been born under more favourable circumstances, it is not improbable that a liberal cultivation of his mind would have enabled him to succeed in a more elevated taste of subjects than those he fixed upon; to which his early associations, no doubt, were the guide: but the fatal influence of low propensities was never more strongly marked than in his case. In fact, so much are we the creatures of habit, that it requires rather more than a usual supply of the reasoning powers, or of fortunate incidents, to draw our affections from the scenes of youthful life; or lead us to see the folly even of vice, when exhibited in the examples of those who surround us from the cradle.

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