24 
beg that he might not be punished. The de-. 
lightful encouragement which this well-judged 
kindness afforded to the young Painter may be 
easily imagined; but who will not regret that 
the mother's over-anxious admiration would not 
suffer him to finish the picture, lest he should 
spoil what was already in her opinion perfect, 
even with half the canvass bare? Sixty-seven 
years afterwards the writer of these Memoirs 
had the gratification to 
the same room with the 
" Christ Rejected," on  
see this piece in 
sublime painting of 
which occasion the 
Painter declared to him that there were inventive 
touches of art in his first and juvenile essay, 
which, with all his subsequent knowledge and 
experience, he had not been able to" surpass.