From DAVID WILKIE, on the attack upon the Academy. MY DEAR HAYDON, 29, Phillimore Place, Kensington, Monday, 3rd February, 1812. have seen your two papers in the Examiner, but although I have had occasion to admire what you have formerly written in that paper, and am as forward as any one to give you the highest praise (which you certainly deserve) for the picture you have lately finished, I must really, as a friend, say that I cannot congratulate you upon what you have now offered to the public in this paper. You have laid yourself open, not merely to the charge of spleen and disappointment, and to the resentment of the Academy, all of which you no doubt laid your account with, but to a charge that is much worse, and which I dare say you had no notion of when you wrote the papers, that of reviling the Academy in order to ingratiate yourself with the Institution. Thus your panegyric on the general conduct of the Institution, your indignation at the aspersion which was attempted to be thrown on the purchase of Mr. West's picture, and your approbation of the plan of giving premiums, will all, I assure you, conspire very much to strengthen, and although those who know you may be ready to acquit you of any such views, there will not be wanting many |