J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Work for Earls Egremont and Lonsdale ... > Lowther Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) 1809

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Verses (Inscriptions by Turner)’ 1809
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 24 Verso:
Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) 1809
D07891
Turner Bequest CXIII 24a
Inscribed by Turner in ink (see main catalogue entry) on white wove paper, 83 x 114 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Written with the sketchbook inverted. These verses were first transcribed by Rosalind Mallord Turner, whose reading is followed here:
To settle the dispute Astrea rose
The brilliant drop hung pendant at her nose
Thence useless timber
To settle the dispute Astrea rose
Bright as the drop that pendant at her nose
In doubtful balance hung but heat and cold
Thence useless timber ever bold with cold
And know that those to earn aspire
Where kind Gods are proved by fire
The prize to judge & so desire
To win Zeus chair and Pollo Lyre
Most of the verses in this sketchbook belong to a longer poem about a shooting accident (see note to folio 13 verso, D07873) but these, together with more on 28 verso (D07896) derived from the Satires of Persius, are unrelated and concerned instead with competition and criticism. They also introduce classical allusions, to Astraea, goddess of justice, her father Zeus and the sun god Apollo. Matthew Imms has discovered a possible inspiration in a ‘Fragment’ by the boy-poet and forger Thomas Chatterton, which begins ‘Int’rest, thou universal God of men / Wait on the couplet and reprove the pen’; in a later couplet the poet asks ‘What tho’ Astrea decks my soul in gold / My mortal lumber trembles with the cold’.1

David Blayney Brown
July 2009

1
The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper; Including the Series Edited, with Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, by Dr. Samuel Johnson...The Additional Lives by Alexander Chalmers, F.S.A., London 1810, vol.XV, p.477.

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) 1809 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-verses-inscriptions-by-turner-r1135847, accessed 21 August 2025.