The veteran ship, for Turner, had a pathos like the passing of a veteran warrior to his grave.
[Illustration: THE FIGHTING TEMERAIRE From the picture by Turner, in the National Gallery, London] Turner loved the sea, and was very sensitive to its associations with the toils and triumphs of mankind.

Born beside the Thames, he grew up among boats and fraternized with sailors all his life.

It was impossible for him to be the beholder of such a scene as the _Temeraire's_ approach to her last moorings, save as a poet-painter; and stirred to the putting forth of all his powers, this _Fighting Temeraire_ is his surpassing poem.
It was in 1775, while Reynolds was at the height of his fame, that Turner saw the light, born of obscure parents in an obscure house, but with a gift of vision that compelled him to the palette and the pencil his whole life long.

Yet, when he was apprenticed to an architect to learn architectural drawing, he had to be dismissed after two periods of probation because of his absolute inability to learn the theory of perspective or even the elements of geometry.

But the time was not far off when he was to become in his turn Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy.
The popular distaste, or unborn taste, for landscape, which had prevented Gainsborough from following his natural bent, was changing at last.