"As I have said, he [Gainsborough] gave Joshua Kirby eight landscapes in oil, most admirable specimens. Thirty years ago, Emerson, the picture-dealer, offered my father fifty guineas a-piece for them, and pronounced them unique. These Turner.. .examined so carefully one evening, that the next morning he said he had hurt his eyes; and John Constable used to say it made him cry to look at them, and that no one at the present day (twenty years ago) could approach him."