it was a life of labour and study, and less interrupted by common events, or unexpected vicissitudes, than that of most men. For a long period of forty years, it was a glorious career of well-earned and well-rewarded fame, of fame which few can ever hope to attain, and from which none can wish to detract.

He was born at Plympton, in Devonshire, July 16, 1723*. His ancestors on both sides were clergymen; a descent, which, although it excludes the recollection of birth and rank, may yet be connected with the honourable claims of hereditary wisdom and virtue. His father had no adequate provision for the maintenance of his large family, but appears to have liberally encouraged his son's early attempts in that art, of which he afterwards became so illustrious a professor. When but eight years of age Joshua had made himself master of a treatise, entitled "The Jesuits' Perspective," and increased his love of the art still more, by studying Richardson's "Treatise on Painting." In his seventeenth year, he was placed as a pupil under his countryman, Mr. Hudson, whom, in consequence of some disagreement, he left in 1743, and removed to Devonshire for three years, during which, after some waste of time, which he ever lamented, he sat down seriously to the study and practice of his art. The first of his performances which brought him into notice, was the portrait of Captain Hamilton, father of the pre

It is perhaps unnecessary to say, that I am indebted for much of this account to Mr. Malone's valuable sketch of Sir Joshua's Life, prefixed to his works.

sent Marquis of Abercorn, painted in 1746. About this time he appears to have returned to London.

In 1746, by the friendship of Captain afterwards Lord Keppel, he had an opportunity to visit the shores of the Mediterranean, and to pass some time at Rome. The sketch he wrote of his feelings when he first contemplated the works of Raffaele in the Vatican, so honourable to his modesty and candour, has been presented to the public by Mr. Malone, and is a present on which every artist must set a high value.

He returned to London in 1752, and soon rose to the head of his profession; an honour which did not depend so much on those he eclipsed, as on his retaining that situation for the whole of a long life, by powers unrivalled in his own or any other country. Soon after his return from Italy, his acquaintance with Dr. Johnson commenced. Mr. Boswell has furnished us with abundant proofs of their mutual esteem and congenial spirit, and Mr. Malone has added the more deliberate opinion of Sir Joshua respecting Dr. Johnson, which may be introduced here without impropriety. It reflects indeed as much honour on the writer as on the subject, and was to have formed part of a discourse to the Academy, which, from the specimen Mr. Malone has given, it is much to be regretted, he did not live to finish.

Speaking of his own discourses, our great artist says, "Whatever merit they have, must be imputed, in a great measure, to the educa

tion which I may be said to have had under Dr. Johnson. I do not mean to say, though it certainly would be to the credit of these discourses, if I could say it with truth, that he contributed even a single sentiment to them: but he qualified my mind to think justly. No man had, like him, the faculty of teaching inferior minds the art of thinking. Perhaps other men might have equal knowledge, but few were so communicative. His great pleasure was to talk to those who looked up to him. It was here he exhibited his wonderful powers. In mixed company, and frequently in company that ought to have looked up to him, many, thinking they had a character for learning to support, considered it as beneath them to enlist in the train of his auditors; and to such persons he certainly did not appear to advantage, being often impetuous and overbearing. The desire of shining in conversation was in him indeed a predominant passion; and if it must be attributed to vanity, let it at the same time be recollected, that it produced that loquaciousness from which his more intimate friends derived considerable advantage. The observations which he made on poetry, on life, and on every thing about us, I applied to our art, with what success others must judge."-When we peruse such a character of Dr. Johnson, from the pen of Sir Joshua Reynolds, it is natural to ask what must become of the puny attempts of inferior writers to diminish the fame, and insult the memory, of our great moralist?

In consequence of his connexion with Dr. Johnson, Mr. Reynolds furnished the three Essays in the Idler, No. 76, on False Criticisms on Painting, which may be recommended to the serious perusal of many modern connoisseurs; No. 79, on the Grand Style of Painting, and No. 82, on the true Idea of Beauty; of which Mr. Boswell informs us the last words, "and pollute his canvass with deformity," were added by Dr. Johnson. These Essays have been very properly incorporated with Sir Joshua's works, by Mr. Malone, as they were his first literary attempts, the earnest of those talents which afterwards proved that he was as eminent in the theory as in the practice of his

art.

The acknowledged superiority of Sir Joshua Reynolds' professional talents, and the broad basis on which it is founded, makes it now unnecessary to be collecting suffrages to add weight to the general opinion, but a review of those powers which rank him as a man of genius, and distinguish him among the most eminent of his profession, may not be without its interest.

His early education was not strictly academic, as he himself regrets; nor to any extent did he ever cultivate the elementary principles of design, but, as Portraits were to shape his fortune, facility of composition, or laborious application to the refinements of an outline, were less necessary. Whether he would have been as eminent in Historical Painting as he was in that department which it was his lot to pursue,

would be now an inquiry as useless as unsatisfactory. That his powers were great in whatever way they were employed, will be readily acknowledged; his taste was too refined, and his judgement too correct, to tolerate defects which were not counterbalanced by some advantages; but as his early practice was exclusively devoted to Portraits, and as it was the chief employment of his whole life, it cannot remain a subject of choice to what branch of his profession a fair analysis of his merit ought to be referred.

From the first examples of Sir Joshua, as well as from his own confession, on seeing the works of Raffaele in the Vatican, it would seem evident that the ornamental parts of the art had absorbed his previous studies, and made the deepest impression on his mind. Little, therefore, could be wanting to induce him to pursue that plan of study, which at the same time that it was the most congenial to his feelings, was in the highest degree important to give interest to individual representation. In pursuing his studies when abroad, he embraced the whole field before him but his time was not spent in collecting or making servile copies, but in contemplating the principles of the great Masters, that he might the more effectually do what he has recommended to others, follow them in the road without treading in their steps; and no man ever appropriated to himself with more admirable skill their extensive and varied powers.

The style of portrait-painting by Hudson and