silks, satins, velvets. Sir Joshua's draperies represent clothes, never their materials. Yet more: Vandyke and Sir Godfrey Kneller excelled all painters in hands; Sir Joshua's are seldom even tolerably drawn. I saw t'other day one of, if not the best of, his works, the portrait of Lord Richard Cavendish. Little is distinguished but the head and hand; yet the latter, though nearest to the spectator, is abominably bad: so are those of my three nieces; and though the effect of the whole is charming, the details are slovenly, the faces only red and white; and his journeyman, as if to distinguish himself, has finished the lock and key of the table like a Dutch flowerpainter."-Letter to Mason, 1783.

In 1786, Walpole writes to Lady Ossory: "Sir Joshua has bought a profile of Oliver Cromwell, which he thinks the finest miniature by Cooper he ever saw. But all his own

geese are swans, as the swans of others are geese. It is most clearly a copy, and not a very good one; the outline very hard, the hair and armour very flat and tame." Sir Joshua left this miniature to Richard Burke, from whom it descended through the Crewes, to its present possessor, Richard Monckton Milnes, Esq. M.P. "It is a poor copy," says Cunningham, and not by Cooper-of the profile Devonshire miniature.'

In 1787, Horace again writes to Lady Ossory: "I called at Sir Joshua's, while he was at Ampthill, and saw his Hercules for Russia. I did not at all admire it: the principal babe put me in mind of what I read so often, but have not seen, the monstrous craws. Master Hercules's knees are as large as, I presume, the late Lady Guilford's. Blind Tiresias is staring with horror at the terrible spectacle. If Sir Joshua is satisfied with his own departed picture, it is more than the possessors or posterity will be. I think he ought to be paid in annuities only for so long as his pictures last: one should not grudge him the first-fruits."

66

Again : Sir Joshua Reynolds is a great painter; but, unfortunately, his colours seldom stand longer than crayons."

"THE INFANT HERCULES."

In 1786, Sir Joshua seemed more bewitched than ever with his palette and pencils, and was painting from morning till night. He now began a picture for Catherine, Empress of Russia, who desired he would paint her an historical onethe subject to be left to his own choice. He selected the

Infant Hercules strangling the Serpents in the Cradle from
West's Translation of Pindar-the first Nemæan Ode, which
Cowley has thus beautifully imitated :-

The big-limb'd babe in his huge cradle lay,
Too weighty to be rock'd by nurse's hands,
Wrapp'd in purple swaddling bands:
When lo! by jealous Juno's fierce commands,
Two dreadful serpents came,

Rolling and hissing loud into the room:

To the bold babe they trace their hidden way:
Forth from their flaming eyes dread lightning went;

Their gaping mouths did forked tongues like thunderbolts present.

*

*

The mighty infant seem'd well pleas'd

At his gay gilded foes:

And as their spotted necks up to the cradle rose,
With his young warlike hands on both he seized:
In vain they raged, in vain they hiss'd,

In vain their armed tails they twist,

And angry circles cast about;

*

Black blood, and fiery breath, and poisonous soul, he squeezes out.

Cotton relates that Sir Joshua, who was always thinking of his Art, was one day walking with Dr. Lawrence, near Beaconsfield, where they met a beautiful little peasant-boy. Reynolds, after looking earnestly at the child, exclaimed, "I must go home and deepen the colouring of my 'Infant Hercules.'"*

The picture was exhibited in 1788; and in the following year, it was sent to St. Petersburg, with two sets of Sir Joshua's Discourses, one in French, the other in English. Next year, the Russian ambassador, Count Woronzow, presented Reynolds with a gold box, having the Empress' portrait on the lid, set with large diamonds. His executors afterwards received 1,5007. as the price of the picture.

“The Infant Hercules," which was remarkable for its rich effect of colour and forcible chiaro-oscuro, was the principal of Sir Joshua's historical pieces, and met with universal applause, from the critics of the day. Even the eccentric Barry approved of it: he said-"The prophetical agitation of Tiresias and Juno enveloped with clouds, hanging over the scene, like a black pestilence, can never be too much admired, and are, indeed, truly sublime." The effect of the tone and colour

* It is likewise related that the child was entirely painted from the infant of a cottager living at Beaconsfield.-See Anecdote Biography: Edmund Burke.

cannot be better expressed than by a painter of the day, who said that "it looked as if it had been boiled in brandy."

It is likewise related that Mr. Cribb sat to Sir Joshua for the Infant Hercules. He is the son of Sir Joshua's framemaker, Mr. Cribb, of Holborn. Reynolds presented the father with an excellent drawing of himself in crayon, which the son has now in his possession.

REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES, AND MALONE.

The intimacy of Sir Joshua with Edmund Malone appears to have ripened into a cordial attachment. They often met at the houses of mutual friends, and sometimes took short country excursions together. Both were, as Malone has minutely recorded, of similar stature and weight, and although of considerable difference in age, each fond of testing his physical vigour as a pedestrian. At a later period, the painter occasionally took Malone's opinion on minor points connected with the composition of his Discourses; and he did the same, probably, with Johnson and Burke. Hence the ungenerous rumour found circulation, that he was indebted for much of their matter as well as manner to Burke.* Sir James Prior found the following short note in Malone's correspondence, in proof that the President did not always ask even Burke for those smaller critical offices which friends are free to exact from and render to each other:

December 15th, 1786.

My dear Sir, I wish you could just run your eye over my Discourse, if you are not too much busied in what you have made your own employment. I could wish that you would do more than merely look at it; that you would examine it with a critical eye, in regard to grammatical correctness, the propriety of expression, and the truth of the observations. Yours, &c. J. REYNOLDS.

Northcote, the pupil of Reynolds, who lived some years in his house, thus fully answers the scandalous fiction in his Memoirs:

"At the period when it was expected that he should have composed them (the Lectures), I have heard him walking at intervals in his room till one or two o'clock in the morning; and I have on the following day, at an early hour, seen the papers on the subject of his art, which had been written the

* See in disproof of this opinion-"Did Edmund Burke write Sir Joshua Reynolds's 'Lectures'?" Anecdote Biography.

preceding night. I have had the rude manuscript from himself, in his own handwriting, in order to make a fair copy from it for him to read in public. I have seen the manuscript also, after it had been revised by Dr. Johnson, who has sometimes altered it to a wrong meaning, from his total ignorance of the subject and of art; but never, to my knowledge, saw the marks of Burke's pen in any of the manuscripts.” Elsewhere, Northcote contradictorily says: "I can't help thinking that Burke had a hand in the Discourses-that he gave some of the fine graceful turns."

Mr. Cotton must, however, be considered to have set the question at rest; and in his circumstantial work, to which we have so often referred, he has engraved facsimiles of a portion of the third Discourse, in Sir Joshua's own handwriting, word for word, as in the printed copy.

Haydon also demolished the argument, both positively and inferentially; as well as by a letter communicated to him by a then (1844) living niece of Sir Joshua's.

Lastly, Mr. F. T. Colby, of Exeter College, Oxford, states that the original MSS., in Sir Joshua's own handwriting, are still preserved at Great Torrington, Devon, where Sir Joshua's nephew, and Mr. Colby's maternal grandfather, the Rev. John Palmer, resided. (Notes and Queries, No. 320.) Anecdote Biography: Edmund Burke.

Haydon relates that the reading of these Discourses settled his walk in life. Accidentally turning over his father's apprentice's collection of books, he hit upon Reynolds's Discourses. He read one it placed so much reliance on honest industry; it expressed so strong a conviction that all men were equal, and that application made the difference, that he fired up at once. He took them all home, and read them through before breakfast the next morning. The thing was done. He felt his destiny fixed. The spark which had for years lain struggling to blaze, now burst out for ever. And, on the evening before he started to try his fortune in the metropolis, Haydon notes: "I thought only of London, Sir Joshua, Drawing, Dissections and High Art."

PORTRAIT OF LORD HEATHFIELD.

In 1788, Reynolds sent to the Exhibition, eighteen pictures, the greatest number he ever sent, including his fine portrait of Lord Heathfield, now in the National Gallery; of which Haydon affirmed, he would rather be the painter than of Vandyke's Gevartius. "There is more (he said) of what

is understood by the word genius in it, than in the other; and it is astonishing how its breadth and tone comes upon you as you enter the room-it affected me like the explosion of a bomb."

This picture was painted for Alderman Boydell, and is one of Sir Joshua's most strikingly characteristic portraits. The intrepid veteran holds in his hand the Key of the fortress of Gibraltar; the background is a view of the rock, with the smoke of artillery, in allusion to the celebrated defence of 1779-83, of which Lord Heathfield, then Lieut.-Gen. Elliot, was the hero. The French and Spanish besieging forces consisted of an army of 40,000 men, and a fleet of 47 sail of the line, besides several smaller vessels. Barry said of the introduction of the key of the fortress into the general's hand, "Imagination cannot conceive anything more ingenious and heroically characteristic."

ROBIN GOODFELLOW, OR PUCK.

This picture was painted in 1789, for Mr. Alderman Boydell's Shakspearian Gallery. Walpole depreciates it as "an ugly little imp (but with some character) sitting on a mushroom half as big as a mile-stone."

Mr. Nicholls, of the British Institution, related to Mr. Cotton that the Alderman and his grandfather were with Sir Joshua, when painting the Death of Cardinal Beaufort. Boydell was much taken with the portrait of a naked child, and wished it could be brought into the Shakspeare. Sir Joshua said it was painted from a little child he found sitting on his steps in Leicester-square. Nicholls's grandfather then said, "Well, Mr. Alderman, it can very easily come into the Shakspeare, if Sir Joshua will kindly place him upon a mushroom, give him fawn's ears, and make a Puck of him." Sir Joshua liked the notion, and painted the picture accordingly.

The morning of the day on which Sir Joshua's Puck was to be sold, Lord Farnborough and Davies the painter, breakfasted with Mr. Rogers, and went to the sale together. When the picture was put up, there was a general clapping of hands, and yet it was knocked down to Mr. Rogers for 105 guineas. As he walked home from the sale, a man carried Puck before him, and so well was the picture known, that more than one