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who, of course, will write with the enthusiasm of old acquaintance. 

 His works are already announced as in a state of preparation for the 

 engraver, and we shall no doubt be furnished with recollections sup- 

 plied neither by the pen of the poet, nor by the pen of authenticity in 

 any shape. 



Lawrence was a loss to the arts. He was a man of a singularly 

 elegant taste in painting ; and by a happiness, unaccountable from his 

 early circumstances and education, of graceful accomplishment in many 

 other ways. His nature was the teacher : it gave him, by instinct, a 

 graceful address, a graceful phraseology, and a graceful mind. Nature 

 had also given him a handsome face, to which his manners and his 

 abilities gave a kind of dignity ; and, on the whole, never was man 

 fitter for the painter of the fair and fashionable world. 



But the estimate of his powers may be made more fairly when the first 

 regret for his loss shall have subsided. He was a masterly draughtsman; 

 he had great skill in taking the likeness, and all his portraits were 

 characterised by elegance ; yet to this elegance he often sacrificed truth. 

 He wanted the force, the fearless and decided pursuit of reality, which 

 made the fame of the great painters. His colouring was tame j it pos- 

 sessed neither depth nor nature. All the bloom of his women was 

 rouge, and all the clothing of his men, silk, or some unsubstantial 

 weaving of the pencil. 



Reynolds had the boldness to paint cloth as it was ; the eye could 

 distinguish it at a glance from velvet, or gossamer, or stained paper, or 

 cloud. Lawrence's back grounds were feeble, a mottled vapour, the 

 feeble sunshine, or showery landscape of a soil washed with eternal 

 droppings of the sky. His portraits, too, had an extraordinary and un- 

 fortunate likeness to each other ; and it was one of the wonders of the 

 painter's art how he could reconcile the perfect accuracy of the indi- 

 vidual likeness with this curious generic resemblance. 



It is equally remarkable that a painter, so cautiously reluctant to 

 offend rank, should have almost always painted his women of rank, as if 

 their morality were as transparent as their dress. Many of them, he 

 certainly could not exaggerate on this point, and some of them might 

 have taken a pride in the display. But Lawrence gave the same ex- 

 pression to all. In this he differed from Reynolds ; whether the 

 difference be due to the inferiority of the artist or of his time. But to 

 have given Lawrence his fair place before posterity, he ought to have been 

 suffered to abandon portraits for awhile, and give the only proof of his 

 powers that a great artist can be content with historical painting. He 

 often expressed a wish to make this experiment. But his perpetual em-r 

 barrassments and the perpetual solicitations of persons of the higher 

 orders entangled him, and checked his step into the region of the grandeur 

 of his art. 



One historical picture of his we have seen, which he painted in early 

 life, and which gave the noblest promise. We believe that he never had 

 time to paint another. The subject was Satan in Pandaemonium, 

 standing on the burning lake, and summoning his overthrown legions 

 to rise. Beelzebub stands by his side, but in shadow. The Prince of 

 Evil is the most powerful embodying of the Miltonic conception that 

 perhaps the pencil could give. The countenance magnificently beautiful, 

 yet full of scorn and despair j the figure with the proportions of a giant, 

 yet light and youthful ; the attitude fierce and defying, yet full of dig- 



M.M. New Scries. VOL. IX, No. 50. 2 D 



