REYNOLDS. 



contributed even a Tingle fentiment to tliem ; but he qualified 

 my mir.d to think juftly. No man had, like him, the faculty 

 of teaching inferior minds the art of thinking."—" The 

 observations which he made on poetry, on life, and on every 

 thing about us, I applied to one art ; with what fuccefs 

 others mull judge." The great leviathan of literature 

 found in the mind of Reynolds a congenial purity and 

 ftrength, and became zealoufly attached to him ; who, with 

 fuch a coadjutor, found but little difficulty in colleaing 

 around him a circle of the moll able and ufeful members ot 

 fociety. Many illullrious foreigners were perfonally inti- 

 mate with him ; and his friendfhip was fought by individuals 

 of the higheft quality ; who revered his genius as much as 

 they refpeded the worth of his private character. From 

 fuch conneftions, his mind, rich in its own (lores, received an 

 acceflion of mod extenfive information, and an inexhauflible 

 treafure for converfation. He had a mind ever open to 

 acquire ufeful knowledge; a found and penetrating judg- 

 ment to felect what he acquired, and great induftry and. 

 application in rendering his acquirements ufeful. 



The variety of talent he exhibited, and the confequent 

 eminence which he gained, qualified him to mare the ho- 

 nours of the firft fcientific inftitutious. He was accord- 

 ingly admitted to the Royal, the Antiquarian, and the 

 D?lletanti Societies; and when the late lord North was 

 inftalled chancellor of the univerfity of Oxford, in July 

 1773, fir Jofhua was admitted to the honorary degree of 

 doftor in civil law. He had previoufiy, in 1769, been 

 elected to the prefidency of the Royal Academy, in the 

 formation of which he had a principal (hare, and had, upon 

 the occafion, been honoured by his majefly with the rank of 

 knighthood. To this inftitution he was a moll invaluable 

 member, and repaid the honour and fame he acquired from 

 his fituation in it, by a zealous attention to its intereils. 

 Nor did the Academy derive lefs credit from the admirable 

 works which he continued yearly to exhibit in it, confuting 

 indeed chiefly of portraits, though he rarely fuifered a 

 feafon to pafs in which he did not bring forwards one or 

 more fpecimens of his powers in hiftory. From the year 

 1769, when, as we have faid, the academy was founded, till 

 1790, inclufive, it appears that he fent no lefs than 244 

 pictures to the exhibition. 



The talk of reading lectures was no part of the prefcribed 

 duty of his office : but impofed voluntarily upon himfelf 

 for the following reafons, afilgned by him in his fifteenth dif- 

 courfe. " If prizes were to be given, it appeared not 

 only proper, but almolt indilpenfably neceffary, that fome- 

 thing fhould be faid by the prefident on the delivery of thofe 

 prizes ; and the prefident, for his own credit, would wilh to 

 fay fomething more than mere words of compliment : which, 

 by being frequently repeated, would foon become flat and 

 uninterefling ; and by being uttered to many, would at lail 

 become a diftin&ion to none. I thought, therefore, if I were 

 to preface this compliment with fome inftruetive obfervations 

 on the art, when we crowned merit in the artills whom we 

 rewarded, I might do fomething to animate and guide them 

 in their future attempts." To the exertions which this moil 

 judicious fenfe of propriety flimulated him to make, he is 

 indebted, principally, for his renown as an author. In the 

 courfe of twenty-one years, viz. from 176910 1790, inclu- 

 five, he compofed fifteen difcourfes ; replete with the founded 

 principles, and the mod ufeful information concerning the 

 art he practifed, that ever have been given to the world. 

 In which, though it mult be acknowledged that there are 

 fome few points not fufficiently explained, yet they are free 

 from the affected rant of connoiffeurlhip, and practically 

 efficient to guide the young, whillt it confirms the more ad- 



vanced, in purfuit of the juft. objects of the art of painting, 

 and the furelt means of obtaining fuccefs. Befides thefe, he 

 wrote three papers for the Idler, in 1759 ; viz.. Nos. 76, 

 79, and 82 ; in which is exhibited his original turn of think- 

 ing on the nature and properties of beauty and of art : and 

 in 1783, his notes to Mafon's tranflation of Du Frefnoy's 

 poem on Painting, gave to the world many practical obferva- 

 tions and explanations of the rules laid down in the text, 

 which convey inltruction of the molt ufeful kind, and tend 

 to (hew how carefully, and how fyftematically, his mind 

 was made up on the fubject. 



It has been conjectured, and widely diffufed in opinion, 

 that fir Jofhua did not compofe his lectures himfelf. In fup- 

 port of what is due to him on that head, Mr. Northcote, 

 who lived fome years in his houfe, has faid in his memoirs, 

 " At the period when it was expected he fhould have com- 

 pofed them, 1 have heard him walking at intervals in his room 

 till one or two o'clock in the morning, and I have on the fol- 

 lowing day, at an early hour, feen the papers on the fubject 

 of his art which had been written the preceding night. I 

 have had the rude manufcript from himfelf, in his own hand- 

 writing, in order to make a fair copy from it for him to read 

 in public : I have feen the manufcript alfo after it had 

 been reviled by Dr. Johnfon, who has fometimes altered it to 

 a wrong meaning, from his total ignorance of the fubject 

 and of art; but never, to my knowledge, faw the marks of 

 Burke's pen in any of the manufcripts. 



" The bifliop of Rochelter, alfo, who examined the 

 writings of Mr. Burke fince his death, and lately edited a 

 part of them, informed a friend that he could difcover no 

 reafon to think that Mr. Burke had the leaft hand in the dif- 

 courfes of Reynolds." And Burke himfelf, in a letter to 

 Mr. Malone, after the publication of fir Jolhua's life and 

 works, fays, " I have read over fome part of the difcourfes 

 with an unufual fort of pleafure, partly becaufe being faded 

 a little in my memory, they have a fort of appearance of no- 

 velty ; partly by reviving recollections mixed with melan- 

 choly and fatisfaction. The Flemilh journal I had never 

 feen before. You trace in that, every where, the fpirit of 

 the difcourfes, fupported by new examples. He is always 

 the fame man ; the fame philofophical, the fame artill-like 

 critic, the fame fagacious obferver, with the fame minutenefs, 

 without the fmalleft degree of trifling." We may fafely 

 fay, this is not the language of one who had himfelf contri- 

 buted much to thofe difcourfes. And if neither Johnfon nor 

 Burke wrote for Reynolds, to whom elfe among his contem- 

 poraries (hall the praife due to thofe invaluable compofitions 

 be given, if Reynolds is to be deprived of it ! 



It is much to be lamented, that the world was deprived 

 of this great artiil before he had put into execution a plan 

 which his biographer, Mr. Malone, fays appears, from fome 

 loofe papers, to have been revolved in his mind. " I have 

 found," fays that author, " among fir Jolhua's papers, fome 

 detached and unconnected thoughts, written occationally, as 

 hints for a difcourfe, on a new and Angular plan, which he 

 feems to have intended as a hiilory of his mind, fo far as con- 

 cerned his art ; and of his progrefs, ftudies, and practice ; 

 together with a view of the advantages he had enjoyed, and 

 the difadvantages he had laboured under, in the courfe that 

 he had run : a fcheme, from which, however liable it might 

 be to the ridicule of wits and icoffers, (of which, he fays, he 

 was perfectly aware, ) he conceived the iludents might derive 

 fome ufeful documents for the regulation of their own con- 

 duit and practice." Such a compofition, from fuch a man, 

 written after he had fpent a long life in fuccefsful practice, 

 with none to guide him ; who had chofen a line of art for 

 himfelf, (lamped with originality ; and in which he had to 



develope 



