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writes to Boswell a little querulously: "They that have your kindness may lack your ardour,"-a reference, evidently, to Sir Joshua.

As to the exact course which the negotiation afterwards took, there was shown to have been some little misunderstanding. Sir Joshua understood from Lord Thurlow that the application to the King had not been successful, but that Dr Johnson might draw on him (the Chancellor), personally, to the extent of five or six hundred pounds, which he might, if he pleased, treat as a mortgage on the government pension. Johnson, thinking that his health had meanwhile improved, gratefully declined the Chancellor's offer, in a letter enclosed in one addressed in a tone of affectionate regard to Sir Joshua himself. It came out afterwards that Thurlow had not thought the moment opportune to make an official application to the King, but had generously made the offer to Johnson on his own account.

After some further fluctuations in the health of the great writer the end came on the afternoon of December 13th. Though unattended in his last moments by the faithful Boswell, then absent in Scotland, he enjoyed the consolation of seeing round him, in the intervals of his last illness, many of his most attached friends-Burke, Bennet Langton, Sir John Hawkins, Reynolds himself -besides being gratuitously attended, to the last, by some of the most eminent medical and surgical authorities of the time, including Dr Brockelsby and Mr Cruikshank. Sir Joshua was appointed executor, jointly with Sir John Hawkins and Dr William Scott of Doctors Commons, and received as a legacy the testator's great French dictionary by Martinière, and his own copy of the folio English dictionary of the last revision.

It is stated by his biographers that, on his death

bed, Johnson made three requests to Sir Joshua: never to use his pencil on a Sunday; to read the Bible whenever possible, and always on Sundays; and to forgive him thirty pounds which he had borrowed of him, as he wished to leave the money to a poor family. Sir Joshua very naturally promised, but found himself apparently unable to adhere strictly to that part of the promise which referred to Sunday painting. A few days before his death, Johnson had asked Sir John Hawkins, as one of his executors, where he would be buried; and on receiving the answer, "Doubtless in Westminster Abbey," he seemed, as Boswell says, to feel a satisfaction very natural to a poet. His funeral on December 20th was attended by a respectable number of his friends, including Sir Joshua, Burke, Sir Joseph Banks, Bennet Langton, Windham, Sir Charles Bunbury, and other members of The Club; but it made in other respects a singular contrast to the splendour of that accorded to Garrick, and to the hardly less imposing obsequies with which Reynolds himself was, a few years later, honoured.

The biographers further quote, from a document communicated by Miss Gwatkin, a paper by Sir Joshua on the character of the friend whom he had known intimately and without interruption for a period of upwards of thirty years. This was no doubt written entirely apart from, and without cognisance of, the materials collected by Boswell for his biography, which, be it remembered, did not appear until within a year of Sir Joshua's death. It completely agrees in the main points with the portrait to be evolved from the ever-popular work of the never popular or remarkable biographer, and might almost serve as a synthesis of its main facts and opinions. Sir Joshua's powers of generalisation here serve him admirably, and in truth, are used with a more telling effect,

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with a more convincing power, than in many of the Discourses, treating with literary methods of his own art. One passage, as having a very important bearing upon the origin of Sir Joshua's style in literature, and also, to a certain extent, in conversation, must be quoted :

"We" (Reynolds and the friend to whom the Memoir is addressed)" are both of Dr Johnson's school. For my own part, I acknowledge the highest obligations to him. He may be said to have formed my mind, and to have brushed from it a great deal of rubbish. Those very people whom he has brought to think rightly will occasionally criticise the opinions of their master when he nods. But we should always recollect that it is he himself who taught us and enabled us to do it."

CHAPTER X

Exhibition of 1785-Portrait of Joshua Sharpe-Portrait of John Hunter — Boswell — Walpole and Sir Joshua - Portrait of the Duc d'Orleans (Philippe Egalité)-The "Infant Hercules "-Exhibition of 1786-Triumphant Display by the Master-"Duchess of Devonshire with her Child"-Mrs Montagu again-Malone and the Discourses—“Lady Caroline Price❞—Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery— The Grand Style in English Art-Reynolds's "Macbeth"-Exhibition of 1787-" Heads of Angels "-Mrs Fitzherbert-Macklin as a Rival to Boydell-Exhibition of 1788-Lady Elizabeth FosterPortrait of Lord Heathfield-Reynolds summoned to Gainsborough's Death-bed -"Mrs Billington as St Cecilia "-Boydell honoured at Academy Dinner-Exhibition of 1789-"Simplicity "Lord Lifford"-"Mrs Braddyll "-Reynolds's Partial Blindness-The Quarrel with the Royal Academy-The President resigns his Office and Membership-His Defence of his Action-Is induced to resume OfficeExhibition of 1790-Last Portrait of Himself-Last DiscourseDr Johnson's Monument-Sir Joshua's Last Illness-Miss Burney's Account-Burke's Account-Death on 23d February 1792-Burke's Obituary Notice-Funeral-Will, Legacies, and Bequests-Sales of Pictures, Drawings, etc.

ON the 10th of December 1784, Sir Joshua delivered, at the distribution of the prizes, his Twelfth Discourse.

The sixteen pictures exhibited by the President at the Academy in 1785 did not include any of his more popular masterpieces, and the year may be described as rather a dull one for him.

Among them were:-"The Snake in the Grass," shown as "A Venus;" a group of "Three Children

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of the Duke of Rutland," afterwards burnt in the great fire at Belvoir.

The Hon. Mrs Stanhope as "Melancholy."

A portrait of the Prince of Wales, which may possibly be that which passed with the Peel Collection into the National Gallery.

A portrait of Mrs Smith, the chère amie of Sir John Lade (formerly at Peckforton; lent as "Lady Lade" to the Old Masters in 1884 by Baron F. de Rothschild).

A half-length of Lady Hume,* wife of Sir Abraham Hume, holding a spaniel in her lap-(lent by Earl Brownlow to the Reynolds Exhibition in 1884).

Painted in this year, and shown at the exhibition of the next, are two of the most notable among Sir Joshua's male portraits-those happy occasional inspirations in which, presenting with a veritable genius the finest aspects of humanity, he rose to heights upon which even the most fascinating of his female portraits do not sustain him. One is the likeness of the eminent conveyancer, Joshua Sharpe, the other is that of John Hunter. The former half-length, in which the venerable gentleman portrayed appears seated at a table, prominent upon which is a draft conveyance, was No. 168 in the Reynolds Exhibition, to which it was contributed by the late Mr John Malcolm of Poltalloch.†

The famous "John Hunter" is, or rather was, among Reynolds's masterpieces, and must take rank, as a noble, heart-stirring conception, with the "Sir Joseph Banks." Leslie saw it nearly thirty years ago, when it had just been cleaned, repaired and relined, and states that it

* Painted on panel, at the particular request of the lady's husband.

+ This portrait had already been referred to in connection with Reynolds's disclaimer of certain praise given to him by the critics for its intellectual qualities.

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