Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/67

 adorning a term of Hymen’), and ‘Lady Cockburn and her Children’ (engraved as ‘Cornelia and her Children’). ‘The Graces’ were the three daughters of Sir William Montgomery, Marchioness Townsend, the Hon. Mrs. Gardiner, and the Hon. Mrs. Blessington. The former picture he scarcely surpassed in elegance, or the latter in splendour of colour. But the work which attracted most attention was the portrait of Dr. Beattie, with his ‘Essay on Truth’ in his hand, and an angel driving away figures of Sophistry, Scepticism, and Folly. This picture roused the wrath of Goldsmith, from the likeness of Sophistry to Voltaire. ‘How could you,’ said he to Reynolds, ‘degrade so high a genius as Voltaire before so mean a writer as Beattie? The existence of Dr. Beattie and his book together will be forgotten in the space of ten years, but your allegorical picture and the fame of Voltaire will live for ever, to your disgrace as a flatterer.’ Before the picture was exhibited Goldsmith was dead. For ten or twelve years they had been on terms of the most intimate friendship. Reynolds had consoled him in his disappointments, and rejoiced in all his successes. He had helped him with counsel and money. Of Goldsmith's love for Reynolds the dedication of ‘The Deserted Village’ is sufficient testimony. ‘The only dedication I ever made was to my brother, because I loved him better than most other men. He is since dead. Permit me to inscribe this poem to you.’ Northcote tells us ‘Goldsmith's death was the severest blow Sir Joshua ever received. He did not touch a pencil for that day, a circumstance most extraordinary for him, who passed no day without a line.’ Sir Joshua acted as his executor, arranged his confused affairs, and selected the place for his monument in Westminster Abbey. It was not till a week after Goldsmith's death that his ‘Retaliation’ was published, with the well-known and unfinished ‘epitaph’ of Reynolds, which has been called ‘the best epitome of his character:’ Here Reynolds is laid, and, to tell you my mind, He has not left a wiser or better behind; His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand, His manners were gentle, complying, and bland; Still born to improve us in every part, His pencil our faces, his manners our heart; To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering; When they judged without skill, he was still hard of hearing; When they talked of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff, He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff.

Reynolds's two greatest rivals came to town about this time—Gainsborough (an old one) in 1774, and George Romney [q. v.], fresh from Italy, in 1775. The latter became so fashionable that, according to a remark of Lord Thurlow, ‘there was a Reynolds faction and a Romney faction.’ There was also another painter who, if not a serious rival, was a spiteful enemy. This was Nathaniel Hone, who sent to the exhibition of 1775 a picture called ‘The Pictorial Conjuror displaying the whole Art of Optical Deception,’ which represented Reynolds clothing models with garments taken from well-known pictures which float about the room. Of course it was rejected.

Sir Joshua sent twelve pictures to the exhibition of 1775, which comprised a portrait (of Dr. Richard Robinson [q. v.], primate of Ireland, now at Christ Church, Oxford) which Horace Walpole declared was the best he ever painted, and ‘Mrs. Sheridan as St. Cecilia,’ perhaps the most lovely in its feeling of any of his works. There was also a charming picture of children, ‘A Beggar Boy and his Sister,’ now called ‘Boy with Cabbage Nets.’ This year Northcote left Reynolds to start on his own account, his master warning him that ‘something more is to be done than that which did formerly; Kneller, Lely, and Hudson will not do now.’

In 1776 Sir Joshua painted his portrait for the Uffizzi Gallery at Florence, and sent it with a long and graceful letter in Italian. In this year Hannah More, who was in the height of her reputation as a poetess, visited London. She was treated by Reynolds with his invariable courtesy, and was greatly pleased with his ‘Infant Samuel’ and ‘St. John,’ then on his easel. The former (probably the most popular of all his pictures, and more than once repeated) is in the National Gallery. It was exhibited this year as ‘The Child Daniel,’ together with the ‘St. John,’ also a child. These and two portraits, Master Herbert as Bacchus and Master Crewe as Henry VIII (the latter an admirable bit of masquerade), show how much his time was now devoted to children. A rarer subject, and treated with much effect, was Omiah the Otaheitan, a ‘lion’ of the season; and other portraits of the year, of very fine quality, were those of the Duchess of Devonshire, Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu [q. v.] (the Queen of the ‘Blues’), and Lord Temple, while one of Garrick takes rank among his greatest masterpieces of character.

Sir Joshua's famous groups of the Dilettanti Society, of which he had been elected a member in 1766, and painter in 1769,