Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/70

 occasions when this was directed towards himself, as when Johnson accused him of taking too much wine, he could retort with a force and justice which brought the old gladiator to his knees. He assisted Johnson with some notes to his edition of Shakespeare. He exerted himself to procure Johnson's pension, and, shortly before his death, to obtain from the government a grant to enable him to go to Italy for his health. Johnson from the first conceived a high opinion of Reynolds's intelligence, and his admiration and affection only increased as life went on. Johnson characterised Reynolds as ‘the most invulnerable man I know; the man with whom if you should quarrel, you would find the most difficulty how to abuse.’ Sir Joshua was appointed one of his executors, and received as a legacy Martinière's ‘French Dictionary’ and Johnson's own copy of his ‘Dictionary.’ On his deathbed he made Sir Joshua promise not to use his pencil on Sunday, to read the Bible whenever possible and always on Sundays, and to forgive him 30l. which he owed him, as he wished to leave the money to a poor family. Reynolds did not strictly perform the first promise. Sir Joshua left two dialogues in which Johnson's method of conversation is admirably caricatured, and also a paper containing a singularly just estimate of his character (all these are printed in Leslie's life).

Another of Johnson's executors was Edmund Malone [q. v.], whom Reynolds had painted as early as 1774, and who became one of Sir Joshua's most intimate friends. Sir Joshua submitted to him at least one of his discourses for revision, and he published a collection of Sir Joshua's writings, with a memoir, in 1797. Miss Palmer wrote to a cousin in Calcutta in January 1786: ‘My uncle seems more bewitched than ever with his palette and pencils; he is painting from morning to night, and the truth is that every picture he does seems better than the former.’ He exhibited sixteen pictures in 1785, thirteen in 1786 and 1787, and seventeen in 1788. To these years belong some of the most celebrated of all his pictures of all kinds: the three pictures for Boydell's ‘Shakespeare,’ ‘The Witch Scene in Macbeth,’ ‘The Death of Cardinal Beaufort,’ and best of the trio, the ‘Puck,’ the ‘Cymon and Iphigenia,’ and the ‘Infant Hercules’ (painted for the Empress of Russia), the Duchess of Devonshire playing hot cockles with her baby, and the group of Lady Smyth and her children, both unsurpassed in their different ways; his noblest heroic portrait, the Lord Heathfield (in the National Gallery), the fine intellectual characterisations of Hunter, Sheridan, Boswell, Erskine, and Philippe Egalité; some of his loveliest female heads: Lavinia, Lady Spencer and her sister, Lady Betty Foster, and Mrs. Braddyl; and some of his most exquisite pictures of childhood, as the cherub-head in different views (portraits of Lord William Gordon's little girl, now in the National Gallery), the ‘Simplicity’ (Offy's daughter), and Penelope Boothby. He was still as fond of society as ever (he joined a new club called ‘The Eumelian,’ after Dr. John Ash [q. v.], in 1787), and in unimpaired health. But while engaged in painting a portrait (probably that of Lady Beauchamp), his eyesight suddenly failed. Against the entries of his appointments for Monday, 13 July 1789, is written ‘Prevented by my eye beginning to be obscured.’ In ten weeks' time he entirely lost the sight of one eye; and, though he painted a little on his unfinished pictures till November 1790, he never commenced another. The progress of the disease, ‘gutta serena,’ was afterwards slow, and he never entirely lost the sight of the other eye, being able to write his will with his own hand on 5 Nov. 1791. These last years were marked by almost the only disagreeable episode in his professional life, the conduct of the academy in opposing with much rudeness his proposal to elect Joseph Bonomi the elder [q. v.] to full membership in order to fill the vacant chair of professor of perspective. Reynolds in disgust resigned his presidency and membership (23 Feb. 1790), but resumed them at the request of the academy (16 March). It is interesting to note that his late antagonist Barry was on this occasion his most vehement supporter, and that a leader in the movement against the president was his old friend Sir William Chambers. To the exhibition this year he sent his own portrait, one of Mrs. Billington, and four others. In June he attended with Boswell the execution of an old servant of Mrs. Thrale, for which he was blamed in the papers. The draft of a letter in defence was found among his letters, and is printed by Leslie (ii. 588–589). In December he delivered his fifteenth and last discourse, in which he referred with much dignity to the recent differences with the academy. During its delivery one of the beams which supported the floor gave way with a sudden crash, and the audience rushed to the door; but Sir Joshua did not move from his seat, and as soon as confidence was restored he resumed his discourse as if nothing had happened. It concluded with an eloquent eulogium of Michael Angelo, and in its final passage he said: ‘I should de-