Page:Eight Friends of the Great - WP Courtney.djvu/44

 24 Sir Joshua wrote several letters to Burke while on this expedition. Of the collection at Dusseldorf he wrote enthusiastically that "Rubens reigns here and revels." He went abroad for another tour in 1783 or 1785. His object then was two-fold. He wished to examine more closely the works of Rubens and to purchase some of the pictures which the ecclesiastical measures of Joseph II. of Austria against the religious and monastic institutions of the Netherlands were forcing into the market. This second investigation of the works of Rubens drove him to the conviction that he had over-estimated their brilliancy. The pictures which passed under the hammer at Brussels tempted him into an expenditure of over £1000. I know not whether Metcalfe accompanied him on this second jaunt; probably he did. The pocket-books of sir Joshua for this tour are missing.

The two friends kept on dining together until the end. They met at dinner at 5 o'clock on Sunday 7 Jany, 1787, when Sir Joshua was due at the reception of Mrs. Vesey at 8, and at the same hour in the evening on Sunday 6 Sept. 1789. Among the guests at the last dinner-party recorded by Leslie and Taylor in their life of Reynolds was Metcalfe. Reynolds died on 23 Feby, 1792, and appointed his three friends, Burke, Metcalfe and Malone, as his executors. To Malone and Metcalfe, with the addition of Boswell and sir William Scott he left "£200 each, to be laid out, if they should think proper, in the purchase of some picture at the sale of his collection, to be kept for his sake." On 17 Jany 1793 his executors forwarded a communication to the empress of Russia requesting her to settle the price of the chef d'œuvre which Reynolds had painted for her and offering her the pictures and drawings which he had collected during the previous thirty-five years. The draught of this document is among the manuscripts of Malone which were purchased