Page:Life of Edmond Malone.djvu/210

190 “The dear friend so often mentioned in these papers, Sir Joshua Reynolds, died at his house in Leicester Fields, last Thursday evening (Feb. 23, 1792), at half past eight o’clock. So much have I been employed for some days past, he having done me the honour to make me one of his executors, that I have not been able till this moment to set down any of the particulars of that sad event.

“I became first acquainted with him in 1778, and for these twelve years past we have lived in the greatest intimacy. The morning after his death, Mr. Burke drew up a short character of him which was inserted not quite correctly, in The Gazetteer, and in The Herald the following day. It is so perfectly just, appropriate, and discriminative, that it is not easy to add to it. He was blessed with such complacency and equality of temper, was so easy, so uniformly cheerful, so willing to please and be pleased, so fond of the company of literary men, so well read in mankind, so curious an observer of character, and so replete with various knowledge and entertaining anecdotes, that not to have loved as well as admired him would have shown great want of taste and sensibility. He had long enjoyed such constant health, looked so young, and was so active, that I thought, though he was sixty-nine years old, he was as likely to live eight or ten years longer as any of his younger friends.

“On our return from an excursion to Mr. Burke’s at Beaconsfield last September, we alighted from his