Page:Nollekens and His Times, Volume 2.djvu/172

 160 As an invitation to the youth of talent to persevere assiduously in his studies, I shall now give a chronological list of the various prizes adjudged to Bacon during his unremitted application to his beloved art. To his eternal honour be it spoken, he received the whole of these encouragements between the age of nineteen and thirty-seven—a period of seventeen of his earliest years, which, in the life of man, I regret to say, have hitherto been seldom filled with so much credit.

My reader will recollect, that Bacon was the first artist who had the honour of being presented, in 1769, with the gold medal from the Royal Academy, as a modeller. Such a distinguished mark of the estimation of his talents by so honourable a body, consisting of the most