Page:Nollekens and His Times, Volume 2.djvu/462

 450 of St. Paul; nor could he ever suspect, great as his fame was, thas this statue would have been as often visited as those of Pasquin and Marforio, or that the pedestal would have displayed the signatures of some of the highest characters in Europe, so justly celebrated for their worth and talent.

Lord and Lady Inchiquin solicited Nollekens to execute Sir Joshua's monument, which he declined, by stating that his engagements would not permit him to undertake it; but I never heard until lately, that he had recommended it to Flaxman, as some have asserted. For my own part, too, I do not believe it, as they were never intimate, and their modes of thinking and living were so diametrically opposite, that it was not possible for a man with Flaxman's elegant and benevolent feelings, to associate with Nollekens. I am fully convinced also, from the ignorant observations which I have heard him make upon Flaxman,—whose sublime ideas and conversations on Art he never could understand,—that Flaxman never would have been preferred by him to Scheemakers's nephew, whose business of monmument-making, for so I must call it with him, arose entirely from the overflowings of the studio of Nollekens, his uncle's pupil.