Page:Nollekens and His Times, Volume 2.djvu/471

 of the Royal Academy, did not surpass in esteem and respect the manner in which Mr. Howard has always mentioned the name of Flaxman.

I was present one evening, at the Argyll-Rooms, when Pistrucci, the Improvisatore, received, amongst other papers, from the audience, a request for his ideas in poetry for the composition for a monument to the memory of Canova; after he had read the request, he bowed to the centre of the second seat before him, and passed an elegant encomium upon our late British Phidias; saying, he could not think of delivering his ideas upon that subject, while there was a Flaxman present, who could, with a few lines of his pencil, far surpass ten thousand lines of his verses.

To the eternal honour of Sir Thomas Lawrence, the first English Artist who has followed the noble example of Sir Peter Paul Rubens, by liberally purchasing the works of contemporary artists, he has not only secured likenesses of Fuseli, Smirke, and Stothard, but unquestionably one of the finest busts of Flaxman extant, which are from the hand of Baily, the Academician, Flaxman's favourite pupil. Sir Thomas is also the fortunate possessor of two figures, designed and modelled by Flaxman,