fession for the purpose of acquiring general knowledge from books, sir Joshua very early and wisely resolved to partake as much as possible of the society of all the ingenious and learned men of his time; a practice which he has strongly recommended to other artist, in one of his Discourses: and in consequence of this, and of his convivial habits, his table for above thirty years exhibited an assemblage of all the talents of Great Britain and Ireland ; there being during that period scarcely a person in the three kingdoms distinguished for attainments in literature or the arts, or for exertions at the bar, in the senate, or the field, who was not occasionally found there. The pleasure and instruction which he derived from such company, induced him in the year 1764, in conjunction with Dr. Johnson, to establish the Literary Club; which still exists, and has included in the list of its members many of the most celebrated characters of the present age.

From the time of his return from Italy, sir Joshua had the misfortune to be very deaf; a complaint which was occasioned by his catching cold in the palace of the Vatican, by painting for a long time near a stove, which attracting the damp vapours of that building, these affected his head. When in company with only one person indeed, he could hear tolerably: but at other times was obliged to use an ear-trumpet to enable him to partake of the conversation of his friends; and such was the serenity of his temper, that what he did not at once hear, he never troubled those with whom he conversed to repeat. To these circumstances Goldsmith alludes, in drawing his character in the form of an epitaph during sir Joshua's life-time, in the following lines:

Here Reynolds is laid; and, to tell you my mind,
He has not left a wiser or better behind.

His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand;
His manners were gentle, complying, and bland.
Still born to improve us in every part:

His pencil our faces, his manners our heart.

To coxcombs averse; yet, most civilly steering,

When they judg'd without skill he was still hard of hearing;
When they talk'd of their Raphaels, Corregios, and stuff,
He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff.

Sir Joshua had now attained a height in fame and fortune, unequalled by any former painter of this country: and his celebrity was spread over every part of the civilized world. For a very long period, he enjoyed an uninterrupted state of good health; to which his custom of painting standing (first introduced by him) certainly contributed; as he thus escaped the disorders incident to a sedentary life. In July, 1789, he for the first time perceived his sight so much affected, that he found it difficult to proceed in a portrait on which he was engaged; and in a few months, in spite of the aid of the most skilful oculists, he was entirely deprived of the sight of his left eye. After some attempts, he determined to 'paint no more lest his other eye should also become affected; a resolution which deprived him of an employment he loved more for its own sake than for the great emolument which it brought him. Still he retained his usual spirits, was amused by reading or by hearing others read to him, and partook of the society of his friends with the same pleasure as before. In the latter part of the year 1791, however, he became afflicted with a disorder of the liver; which after a confinement of three months, supported with an equanimity rarely displayed, carried him off on the 23d of February, 1792, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. He was buried in St. Paul's cathedral, with every honour that could be shewn to genius and to worth by a grateful and enlightened nation, near the spot where was formerly interred his great predecessor Vandyke.

Sir Joshua Reynolds was in stature rather under the middle size; of a florid complexion, and a lively and pleasing aspect; well made, and extremely active. His appearance at first sight impressed the spectator with the

idea of a well-born and well-bred English gentleman. With an uncommon equability of temper, he possessed a constant flow of spirits, which rendered him at all times a most pleasing companion; and in conversation his manner was perfectly natural, simple, and unassuming. His professional reputation stands on a solid and durable basis; and in one department of his art it has been forcibly declared by a competent judge, that the exuberance of his invention will be the grammar of future painters of portraits. In the exercise of his talents he was indefatigably assiduous; and, to use the words applied by Dr. Johnson to Pope, "He was one of those few whose labour is their pleasure; he was never elevated into negligence, nor wearied to impatience; he never passed a fault uncorrected by indifference, nor quitted it by despair. He laboured his works first to gain reputation, and afterwards to keep it."

His friend Mr. Burke, with whom he lived in great intimacy for above thirty years, has summed up his character in an affectionate tribute to his memory, from which the following passages are extracted. "Sir Joshua Reynolds was, on very many accounts, one of the most memorable men of his time. He was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. In taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of colouring, he was equal to the great masters of the renowned ages. In portraits he went beyond them; for he communicated to that description of the art, in which English artists are most engaged, a variety, a fancy, and a dignity, derived from the higher branches, which even those who professed them in a superior manner did not always preserve when they delineated individual nature. His portraits remind the spectator of the invention of history, and the amenity of landscape. In painting portraits he appeared not to be raised upon that platform, but

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to descend to it from a higher sphere. His paintings il lustrate his lessons, and his lessons seem to be derived from his paintings.

“In full affluence of foreign and domestic fame, admired by the expert in art and by the learned in science, courted by the great, caressed by sovereign powers, and celebrated by distinguished poets; his native humility, modesty, and candour, never forsook him, even on surprise or provocation; nor was the least degree of arrogance or assumption visible to the most scrutinizing eye, in any part of his conduct or discourse.

“His talents of every kind, powerful from nature, and not meanly cultivated by letters; his social virtues in all the relations and all the habitudes of life; rendered him the centre of a very great and unparalleled variety of agreeable societies, which will be dissipated by his death. He had too much merit not to excite some jealousy; too much innocence to provoke any enmity. The loss of no man of his time can be felt with more sincere, general, and unmixed sorrow."

WILLAM MURRAY,

EARL OF MANSFIELD.

Born 1705.-Died 1793.

From 3d Anne, to 33d George III.

AMONG the liberal studies, the attainment of exalted eminence is perhaps more difficult, and the talents which it requires more solid and complicated, in the law than in any other; and besides this difficulty, which is inherent the profession itself, the higher the station in which its fessor is placed, the more consummate of course are qualities required to discharge its duties with distine

tion or propriety. Subtlety of argument, with a competent share of legal knowledge, may confer considerable reputation on a pleader who yet is destitute of the far superior qualifications requisite for a judge. So multitudinous indeed are the restraints and regulations which a high degree of civilization occasions,-particularly in a commercial country like this, where all the powers of the mind are exerted, both honourably and dishonourably, in the acquisition of wealth,-that nothing less than the most indefatigable perseverance can master the whole of the legal code, and store the mind with the particular rules to be applied to every contingent circumstance. Yet the character of the judge who is to preside in the first civil court of this kingdom, will not be perfect without something still higher; he should possess that force of genius which is peculiarly the gift of heaven, and which no study can supply where nature has been deficient ;-that quick intuitiv e glance of the mind which not only darts through the obscurities and perplexity in which the perverse in‐ genuity of contending advocates often envelopes a cause, but at once performs the much harder task of disentangling the intricacies with which the question itself is often embarrassed, and elicits a ray of light to make the genuine point on which the justice of the case turns obvious to a common understanding. One more feature is wanting to the perfection of this portrait, namely, eloquence; and when these various and splendid qualities are considered, it will be readily allowed that the distinguished sages of the law are amply entitled to the admiration and reverence with which they are usually contemplated. All these accomplishments, in as high a degree as they were ever possessed by any mortal in the annals of national jurisprudence, adorned the first earl of Mansfield; whom it is the purpose of the present memoir to hold out as a prominent and shining example to youthful emulation.

The honourable William Murray was the eleventh