you

love. I'll tell you what,' would Hogarth say: 'Sam 'Johnson's conversation is to the talk of other men like 'Titian's painting compared to Hudson's: but don't 'tell people, now, that I say so; for the connoisseurs and 'I are at war, you know; and because I hate them, they 'think I hate Titian.'

Goldsmith and the connoisseurs were at war, too; and this would help to make more agreeable that frequent intercourse, of which Hogarth has himself left the only memorial. A portrait in oil, known by the name of 'Goldsmith's Hostess,' and so exhibited in London a few years back, is the work of his pencil. It involves no

accounts reveal to us how often it was needful to mitigate Mrs. Fleming's impatience, to moderate her wrath, and, when money was not immediately at hand, to minister to her vanities. For Newbery was a strict accountant, and kept sharply within the terms of his bargains; exacting notes of hand at each quarterly settlement for whatever the balance might be, and objecting to add to it by new payments when it happened to be large. It is but to imagine a visit from Hogarth at such time. If his good nature wanted any stimulus, the thought of Newbery would give it. He had himself an old grudge against the booksellers. He charges them in his autobiography with 'cruel treatment' of his father, and dilates on the bitterness they add to the necessity of earning bread by the pen. But, though the copyrights of his prints were a source of certain and not inconsiderable income, his money at command was scanty; and it would better suit his generous good humour, as well as better serve his friend, to bring his easel in his coach some day, and enthrone Mrs. Fleming by the side of it. So the portrait was painted; and much laughter there was in its progress, I do not doubt, at the very different sort of sitters and subjects, whose coronet-coaches were crowding the west side of Leicester Square.

The good humour of Reynolds was a different thing from that of Hogarth. It had no antagonism about it. Ill humour with any other part of the world had nothing to do with it. It was gracious and diffused; singling

out some, it might be, for special warmth, but smiling blandly upon all. He was eminently the gentleman of his time; and if there is a hidden charm in his portraits, it is that. His own nature pervades them, and shines out from them still. He was now forty years old, being younger than Hogarth by a quarter of a century; was already in the receipt of nearly six thousand pounds a year ; and had known nothing but uninterrupted prosperity. He had moved from St. Martin's Lane into Newport Street, and from Newport Street into Leicester Square: he had raised his prices from five, ten, and twenty guineas (his earliest charge for the three sizes of portraits), successively to ten, twenty, and forty; to twelve, twenty-four, and fortyeight; to fifteen, thirty, and sixty; to twenty, forty, and eighty; and to twenty-five, fifty, and a hundred, the sums he now charged: he had lately built a gallery for his works: and he had set up a gay gilt coach, with the four seasons painted on its pannels. Yet, of those to whom the man was really known, it may be doubted if there was one who grudged him a good fortune, which was worn with generosity and grace, and justified by noble qualities; while few indeed should have been the exceptions, whether among those who knew or those who knew him not, to the feeling of pride that an Englishman had at last arisen, who could measure himself successfully with the Dutch and the Italian.

This was what Reynolds had striven for; and what common men might suppose to be his envy or self-suffi

ciency. Not with any sense of triumph over living competitors, did he listen to the praise he loved; not of being better than Hogarth, or than Gainsborough, or than his old master Hudson, was he thinking continually, but of the glory of being one day placed by the side of Vandyke and of Rubens. Undoubtedly he must be said to have overrated the effects of education, study, and the practice of schools; and it is matter of much regret that he should never have thought of Hogarth but as a moral satirist and man of wit, or sought for his favourite art the dignity of a closer alliance with such philosophy and genius. But the difficult temper of Hogarth himself cannot be kept out of view. His very virtues had a stubbornness and a dogmatism that repelled. What Reynolds most desired, to bring men of their common calling together, and by consent and union, by study and co-operation, establish claims to respect and continuance, Hogarth had been all his life opposing; and was now, at the close of life, standing of his own free choice apart and alone. Study the great works of the great masters for ever, said Reynolds; there is only one school, cried Hogarth, and that is kept by Nature. What was uttered on the one side of Leicester Square, was pretty sure to be contradicted on the other; and neither would make the advance which might have reconciled the views of both. Be it remembered, at the same time, that Hogarth, in the daring confidence of his more astonishing genius, kept himself at the farthest extreme.

'Talk of sense, and study, and all

that,' he said to Walpole, 'why, it is owing to the good 'sense of the English that they have not painted better. 'The most ignorant people about painting are the painters 'themselves. There's Reynolds, who certainly has genius; 'why but t' other day he offered a hundred pounds for a 'picture that I would not hang in my cellar.' Reynolds might have some excuse if he turned from this with a smile, and a supposed confirmation of his error that the critic was himself no painter. Thus these great men lived separate to the last. The only feeling they shared in common may have been that kindness to Oliver Goldsmith, which, after their respective fashion, each manifested well. The one, with his ready help and robust example, would have strengthened him for life, as for a solitary warfare which awaited every man of genius; the other, more gently, would have drawn him from contests. and solitude, from discontents and low esteem, to the sense that worldly consideration and social respect might gladden even literary toil. While Hogarth was propitiating and painting Mrs. Fleming, Reynolds was founding the Literary Club.

It did not receive that name till many years later: but that Reynolds was its Romulus, and this the year of its foundation, is unquestionable; though the meetings did not begin till winter. Johnson caught at the notion eagerly; suggested as its model a club he had himself founded in Ivy Lane some fourteen years before, and which the deaths or dispersion of its members had now