a 'cheerful evening' intercepted work, some hours were still seized from sleep,' to write as much as he had contemplated by the studies of the morning.

One may clearly trace these 'cheerful evenings,' I think, in Mrs. Fleming's 'incidental expenses.' The good lady was not loath to be generous at times, but is careful to give herself the full credit of it; and a frequent item in her bill is a gentleman's dinner, nothing.' Four gentlemen have tea, for eighteen-pence; wines and cakes' are supplied for the same sum; bottles of port are charged two shillings each; and one Doctor Reman' is such a special favourite, that three elaborate cyphers (£0. Os. Od.) follow his teas as well as his dinners. Redmond was his real name. He was a young Irish physician who had lived some years in France, and was now disputing with the Society of Arts on some alleged discoveries in the properties of antimony. Among Mrs. Fleming's anonymous entries, however, were some that related to more distinguished visitors.

The greatest of these I would introduce as he was seen one day in the present year by a young and eager admirer, passing quickly through Cranbourne Alley. He might have been on his way to Goldsmith. He was a bustling, active, stout little man, dressed in a sky blue coat. His admirer saw him at a distance, turning the corner; and, running with all expedition to have a nearer view, came up with him in Castle Street, as he stood patting one of two quarrelling boys on the back, and, looking steadfastly

at the expression in the coward's face, was saying in very audible voice, 'Damn him, if I would take it of him! at 'him again!' Enemy or admirer could not better have seen William Hogarth. He might see, in that little incident, his interest in homely life, his preference of the real in art, and his quick apprehension of character; his love of hard hitting, and his indomitable English spirit. The admirer, who, at the close of his own chequered life, thus remembered and related it, was James Barry of Cork; who had followed Mr. Edmund Burke to London with letters from Doctor Sleigh, and whose birth, genius, and poverty soon made him known to Goldsmith.

Between Goldsmith and Hogarth were many reasons of sympathy. Few so sure as the great, self-taught, philosophic artist, to penetrate at once, through any outer husk of disadvantage, to discernment of an honest and loving soul. Genius in both took side with the homely and the poor; and they had personal foibles in common. No man can be supposed to have read the letters in the Public Ledger with heartier agreement than Hogarth; no man so little likely as Goldsmith to suffer a sky blue coat, or conceited, strutting, consequential airs, to weigh against the claims of the painter of Marriage à-la-Mode. How they first met has not been related, but they met frequently. In these last two years of Hogarth's life, admiration had become precious to him; and Goldsmith was ready with his tribute. Beside, there was Wilkes to rail against, and Churchill to condemn, as well as Johnson to praise and

M M

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 you '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