possible, and each one better than the last,
caused him so to touch and retouch, that he
was told " probably he never had sent out to
the world any one of his paintings in as perfect
a state as it had been." Reynolds replied, that
he believed this to be true, but, " notwithstanding,
he certainly gained ground by it on the
whole, and improved himself by the experiment;"
adding, " if you are not bold enough to run the
risk of losing, you can never gain."

"I have heard him say," writes Northcote,
"that whenever a new sitter came for a portrait,
he always began it with a full determination to
make it the best picture he had ever painted;
neither would he allow it to be an excuse for
his failure, to say, ' the subject was a bad one
for a picture;' there was always nature, he
would observe, which, if well treated, was fully
sufficient for the purpose." The one picture
that, after his settlement in London, contributed
most to produce a run upon his studio, was of
his friend Keppel, now an admiral. But there
was no element of chance in this. Reynolds
himself knew what, given the requisite abilities,
was the chief helper to his great success. "My
success," he wrote, " and continual improvement
in my art, if I may be allowed that expression,
may be ascribed in a good measure to a principle
which I will boldly recommend to imitation; I
mean a principle of honesty; which, in this, as
in all other instances, is, according to the vulgar
proverb, certainly the best policy,—I always
endeavoured to do my best. Great or vulgar,
good subjects or bad, all had nature; by the
exact representation of which, or even by the
endeavour to give such a representation, the
painter cannot but improve in his art. I had
always some scheme in my mind, and a perpetual
desire to advance. By constantly endeavouring
to do my best, I acquired a power of doing that
with spontaneous facility, which was, at first,
the whole effort of my mind."

James Barry, with a higher form of genius
than Reynolds's, worked as hard, or harder, and
dined for a year together upon gruel, that he
might achieve work worthy of his purest aspirations.
Barry's failure proved that even honesty
and earnestness of purpose may fail of
breadwinning where there is an impracticable temper,
or a too great ostentation of self-confidence.
Barry chafed even at Burke, the truest and
most faithful helper he had in the world, because,
meaning to help him up in the world, he went
to sit to him for a portrait without having sent
notice on the previous day, as Reynolds
expected of his sitters. Barry was at home and
disengaged, but sulked, and refused to paint.
Burke dealt with him tenderly, explained to him
that he could not fore-arrange his time, and
that when he had sat to Reynolds he had gone
in the same way, taking his chance of finding
the artist able to receive him, and after a
fretful correspondence Barry came down from
his high rope. Success in life is almost always
incompatible with such a temper. Reynolds,
placid, courteous, socially pliable, yet in no
case servile, firm to his own opinions, but not
offensively flourishing them in the faces of those
to whom they were unwelcome, would have
thriven had he been but moderately clever in
his art. Goldsmith's character of Reynolds in
the Retaliation sums him up with the knowledge
and love of a friend:

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 judged without skill, he was still hard of hearing;
When they talked of their Raphaels, Corrcgios, and stuff,
He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff.

Another element in Reynolds's success, as
compared with Barry's failure, is that Reynolds, by
the bent of his genius, served the wealthy and
fashionable people of the town in a day of much
social frivolity. A painter whose brush played
the looking-glass—and a flattering glass too—
was somebody for all the fine folks to run after,
and Reynolds, when he attempted the ideal,
never shocked polite tastes with much more than
the sort of fustian allegory then considered fine,
and in which Reynolds himself, a social man who
was of the fashion as well as in fashion, seems to
have believed as much as his neighbours. Barry
worshipped in his gloomy solitude a more remote
ideal. Barry shunned society, and snubbed
friends, while he sought to create a fashion.
Reynolds courted society, and had unfailing
kindness and consideration for the many friends
he made, while he followed the fashion of his
day with a genius that made him, in his own
way of art, its wholesome guide and teacher.

All the history of Reynolds's constant success,
inseparably joined to the concurrent story of his
constant industry, may be read in the book that
tells his life and times. He removed, at the age
of thirty-seven, to the house which was his home
for all the rest of his life, at 47, Leicester-square,
now occupied by the literary auctioneers, Puttick
and Simpson. From time to time he raised his
prices, and soon had an income of six thousand
a year. When the Royal Academy was founded,
he—then forty-six years old—was named its
first president, and, on that account, was
knighted at the levee which preceded the opening
of its first exhibition. Thenceforth he was
Sir Joshua. He was a pleasant member of the
very aristocratic Dilettanti Club, and of the very
literary Turk's Head Club, the familiar friend of
Johnson, Garrick, Burke, and Goldsmith, vainly
designed by Mr. Thrale to be the husband of
Miss Burney, but to the last a bachelor. Then
on the verge of threescore and ten, with one eye
blind and a weakness in the other, when he said
to Miss Burney, with dejected voice, "I am
very glad to see you again, and I wish I could
see you better; I have but one eye now, and
scarcely that." Swelling arose about the blind
eye, for which he was purged and blistered,