Abstract topics of wit or learning do not furnish a connecting link: but the painter, the sculptor, come in close contact with the persons of the Great. The lady of quality, the courtier, and the artist, meet and shake hands on this common ground; the latter exercises a sort of natural jurisdiction and dictatorial power over the pretensions of the first to external beauty and accomplishment, which produces a mild sense and tone of equality; and the opulent sitter pays the taker of flattering likenesses handsomely for his trouble, which does not lessen the sympathy between them. There is even a satisfaction in paying down a high price for a picture-it seems as if one's head was worth something!-During the first sitting, Sir Joshua did little but chat with the new candidate for the fame of portraiture, try an attitude, or remark an expression. His object was to gain time, by not being in haste to commit himself, until he was master of the subject before him. No one ever dropped in but the friends and acquaintance of the sitter-it was a rule with Sir Joshua that from the moment the latter entered, he was at home-the room belonged to him-but what secret whisperings would there be among these, what confidential, inaudible communications! It must be a refreshing moment, when the cake and wine had been handed round, and the artist began again. He, as it were, by this act of hospitality assumed a new character, and acquired a double claim to confidence and respect. In the mean time, the sitter would perhaps glance his eye round the room, and see a Titian or a Vandyke hanging in one corner, with a transient feeling of scepticism whether he should make such a picture. How the ladies of quality and fashion must bless themselves from being made to look like Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith How proud the first of these would be, how happy the last, to fill the same arm-chair where the Burnburys and the Hornecks had sat! How superior the painter would feel to them all! By "happy alchemy of mind," he brought out all their good qualities and reconciled their defects, gave an air of studious ease to his learned friends, or lighted up the face of folly and fashion with intelligence and graceful smiles. Those portraits, however, that were most admired at the time, do not retain their their preeminence now: the thought remains upon the brow, while the colour has faded from the cheek, or the dress grown obsolete; and after all, Sir Joshua's best pictures are those of his worst sitters-his Children. They suited best with his unfinished style; and are like the infancy of the art itself, happy, bold, and careless. Sir Joshua formed the circle of his private friends from the élite of his sitters; and Vandyke was, it appears, on the same footing with his. When any of those noble or distinguished persons whom he has immortalized with his pencil, were sitting to him, he used to ask them to dinner, and afterwards it was their custom to return to the picture again, so that it is said that many of his finest portraits were done in this manner, ere the colours were yet dry, in the course of a single day. Oh! ephemeral works to last for ever! Vandyke married a daughter of Earl Cowper, of whom there is a very beautiful picture. She was the none, and he his own Paris. A painter of the name of Astley married a Lady who sat to him for her picture. He was a wretched hand, but a fine person of a man, and a great coxcomb; and on his strutting up and down before the portrait when it was done with a prodigious air of satisfaction, she observed, "If he was so pleased with the copy, he might have the original." This Astley was a person of magnificent habits and a sumptuous taste in living; and is the same of whom the anecdote is recorded, that when some English students walking out near Rome were compelled by the heat to strip off their coats, Astley displayed a waistcoat with a huge waterfall streaming down the back of it, which was a piece of one of his own canvasses that he had converted to this purpose. Sir Joshua fell in love with one of his fair sitters, a young and beautiful girl, who ran out one day in a great panic and confusion, hid her face in her companion's lap who was reading in an outer room, and said, "Sir Joshua had made her an or fer!" This circumstance, perhaps, deserves mentioning the more, because there is a general idea that Sir Joshua Reynolds was a confirmed old bachelor. Goldsmith conceived a fruitless attachment to the same person, and addressed some compassionate letters to her. Alas! it is the fate of genius to admire and to celebrate beauty, not to enjoy it! It is a fate, perhaps not without its compensations "Had Petrarch gain'd his Laura for a wife, Would he have written Sonnets all his life?" This distinguished beauty is still living, and handsomer than Sir Joshua's picture of her when a girl; and inveighs against the freedom of Lord Byron's pen with all the charming prudery of the last age.* The relation between the portraitpainter and his amiable sitters is one of established custom; but it is also one of metaphysical nicety, and is a running double entendre. The fixing an inquisitive gaze on beauty, the height ening a momentary grace, the dwelling on the heaven of an eye, the losing one's-self in the dimple of a chin, is a dangerous employment. The painter may chance to slide into the lover-the lover can hardly turn painter. The eye indeed grows critical, the hand is busy; but are the senses unmoved? We are employed to transfer living charms to an inanimate surface; but er. ly and innocent female, which is writ- and spirit that but now breathed from they may sink into the heart by the * Sir Joshua may be thought to have studied the composition of his female portraits very coolly. There is a picture of his remaining of a Mrs. Symmons, who appears to have been a delicate beauty, pale, with a very little colour in her checks: but then to set off this want of complexion, she is painted in a snow-white satin dress, there is a white marble pillar near her, a white cloud over her head, and by her side stands one white lily, The snow on the lap of beauty freezes the soul. The heedless unsuspected license of foreign manners gives the artist abroad an advantage over ours at home. Sir Joshua Reynolds painted only the head of Iphigene from a beautiful woman of quality: Canova had innocent girls to sit to him for his Graces. I have but one other word to add on this part of the subject: if having to paint a delicate and modest female is a temptation to gallantry, on the other hand the sitting to a lady for one's picture is a still more trying situation, and amounts (almost of itself) to a declaration of love! Landscape-painting is free from these tormenting dilemmas and embarrassments. It is as full of the feeling of pastoral simplicity and ease, as portrait-painting is of personal vanity and egotism. Away then with these incumbrances to the true liberty of thought-the sitter's chair, the bag-wig and sword, the drapery, the lay-figure-and let us to some retired spot in the country, take out our portfolio, plant our easel, and begin. We are all at once shrouded from observation— "The world forgetting, by the world forgot!" We enjoy the cool shade, with solitude and silence; or hear the dashing waterfall, "Or stock-dove plain amid the forest deep, That drowsy rustles to the sighing gale." It seems almost a shame to do any thing, we are so well content without it; but the eye is restless, and we must have something to show when we get home. We set to work, and failure, or success, prompts us to go on. We take up the pencil, or lay it down again as we please. We muse or paint, as objects strike our senses or our reflection. The perfect labour we feel turns labour to a luxury. We try to imitate the grey colour of a rock or of the bark of a tree the breeze wafted from its broad foliage gives us fresh spirits to proceed, we dip our pencil in the sky, or ask the white clouds sailing over its bosom to sit for their pictures. We are in no hurry, and have the day be fore us. Or else, escaping from the close-embowered scene, we catch fading distances on airy downs, and seize on golden sunsets with the fleecy flocks glittering in the evening ray, after a shower of rain has fallen. Or from Norwood's ridgy heights, survey the snake-like Thames, or its smoke-crowned capital; "Think of its crimes, its cares, its pain, Then shield us in the woods again." No one thinks of disturbing a landscape-painter at his task: he seems a kind of magician, the privileged genius of the place. Wherever a Claude, a Wilson has introduced his own portrait in the foreground of a picture, we look at it with interest (however ill it may be done), feeling that it is the portrait of one who was quite happy at the time, and how glad we should be to change places with him. Mr. Burke has brought in a fine episode in one of his later works in allusion to Sir Joshua's portrait of Lord Keppel, and of some other friends, painted in their better days. The portrait is indeed a fine one, worthy of the artist and the critic, and perhaps recalls Lord Keppel's memory oftener than any other circumstance at present does. Portrait-painting is, in truth, a sort of cement of friendship, and a clue to history. Mr. C****r, of the Admiralty, the other day blundered upon some observations relating to this subject, and made the House stare by asserting that portrait-painting was history or history portrait, as it happened, but went on to add, "That those gentlemen who had seen the ancient portraits lately exhibited at Pall-mall, must have been satisfied that they were strictly historical;" which showed that he knew nothing at all of the matter, and merely talked by rote. There was nothing historical in the generality of those portraits, except that they were portraits of people mentioned in history-there was no more of the spirit of history in them, which is passive or active, than in their dresses. I was going to observe, that I think the reviving the recollection of our family and friends in our absence may be a frequent and strong inducement to sitting for our pictures, but that I believe the love of posthumous fame, or of continuing our memories after we are dead, has very little to do with it. And one reason I should give for that opinion is this, that we are not naturally ver prone to dwell with pleasure on any thing that may happen in relation to us after we are dead, because we are not fond of thinking of death at all. We shrink equally from the contemplation of that fatal event or from any speculation on its consequences. The surviving ourselves in our pictures is but a poor consolation-it is rather adding mockery to calamity. The perpetuating our names in the wide page of his tory or to a remote posterity is a vague calculation, that takes out the immediate sting to mortality-whereas, we our selves may hope to last (by a fortunate extension of the term of human life) almost as long as an ordinary portrait; and the wounds of lacerated friendship it heals must be still green, and our ashes scarcely cold. I think therefore that the looking forward to this mode of keeping alive the memory of what we were by lifeless hues and discoloured features, is not among the most approved consolations of human life, or favourite dalliances of the imagination. Yet I own I should like some part of me, as the hair or even nails, to be preserved entire, or I should have no objection to lie like Whitfield in a state of petrifaction. This smacks of the bodily reality at least-acts like a deception to the spectator, and breaks the fall from this "warm, kneaded motion to a clod"-from that to nothing-to the person himself. I suspect that the idea of posthumous fame, which has so unwelcome a condition annexed to it, loses its general relish as we advance in life, and that it is only when we are young, that we pamper our imaginations with this bait, with a sort of impunity. The reversion of immortality is then so distinct, that we may talk of it without much fear of entering upon possession: death is itself a fable-a sound that dies upon our lips; and the only certainty seems the only impossi bility. Fame, at that romantic period, is the first thing in our mouths, and death the last in our thoughts. TO THE EOLIAN HARP. HARP of the Zezbyr! whose last breath When thankless flowers in silence bend, Thou bailest the freshness of heaven with song; Thou hast accents of bliss for the calmest hour, Harp of the breeze! whether gentle or strong, It is not an echo-'tis far too sweet To be born of a lay so rude as mine; But, Oh! when terror and softness meet How pure are the hues of the wreath they twine! Heaven's own harp! save angel-fingers, None should dare open thy mystic treasures; (Lit. Gaz.) GREENWICH HOSPITAL. "A tear is a pleasure, d'ye see, in its way." Po DOOR Tom! He is gone, and the tongue that could once set the cockpit in a roar, is silent now for ever! He died bravely in the service of his country, and has left a memorial in the hearts of all who knew him, which time can never efface. The wailings of distress had only to reach his ear, when his hand, his purse, were at the disposal of the supplicant. Poor Tom! I have shed many a tear to thy memory; nor do I consider it a weakness that my eyes are at this moment moistened by the overflowings of affectionate remembrance. We had embarked in the navy on the same day, and in the same ship, had endured together the many tricks to which all greenhorns are exposed at their first introduction to the midshipman's birth. We were watch-mates, and shared the secrets of each other's heart. Oh, how of ten, at the midnight hour, have we gazed at the full round moon pictured on the bosom of the azure wave, and wiled away the mid watch in painting scenes of future glory; or, looking towards our own home-shore, thinking on those we'd left behind. Fancy, delusive most where warmest wishes are, would lead us on in a romantic dream of sweet delight, known only to the young mariner! There are some feelings of the human mind so exquisitely delicate in their nature, and yet so powerful in their operations, that as soon would the pulse of existence cease to beat, as those feelings cease to actuate the heart of man. The cherish'd remembrance of "Auld lang syne" dwells in the breast, and is as dear when only illuminated by the last rays of a declining sun, as when it bask'd in its meridian beam, and exulted in the glorious splendor." Hallo! (you will say,) where is our Old Sailor bound to now?-surely he is getting 54 ATHENEUM VOL. 14. out of his latitude." Mayhap I may be. May be? no-I'm a child to this hour; but one word 's as good as twenty, let me go on and spin my yarn upon my own winch. Our ship was paid off, and all hands were drafted into other men of war, consequently a separation took place, and we lost sight of each other for some years. One day I was walking the deck, when the quarter-master of the watch informed me there was a boat coming alongside with a lieutenant in her; and as our third had applied to be superseded, I made no doubt that this was the new luff-tackle coming to join us. But what was my pleasure on beholding between the white lapelles the smiling face of my old friend. A glow of inexpressible animation warm'd my heart; but perhaps, thought I, promotion has alter'd him,-I drew back,-however he had caught sight of me, and the pressure of friendship told me in an instant Tom was the same honest, generous, openhearted being I had ever found him. In a few days we sailed with the fleet for the Mediterranean, and were present at the glorious battle of the Nile. Poor Tom and I were stationed on the same deck, and never did mortal display more heroic bravery, more cool intrepidity; yet there was an indefinable expression at times in his look, as if some thought lay struggling in his breast and could not gain an utterance. Oh, what a day was that for England! The name of Nelson now has lost its charm; yet are there some who can remember its magic influence on the seaman's mind-'twas emblazoned on the standard of Fame which waved the bright banner of Victory. I look sometimes at his funeral-car, and call to remembrance the time when a grateful country paid a just tribute to his memory. Well do I recollect the |