Put Iris.

MEMOIRS OF REYNOLDS.* It is somewhat late in the day for a Life of Reynolds written from the literary point of view, with elaborate disquisitions on his art and works, his character and powers, and the broad circumstances of his career. Perhaps, on the other hand, it is even yet too early for a life of him final and complete ; in which all existing materials should be combined and fused, all details assume their proper relative importance, and disquisition, advocacy, or censure, pass into the calm and abiding verdict of posterity.

Mr. Cotton's work is neither of these things. It is essentially a book of materials. The plain facts are stated in plain detail ; the critical views are collected from past writers, professional or critical ; family and friendly records have been consulted; and diaries, letters, papers, and miscellaneous entries, many of them unpublished, are reproduced. The author, when he himself appears, deals not in new or striking views, or in the large and stately method of treatment which expands and modifies the reader's conception of the subject as a whole, but in correction, qualification, or confirmation, of what has been previously advanced. He does not aim at throwing a broad illumination • Sir Joshua Reynolds and his Works. Gleanings from his Diary, Unpublished Manuscripts, and from other Sources. By William Cotton,18t.A., of the University of Oxford. Edited by John Burnet, F.R.S., Author of " Practical Hints on Painting," he. Published by Longmans and by Colnaghi. over the entire surface which lies before his survey, but rather at giving additional light upon points here and there, so as to assist investigation, without presenting its perfect distilled essence, or superseding it. In the painter's language, his book is a study for a picture, and not the picture itself.

• It is seldom at the present day that one meets with a book upon one of those themes which dillettantism dabbles with and enthusiasm dilates upon, written with such an absence of attempt at literary effect or parade of sentiment and authorship. It is all plain sailing throughout. One might be willing to dispense with a detail here and there, an extract, a piece of catalogue work, or a citation ; but there is no bookmaking. The writer sinks the manner in the matter, and tells his story in the first words he finds, without adornment or exaggeration ; and, though no one would recur to the volume as a specimen of composition or art, many may feel a refreshment in its straightforward simplicity, in these days of writing about and about a subject, when no opportunity is lost for description, digression, or speculation, and an author uses his theme as a peg to hang his own dirty linen upon in the face of the public.

We are not called upon on the present occasion to enter into any analysis of the gag or weaknesses of Reynolds ; his magical colour and manipulation, his spontaneous living expression, his faulty drawing, his principles of' art, or the range of his subjects. We may, however, protest en passant against any countenance which may be derived from his practice for the sacrifice of truth of likeness in portrait-art to abstract beauty. The portrait-painter is justified—indeed required by the true principles of art--to present his sitter in the most advantageous aspect compatible with his characteristic idiosyncracy of mind and body, and to employ any accessory means of beauty which he can add with appropriateness; but beyond this he cannot go without substituting vain fallacy to valuable truth, and abusing his own gifts of perception and imagination. Intentional flattery, in whatever form or degree, is inexcusable. Such a statement as this can only be regarded as a grave imputation on the art of Reynolds— "No representations of female character have surpassed in sweetness and beauty. the portraits of Reynolds ; but there appears to have been some truth in the remark that this was accomplished greatly at the expense of likeness. Hoppner, who was himself distinguished for the beauty with which he endowed the female form, remarked, that even to him it was a matter of surmise that Reynolds could send home portraits with so little resemblance to the originals.'

Into the painter's character Mr. Cotton's book affords no fresh insight. His serenity, self-restraint, and steadiness of purpose, were known already. For aught Mr. Cotton shows, he never knew a passion, an inward eonflict, or a remorse. His diligent observation and clearheadedness come out in the manuscript materials ; rather, however, as a general habit of mind than in particular instances.

Failing as it does to lend itself to any broad view of Reynolds's career, the quality of the book is best exhibited by a glance at its individual contents. After some account of Reynolds's native town' Plympton in Devonshire, where ho was born in 1723, we are introduced to his family, and especially his placid absent-minded father, tho Reverend Samuel Reynolds, master of the llympton Grammar-School. The Jesuits' Perspective, Cates Emblems, and Richardson's Theory of Painting, were favourite books of the painter's boyhood. The father's letters relative to Joshua's study under the fashionable portrait-painter Hudson are now, and throw some new light on the relations of the master and pupil. Then come extracts from Reynolds's private pocket-books, written when he was set up on his own account and in flourishing practice. On the 7th March 1761, he enumerates seven sitters in seven consecutive hours ; he had had one hundred and twenty within the preceding year. But the entries in the pocket-books are scarcely ever more than merely the names of the sitters, with the days and hours appointed ; or, when the painter was taking his rare holidays, such jottings as "September 7th 1770, five o'clock, set out for Devonshire ; 8th, dined with Lord Pembroke, lay at Blandford; 9th (Sunday), Dorchester, fine prospect ; Bridport, Axminster' "—and so on. The pictures which he exhibited year by year from 1760, when the first public exhibition by a body of British artists was opened in London, are duly chronicled by Mr. Cotton ; who gives from the Royal Academy catalogues, purchased by Mr. Sheepshanks from the sale at Strawberry Hill, the notes of Horace Walpole ; laconic, and neither in themselves nor from the connoisseurship of their writer worth much at this time of day. The period when Sir Joshua's sight began to fail in 1789, and the circumstances of his calm death in 1792, are illustrated in letters from his niece, Miss Palmer. The closing chapters contain details of the sales of his collections of art, and of his own works from time to time; extracts from his miscellaneous manuscripts ; and observations, reproduced from Sir Charles Eastlake, Hayden, Burnet, and others, on his style and experiments in execution : to which are added some additional notes and extracts in an appendix. This is the account of the manuscripts " A great number of manuscripts in Sir Joshua's luindmiting came into the possession of the Reverend John Palmer, and are now the property of his son, R. L. Palmer, Esq. Besides a complete copy of the Travels in Flanders, made by an amanuensis and corrected for the press by Sir Joshua himself, there are said to be at least 2000 sheets of composition, mostly foolscap. Some of the subjects are continuous for several pages ; others being only loose memoranda' and obversations to be considered as materials :

they are contained in a general cover, marked 'Sketches by Sir J. R.' One parcel is marked 'Analogy.' Others are marked 'Reason,' 'Node,' Pre

face to Fleraish Tour,' 'Vatican' Discourses not used,' • Sketches for the Discourses on Painting, by Sir Joshua Reynolds,' 'Part of the Ninth Discourse.' There are others headed 'Self,' 'Method of Study,' 'Colouring,' 'Michael Angelo,' &o. &c."

The parcel marked " Self " sounds tempting; but the extracts given from it are not of very special weight, and most of them had been previously made public by Malone, only altered in combination and phraseology.

We add a triad of anecdotes ; the third at any rate not new, but always worth repeating. The second is not the only one which shows how much store Reynolds set upon his election as Mayor of his native Plympton : the first is an amusing trait of what the French call a "Meese Anglaise." Among the pictures which Reynolds sent to the exhibition of 1771 was "A Girl Reading.—The porttait of his favourite niece (Theophila Palmer) reading Clarissa ; which Walpole has marked charming. It is in the pos session of the family of the late John G-watkin, Esq. Miss Palmer was twelve years old when this portrait was taken ; and seeing it described in the catalogue as a 'girl reading,' she observed, 'I think they might have

said a young lady reading.' • • •

"Sir Joshua commemorated the fact of his having been Mayor of Plympton in a Latin inscription, which he inserted on the back of his own portrait, painted for the Grand Duke's Gallery, at Florence, in the following terms= Nee non oppidi died Plimpton, Comitatu Devon, Prmfeetus, Justiciarius, morumque censor.' This portrait has been engraved in mezzo

tinto by Chas. Townley. *

"This unfinished look which some of Reynolds's pictures had when they were first sent home caused occasional disappointment; and it i said that Lord Holland when he received his portrait, could not help remarking that it had been hastily executed ; and, making some demur about the price, asked Reynolds how long he had been painting it. The offended artist replied, All my life, my Lord."

The following is the major part of one section of " a jeu d'esprit written by Sir Joshua Reynolds to illustrate a remark which he had made, that Dr. Johnson considered Garrick as his property, and would never suffer any one to praise or abuse him but himself." In this first section, it will be seen, Johnson is made to abuse Garrick in opposition to Reynolds ; in the second, he praises him in opposition to Gibbon. "It. I talked once to our friend Garrick upon this subject, [Free Will] ; but I remember we could make nothing of it.

"L 0 noble pair !

"R. Garrick was a clever fellow, Dr. 3.; Garrick, take him altogether, was certainly a very great man. "3. Garrick, sir, may be a great man in your opinion, as far as I know, but he was not BO in mine : little things are great to little men.

"It. I have heard you say, Dr. Johnson— "J. Sir, you never heard me say that David Garrick was a great man : you may have heard me say that Garrick was a good repeater of other men's words—words put into his mouth by other men : this makes but a faint approach towards being a great man.

"B. But take Garriek upon the whole, now, in regard to conversation

" J. Well, air, in regard to conversation I never discovered in the conversation of David dinick any intellectual energy, any wide grasp of thought, any extensive comprehension of mind, or that he possessed any of those powers to which great could with any degree of propriety, be applied "R. But still— "3. Hold, sir, I have not done. There are, to be sure, in the laxity of colloquial speech, various kinds of greatness : a man may be a great tobacconist, a man may be a great painter, he may be likewise a great mimic ; now you may be the one, and Garrick the other, and yet neither of you be great men. "it. But, Dr. Johnson—

"J. Hold, sir—I have often lamented how dangerous it is to investigate and to discriminate character, to men who have no discriminative powers.

"it. But Garrick, as a com]anion, I heard you say—no longer ago than last Wednesday, at Mr. Thrale's table " J. You tease use, sir. Whatever you may have heard me say, no longer ago than last Wednesday, at Mr. Thndc's table, I tell you I do not say so now: besides, as I said before, you may not have understood me—you misapprehended me—you may not have heard me. It. I am very sure I heard you. "J. Besides, besides, sir, besides—do you not know—are you so ignorant as not to know' that it is the highest degree of rudeness to quote a man against himself? "it. But if you differ from yourself, and give one opinion today— "I. Have done, sir; the company you see are tired, as well as myself."

The volume is illustrated by various portraits and views, on stone and wood ; the former by no means satisfactory. There are also some interesting fac-similes. On one of the future painter's earliest perspective drawings, his father, who was also his schoolmaster, has written—" This is drawn by Joshua in school, out of pure idleness." The fac-simile of two pen-and-ink sketches by Sir Joshua, from his pocket-books for 1764 and 1789, have the scribbly indecisive look of one not well grounded in drawing, and exhibit little of the master in any respect. The handwriting specimens are particularly clear ; the letters, where any paint have been taken, well formed, though a little straggling. One entry of an appointment with a sitter (Mrs. Garrick, on the 13th July 1789) bears the ominous addition, "Prevented by my eye beg-in-ng to be obscured."

A catalogue of the portraits painted by Sir Joshua, completer than any heretofore published, was to have appeared in this volume ; but eventually its publication has been postponed till the ensuing spring.