than one hundred years when he died must yield to the fact since we have it. A forthright, on the spot, up-to-date etching should be a much better thing than an engraving after a drawing, and there is joy for the lover of art in the 'del. et sc.' of the artist: S. Ireland. On the copy of the print in the British Museum is the following succinct account of the man. 'Died 1785, aged 102. Said to be the oldest general in Europe. Sketched from life at the sale of Johnson's books (February 13, 1785) when the general was reading a book he had purchased without spectacles. In 1706 he had an ensign's commission, and remembered having shot snipe in Conduit Mead where Conduit Street now stands.' The James Northcote.-Plymouth man, pupil of Reynolds, who lived to paint Ruskin's portrait. Best known to the general reader by Hazlitt's report of his conversations, and by the portions of an autobiography recently published. entries under his name in Dr. Birkbeck Hill's Boswell are numerous, and he is proved by the numerous portraits we have to have been an exceptionally picturesque individual, as well as a very original character. There is extant in manuscript a letter from Ruskin's father to James Northcote bespeaking an early copy of his Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds then about to be published. There is something to be said, in conclusion, about the omissions found to be necessary. The limitation to one hundred portraits is the measure of the editor's freedom, and the fact that some pertaining more properly to Johnson's Tour in the Hebrides have been held over will account for some of the Scotsmen. Looming large as we look backwards are the statesmen, judges, and clerics who helped in their day to make history, but their portraits are everywhere, and consequently not in these volumes-not, at least, in great numbers. The possessors of what seem to have been the most interesting faces have been selected as typical, and not unfairly, I hope: -Lord Thurlow and Bishop Newton, for instance. The poets have their own little spheres and niches, their little stone tablets in churches, and the greatest are not the most beautiful, so we have to be sparing here. The most convincing of reasons for not showing a portrait is that it does not exist, and some of Fortune's tricks are the meanest. She may have promised Savage his portrait, but not that she would pay for it, and that portrait has yet to be found. So with many of Johnson's intiMrs. Desmoulins, Robert Levet, and mates others of his menagerie. We have seen how Boswell obtained his portrait, and it will never, I suppose, be known how much the 'Literary Club' owed, not of cash, but of thanks, to its founder, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Mrs. Abington con amore, Kitty Fisher, Nelly O'Brien, Harriet Powell, Polly Kennedy, 'Miss Emily,' and Mrs. Robinson, but as often as any of these he painted his men-friends in Johnson's circle,-including the replicas, there were not less than twelve portraits of Johnson, of Burke eight, Garrick seven, Fox six, Goldsmith five, and Sir William Chambers three (let others correct the figures, which I take from the roughest notes). Portraits of Bennet Langton, John Courtenay, and Dr. Fordyce (Club members) were painted but not engraved, and very probably others that have been overlooked. To what an extent we who are working this vein are indebted to Reynolds alone must have been made clear to the reader. It is in the world outside his world that the trouble begins— sometimes to result in a 'find,' sometimes in a sense of loss. There is no one engaged in this kind of work who has not to thank Dr. Birkbeck Hill for supplies that have come from his never-failing sources of information, and not for that only, but for something that has been added, converting what might have been doles into keepsakes, to be put where one's thoughts are hidden. Remembering that but for his help we should not have been brought face to face with Johnson's wife and her daughter, I feel as if bidden to speak for others. ERNEST RADFORD. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN VOL. I 1709-1757 FRONTISPIECE SAMUEL JOHNSON, 1709-1784, By Sir Joshua Reynolds (1756). LUCY PORTER, Johnson's step-daughter. MRS. PORTER, 1688-1752, DAVID GARRICK, 1716-1799, . ROBERT DODSLEY, 1703-1764, By Sir Joshua Reynolds (1760). PAUL WHITEHEAD, 1710-1774, WILLIAM HOGARTH, 1697-1764, National Portrait Gallery. Thinks Johnson may be an idiot. EDWARD CAVE, 1691-1754, By Francis Kyte. |