235

THE YEAR BOOK-FEBRUARY 23.

professional contemporaries, courted by
the great, caressed by sovereigns, and ce-
lebrated by poets, yet arrogance or pre-
sumption was never visible in his con-
duct or conversation to the most scruti-
nizing eye. His talents of every kind,
and his social virtues, rendered him the
He
centre of many agreeable circles.
had too much merit not to excite jealousy,
and too much innocence to provoke en-
mity. The loss of no man of his time
was felt with more general and unmixed
sorrow. His remains were deposited in
the metropolitan cathedral of St. Paul.
No one better deserved honorable sepul-
ture than the man who, by precept and
example, taught the practice of the art he
professed, and who added to a thorough
knowledge of it the literature of a scholar,
the knowledge of a philosopher, and the
manners of a gentleman.

Sir Joshua Reynolds was the son of
the Rev. Samuel Reynolds. He was born
at Plympton, in Devonshire, July 16,
1723. and about the year 1742 placed
under Hudson, who, though a poor
painter, was the best of his time, and
had been a pupil to Richardson, who
thus appears to have been Sir Joshua's
pictorial grandfather. Reynolds went
with admiral (afterwards lord) Keppel, to
Minorca, in 1749, and thence accom-
panied him to Italy, where he staid till
1753. At Rome he painted caricatures
of some English gentlemen there, with
their own consent, which was much the
He particularly
fashion of the day.
painted sort of parody on Raphael's
School of Athens, in which all his English
acquaintances at Rome were introduced.
This picture contains nearly thirty
portraits, with the portrait of the pos-
sessor, Joseph Henry, Esq., of Straffan,
in Ireland. Reynolds returned from
Italy in 1753 or 1754, and produced a

which introduced him at once into the
whole-length picture of lord Keppel,
first business in portrait painting. He
the polite world flocked to see the pic-
painted some of the first-rate beauties;
tures, and he soon became the most
fashionable painter, not only in England,
but in Europe. He then lived in Newport
Fields about 1760. He chiefly employed
Street, whence he removed to Leicester
wnere self-love prefers likenesses of itself,
himself on portraits, because, in a country
to representations of natural and historical
truth, the historical department is not
deviations from "head dressing," are his
equally eligible. Among Reynolds's best
pictures of Venus chastising Cupid for
having learned to cast accounts, Dante's
Ugolino, a Gipsey telling fortunes, The
Death of Dido, the Nativity, the Cardinal
Infant Jupiter, the calling of Samuel, the
Virtues, &c., for Newcollege Chapel;
Cupid and Psyche, Cymon and Iphi-
genia, Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse,
and Hercules strangling the Serpents. He
not owe any part either of his fame or his
also painted a few landscapes. He did
never commissioned him to paint a single
fortune to royal favor; George III.
1771, when he gave his portrait to the
picture, nor once sat to him, except in
Sir Joshua, Mr. Gar-
Royal Academy.
Mr. Goldsmith,
Mr Burke, and his brother Richard, Mr.
rick, Mr. Cumberland,
William Burke, and Dr. Bernard, after-
terwards bishop of Killaloe, had happened
to dine together three or four times at the
St. James's Coffee-house, and an epitaph
on Goldsmith, which Garrick produced
one day, gave birth to Goldsmith's "Re-
taliation."

The lines on Sir Joshua
R. are worth transcribing, though the
smith's death :-
character was left unfinished, by Gold-

"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 judg'd without skill, he was still hard of hearing;
When they talk'd of their Raphaels, Corregios, and stuff,
He shifted his trumpet and only took snuff."

Sir Joshua was so remarkably deaf as
to be under the necessity of using an ear-
trumpet in company. His prices were,
12 Guineas.
About 1755, for a head,
25 ditte
Soon After, 1760

About 1770

From 1779 till he ceased to

35 guineas

50 ditto

paint Half and whole lengths in proportion. Horace Walpole, earl of Orford, in the

ture of Ugolino? When were infantine loveliness, or embryo passions, touched with sweeter truth, than in his portraits of Miss Price and the Baby Jupiter."

Dr. Johnson says, in the Life of Cowley," Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great painter of the present age, had the first fondness for his art excited by the perusal of Richardson's Treatise." He adds, "I know no man who has passed through life with more observation than Reynolds-whose observations on all subjects of criticism and taste are so ingenious and just, that posterity may be at a loss to determine whether his consummate skill and execution in his own art, or his judgment in that and other kindred arts, were superior."

advertisement prefixed to the fourth volume of his Anecdotes of painting, justly says, "The prints after the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds have spread his fame to Italy, where they have not at present a single painter who can pretend to rival an imagination so fertile that the attitudes of his portraits are as various as those of history. Sir Joshua had been accused of plagiarism, for having borrowed attitudes from ancient masters. Not only candor, but criticism, must deny the force of the charge. When a single posture is imitated from an historic picture, and applied to a portrait in a different dress, and with new attributes, this is not plagiarism, but quotation; and a quotation from a great author, with a novel application of the sense, has always been allowed to be an A print, engraved by Bartolozzi, was instance of parts and taste, and may have presented to each attendant on Sir Joshua's more merit than the original. When the funeral. The principal figure in it is a sons of Jacob imposed on their father by beautiful female, clasping an urn; near a false coat of Joseph, saying, Know her is a boy or genius, holding an extinnow whether this be thy son's coat or guished torch in one hand, and pointing not?' they only asked a deceitful ques-with the other to a tablet on a sarcophation but that interrogation became wit, gus, inscribed, Succedit fama, vivusque per when Richard I., on the pope reclaiming ora feretur.* a bishop whom the king had taken prisoner in battle, sent him the prelate's coat of mail, and in the words of Scripture asked his Holiness, whether THAT February 23. Day breaks was the coat of his son or not?-Is not there humor and satire in Sir Joshua's reducing Holbein's swaggering and colossal haughtiness of Henry VIII. to the boyish jollity of Master Crewe? Sir Joshua was not a plagiary, but will beget a thousand. The exuberance of his invention will be the grammar of future painters of portraits. In what age were paternal despair, and the horrors of death, pronounced with more expressive accents than in his pic

Sun rises

sets

Twilight ends

h. m.

4.54

6 47

5 13

7 0

The apricot begins to show a few blos

soms.

White butterbur often in full flower if mild; but there is sometimes a month's difference in the blowing of this plant.

THE SEASON.

Gents. Mag.,

239

THE YEAR BOOK,-FEBRUARY 28.

in Flanders, founded the abbey of Boxley
for monks of the Cistercian order, and
dedicated it to the Virgin Mary, as all
houses of that order were.
Richard I. gave the manor to the abbey,
In 1189 king
which was aggrandized and variously
privileged by successive monarchs,

Edward I. summoned the abbot of
Boxley to parliament. At the dissolution,
Boxley shared the common fate of church
lands, and Henry VIII. reserved it to the
crown, but by indenture exchanged the
abbey and manor, excepting the parsonage
and advowson, with Sir Thomas Wyatt,
of Allyngton, Knt., for other premises.
Two years afterwards Boxley was again
vested in the crown.

Queen Mary granted the manor to the lady Jane Wyatt, widow of Sir Thomas, and her heirs male in capite, by knight's service. It again reverted to the crown, by attainder of blood, which was restored by act of parliament to George Wyatt, Esq., who, by a grant from the crown, possessed this estate in fee; and his descendant, Richard Wyatt, Esq., who died in 1753, bequeathed it, with other estates, to Lord Romney. through the families of Silyard and The abbey passed Austen, to John Amhurst, of Rochester, Esq., afterwards of Bensted.*

A little tract, "Summer Wanderings in Kent, 1830," which may be considered as almost privately published-for it is printed and sold at Camberwell-mentions the remains of this ancient edifice, and the title page is frontispieced with a view of the old oak growing from the ruined wall, as it is here represented The engraving is referred to in the annexed extracts from the "Wanderings:"

"Over the fields to Boxley Abbey, once notorious as the scene of a pious fraud-the notorious Rood of Grace, burnt afterwards at Paul's Cross, which, according to Lambard, could bow itself, lift up itself, shake and stir the hands and feete, nod the head, roll the eyes, wag the chaps, and bend the browes,' to admiration. The principal remains [of the abbey] consist of a long barn, a brick gateway and lodge, and the boundary wall thickly overgrown with ivy, in which I observed an oak of considerable magnitude and apparently in a flourishing state, notwithstanding the rigid soil in which it grows, the roots in several

* Hasted

242

places, where they had displaced parts of the wall, being as thick as a man's leg. The Indian Peepul-tree seems to delight a size as frequently to throw down, not in similar situations, where it attains such only walls, but whole buildings.

fall of unseen waters; and forcing a "Passed a spinney, cheered by the passage through the hedge which guarded it, arrived at a beautiful cascade, remarkable for encrusting with a pearly coat any hills, where I saw substance immersed in it. Towards the swinging on a strong breeze over a thick a pair of ravens cover, into which they soon dropped, and a hawk breasting the pure air far above awhile on the varied prospect before me. them. Gained the summit, and gazed Saw a stone with this inscription: Here I was set With labour great, Judg as you pleas, Twas

for your ease. (1409-1609.) The purpose for which it was erected cannot be determined with any certainty. haps some worthy friar of the neighbourfor enabling horsemen to mount; or perIt has the appearance of a stepping block ing abbey of Boxele,' willing to do a planted here for the ease of such as might service to kindred minds, caused it to be repair to the delightful eminence on tide.' which it is set, to meditate at even

66

and obtained a charming view of Boxley
Shaped my course eastward,
church, with its green church-yard finely
relieved against a cluster of towering
trees, and reposing in a quiet valley, sur-
and extensive.
rounded by scenery the most luxuriant

thickets and brakes, I came suddenly
"After forcing a
upon the new pathway cut by Lord
passage through
Romney in a zig-zag direction down the
hill, at a point where the branches of two
venerable yew trees meet across it,-

Upon whose grassless flour of red-brown hue
a pillared shade
By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged
Perennially-beneath whose sable roof
Of boughs, as if for festal purpose decked
With unrejoicing berries, ghostly shapes
May meet at noon-tide,

"About this walk, the greater part of
which is open to the charming landscape
below, are planted numerous firs, from
whose dusky recesses the new foliage shot

forth, like spent stars from a jet of fire dropping through the still twilight. Heard the tinkling of a sheep-bell, and the shrill whistle of a lazy urchin stretched in the shadow of a neighbouring thicket, and soon caught a glimpse of the flock hurrying down from the skirts of a coppice to the more open pasture below. A short walk brought us to Boxley. In the church-yard, I noticed a plain memorial for Rose Bush,' aged 21a fine theme for the punster and the poet."

SPEECH FROM A TREE.

A prodigal, who was left by his father in possession of a large estate, well-conditioned, impaired it by extravagance. He wanted money, and ordered a number of timber trees, near the mansion, to be felled for sale. He stood by, to direct the laborers, when suddenly a hollow murmuring was heard within the trunk of a venerable oak, and, after several groans, a voice from the tree distinctly said:

"My young master,

"Your great grandfather planted me when he was much about your age, for the use of his posterity. I am the most ancient tree in your forest, and have largely contributed by my products to people it. There is, therefore, some respect due to my services, if none to my I cannot well remember your years. great grandfather, but I recollect the favor of your grandfather; and your father was not neglectful of me. My shade assisted his rest when he was fatigued by the sultry heat, and these arms have sheltered him from sudden showers. You were his darling, and, if the wrinkles of age have not obliterated them, you may see your name traced in several places by his own hand on my trunk.

"I could perish without regret, if my fall would do you any real service. Were I destined to repair your mansion, or your tenants' ploughs and carts, and the like, I should fulfil the end for which I exist to be useful to my owner. be trucked away for vile gold, to satisfy the demand of honorable cheats, and be rendered subservient to profligate luxury, is more than a tree of any spirit can bear.

But to

"Your ancestors never thought you would make havoc and waste of the woods they planted. While they lived it was a pleasure to be a tree; the old ones amongst us were honored, and the young ones were encouraged around us.

Now, we must all fall without distinction, and in a short time the birds will not find a branch to build or foost upon. Yet, why should we complain? Almost all your farms have followed you to London, and, of course, we must take the same journey.

"An old tree loves to prate, and you will excuse me if I have been too free I hope that advice with my tongue. from an oak may make more impression upon you than the representations of your steward. My ancestors of Dodona were often consulted, and why should a British tree be denied liberty of speech?

"But you are tired, you wish me to remain dumb. I will not detain you, though you will have too much reason to remember me when I am gone. I only beg, if I must fall, that you will send me to one of his majesty's dock-yards, where my firmness and integrity may be emcountry, ployed in the service of my while you, who are a slave to your wants, only live to enslave it."

The prodigal could bear no more: he ordered the oak to be dispatched, and the venerable tree fell without a groan.

1655. Feb. 24. Mr. Evelyn notes his having seen a curious mechanical contrivance. "I was shewed a table clock, whose balance was only a chrystal ball sliding on parallel irons without being at all fixed, but rolling from stage to stage till falling on a spring concealed from sight, it was thrown up to the utmost channel again, made with an imperceptible declivity; in this continual vicissitude of motion prettily entertaining the eye every half minute, and the next half giving progress to the hand that showed the hour, and giving notice by a small bell, so as in 120 half minutes, or periods of the bullets falling on the ejaculatory spring, the clock-part struck. This very extraordinary piece (richly adorned) had been presented by some German prince to our

For St. Matthias, see Every Day Book, ii. 254.