SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. THE THE Rev. Samuel Reynolds, the father of Sir Joshua, in 1715, at the age of thirty-four, became master of the grammar-school at Plympton, in Devonshire, and there Joshua was born, July 16th, 1723. He was the third son, and seventh child in a family of eleven. Samuel Reynolds was more remarkable for the range than for the depth of his attainments. His want of profundity might have been no disadvantage in the elementary instruction of youth, but he was also remarkable for good temper, guilelessness, and absence of mind, and these were qualities which would be likely to render him the dupe of his boys. Whatever was the cause he was unsuccessful in his office, and in spite of his various knowledge and virtues, he was at last left with only a single pupil. Joshua was intended for a general practitioner in medicine. Before he was seventeen he had already "spent a great deal of time and pains" on the study of medicine, un "on der the direction of his father, who was, in his own opinion, a proficient Abridged from two elaborate papers on Rey nolds and his works in the Quarterly Review for 1866. in the science. He thought of appren ticing his son to the Plympton apoth ecary, and said he should make no ac count of the qualification of the nomi nal master, since he himself should be the actual instructor. The salary of the worthy schoolmaster was only £120 a year and a house, and as, with his large family and small income, he could not afford to send his boys to the University, he had evidently resolved to educate them with reference to their special callings, instead of devoting their entire youth to obtaining a critical acquaintance with the learned languages. Joshua had been accustomed from childhood to make little sketches, and copy the poor engravings in Dryden's "Plutarch," and Jacob Cats' "Book of Emblems.” He does not appear to have displayed at the outset any extraordinary skill. His most memor able feat was that he went through the Jesuits' "Perspective" of his own accord at the age of eight. "It happened," he told Malone, "to lie on the window-seat of his father's parlor, and he made himself so completely master of it, that he never afterwards had oc casion to study any other treatise on (169) was concluded through the mediation of Mr. Cutcliffe; and Joshua was to be boarded, lodged, and instructed during four years for £120. Half of the money was to be raised by Samuel Reynolds in the course of the four years, and the other half was advanced by one of his married daughters, Mrs. Palmer, as a loan to her brother. that subject." He lost no time in re-ed out in a strange, unexpected manducing the system to practice, and ner to a miracle." The arrangement drew by it the Plympton school-house, which was open below, and rested upon columns at one side, and one end. "Now this," said Samuel Reynolds of his son's performance, "exemplifies what the author of the 'Perspective' asserts in his preface, that by observ. ing the rules laid down in his book, a man may do wonders; for this is wonderful." The commendation sunk into the child's mind, and in the zenith of his fame Reynolds repeated the remark to Boswell. Joshua next tried his hand in taking likenesses, but with only "tolerable success." Year after year he continued to amuse his leisure hours with his pencil, and when the choice of his profession was under discussion "his very great genius for drawing" raised a question whether medicine should not give way to art. Joshua had been "very much pleased" with a print he had seen, from a picture by Hudson, who was the most popular portrait painter of the day. He was a native of Devonshire, and was shortly expected to pay a visit to Bideford, were Samuel Reynolds had an intimate friend in Mr. Cutcliffe, an attorney. The schoolmaster requested him to show some of Joshua's draw ings to Hudson, and ascertain if he would receive the lad for a pupil. The fond father, with a prophetic faith in the result, pronounced it to be "one of the most important affairs in his life, and that which he looked upon to be his main interest some way or other to bring about." The difficulties proved less formidable than he anticipated. "Everything," he said, "jump Young Reynolds was received into Hudson's house in November, 1740, and found his highest expectations fulfilled. "He is very sensible of his happiness," his father wrote to Mr. Cutcliffe in December, "in being under such a master, in such a family, in such a city, and in such an employ. ment." When Joshua arrived in London, painting had sunk to be an ordinary manufacture. "The art," he said, "was at the lowest ebb: it could not indeed be lower." The painters were incapable of appreciating fine works as well as of executing them; for from being trained in a false, conventional taste, they had come to prefer defects to beauties. Reynolds told Northcote that they would have laughed any one to scorn who had ventured to place the masterpieces of Vandyke in competition with the frigid mannerism of Kneller. Hudson was the last of this school who acquired a reputation. There are portraits by him which would not be thought contemptible if they were from the pen cil of an artist without pretensions; but his choicest works are poor performances for the most celebrated painter of a generation. Horace Walpole age of speaks of his "honest similitudes," In December of that year he was discarded pupil reappeared in London, and opened a studio at the close of 1744, he got him elected into a club, "composed of the most famous men in their profession," which was a recognition of his right to take immediate rank with them. |