mely, that a deputation from
the whole body of the academy should wait upon him, and inform him of
their wish, that the authority and privileges of the office of
president might be his during his life, declaring their willingness to
permit the performance of any of its duties which might be irksome to
him by a deputy.

From this period Sir Joshua never painted more. The last effort of his
pencil was the portrait of the honorable Charles James Fox, which was
executed in his best style, and shows that his fancy, his imagination,
and his other great powers in the art which he professed, remained
unabated to the end of his life. When the last touches were given to
this picture,

"The hand of Reynolds fell, to rise no more."

On Thursday, February 23, 1792, the world was deprived of this amiable
man and excellent artist, at the age of sixty-eight years; a man than
whom no one, according to Johnson, had passed through life with more
observations of men and manners. The following character of him is
said to be the production of Mr. Burke:

"His illness was long, but borne with a mild and cheerful fortitude,
without the least mixture of anything irritable or querulous,
agreeably to the placid and even tenor of his whole life. He had, from
the beginning of his malady, a distinct view of his dissolution, which
he contemplated with that entire composure which nothing but the
innocence, integrity, and usefulness of his life, and an unaffected
submission to the will of Providence, could bestow. In this situation
he had every consolation from family tenderness, which his tenderness
to his family had always merited.

"Sir Joshua Reynolds was, on very many accounts, one of the most
memorable men of his time; he was the first Englishman who added the
praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. In
taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in richness and
harmony of coloring, he was equal to the great masters of the renowned
ages. In portrait he went beyond them; for he communicated to that
branch of the art in which English artists are the most engaged, a
variety, a fancy, and a dignity derived from the higher branches,
which even those who professed them in a superior manner did not
always preserve when they delineated individual nature. His portraits
reminded the spectator of the invention of history and the amenity of
landscape. In painting portraits he appears not to be raised upon that
platfo