nd, with a single
exception, apparently unnoticed from the day it was published until the
present. It is printed from a copy which I acquired many years ago at a
London bookstore and which for a while I thought unique. I did not find
it listed in the catalogues of the chief libraries of England or
America, nor in the various books on anonymous publications. I have
found no mention of it in the newspapers and magazines of the time, no
mention of it in contemporary letters or diaries. The one man in England
who took the trouble to record the ode for posterity was, as might be
expected, Horace Walpole, who in his manuscript Books of Materials
merely noted that the poem had been published in 176_8_ (_Anecdotes of
Painting ... Volume the Fifth_, ed. Hilles and Daghlian, Yale University
Press, 1937). When challenged to locate Walpole's copy of the ode,
the greatest of modern collectors was able, after perhaps forty-five
seconds, to say not only that it was in the Houghton Library at Harvard
but that on the title in Walpole's hand was the information that the
poem was published on the sixteenth of May, a fact which would otherwise
be unknown. A third copy was in the possession of the late Professor
Heidbrink of Northwestern, inscribed in a contemporary hand "T. M.,
M.A." and thus, possibly, the author's own. There are, then, three known
copies extant. Doubtless others will be found, bound up with pamphlets
of the same vintage, as yet uncatalogued.

What Walpole did not know was the name of the author, and quite possibly
the ode would have remained unread and unnoticed for another two
centuries had Mr. Kirkwood not brought to light the letters which are
first published in the introduction that follows. From these letters and
a few known facts the history of the ode seems clear enough. Reynolds
had a number of relatives living in Great Torrington. In the summer of
1762 when he and Dr. Johnson went to Devonshire they were entertained by
Morrison. Johnson's published letters prove that he did not forget
Morrison, and Reynolds was soon painting the portrait of Morrison's
daughter. In the summer of 1766 Morrison sent his ode to Reynolds. The
following January he learned that Johnson, "as severe a Critic as old
Dennis," praised it and ordered it to be published. Reynolds himself
must have arranged for the publication.

The publisher selected was William Griffin, who a few years later was to
bring out some of Sir Joshua's _Discourses