d his kindness to the humblest and the most
wretched? What was fifty guineas to poor De Gree? Who were the humbler
people to whom he denied his bounty? And is the fair fame, the honest
reputation--the honourable reputation, we should say--of such a man as
Sir Joshua Reynolds--such as he has been proved to be--such as not only
such men as Burke and Johnson knew him, but such as his pupil and inmate
Northcote knew him--to be vilified by a low-minded biography, the dirty
ingredients of which are raked up from lying mouths, or, at least,
incapable of judging of such a character--from the lips of servants,
whose idle tales of masters who discard them, it is the common usage of
the decent, not to say well-bred world, to pay no attention to--not to
listen to--and whom none hear but the vulgar-curious, or the slanderous?
But if a servant's evidence must be taken, the fact of the exhibition of
Sir Joshua's works for his servant Kirkly should have been enough--to
say nothing here of his black servant. But the story of Kirkly is
mentioned--and how mentioned? To rake up a malevolent or a thoughtless
squib of the day, to make it appear that Sir Joshua shared in the gains
of an exhibition ostensibly given to his servant. The joke is noticed by
Northcote, and the exhibition, thus:--"The private exhibition of 1791,
in the Haymarket, has been already mentioned, and some notice taken of
it by a wicked wit, who, at the time, wished to insinuate that Sir
Joshua was a partaker in the profits. But this was not the truth;
neither do I believe there were any profits to share. However, these
lines from Hudibras were inserted in a morning paper, together with some
observations on the exhibition of pictures collected by the knight--

'A squire he had whose name was Ralph
Who in the adventure went his half,'

thus gaily making a sacrifice of truth to a joke." It is very evident
that this was a mere newspaper squib, and suggested by the "knight and
his squire Ralph;" but Cunningham so gives it as "the opinion of many,"
and with rather more than a suspicion of its truth. "Sir Joshua made an
exhibition of them in the Haymarket, for the advantage of his faithful
servant Ralph Kirkly; but our painter's well-known love of gain excited
public suspicion; he was considered by many as a partaker in the
profits, and reproached by the application of two lines from
Hudibras."--P. 117. But this report from a servant is evidently no
servant's report at