feeling of trade rather than the impulse of genius, and that it become a
manufactory for conventional forms and hereditary graces. Opulent
collectors were filling their galleries with the religious paintings of
the Romish Church, and vindicating their purchases by representing these
works as the only patterns of all that is noble in art and worthy of
imitation. Hogarth perceived that all this was not according to the
natural spirit of the nation; he well knew that our island had not yet
poured out its own original mind in art, as it had done in poetry; and
he felt assured that such a time would come, if native genius were not
overlaid systematically by mock patrons and false instructors.

"As a painter," says Walpole, "Hogarth has slender merit." "What is the
merit of a painter?" Cunningham concludes. "If it be to represent
life--to give us an image of man--to exhibit the workings of his
heart--to record the good and evil of his nature--to set in motion
before us the very beings with whom earth is peopled--to shake us with
mirth--to sadden us with woeful reflection--to please us with natural
grouping, vivid action, and vigorous colouring--Hogarth has done all
this--and if he that has done so be not a painter, who will show us
one?"

III

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS AND THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH

Whether or not SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS is entitled to be ranked among the
very greatest painters, there can be no question that he has a place
among the most famous, not only on account of his actual painting, but
also because of the influence exerted by his whole-hearted devotion to
his art, and his strong character in forming, out of such unpromising
elements, a really vigorous school of painting in this country. The
example he set in the strenuous exercise of his profession, the precepts
he laid down for the guidance of students, and the dignity with which he
invested the whole practice of painting which, until he came, had
degenerated into a mere business, were of incalculable benefit to his
own and succeeding ages, and Edmund Burke was paying him no empty
compliment but only stating the bare truth when he said that Sir Joshua
Reynolds was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant
arts to the other glories of his country.

Joshua Reynolds was born at Plympton in Devonshire on the 16th July
1723; the son of the Rev. Samuel Reynolds and his wife Theophila Potter.
He was on every side connected with the Church, for bo