He was an admirer of elegant penmanship, and looked at a well written letter with something of the same pleasure as at a fine landscape. His love of music was constant; and he seems to have been kept under a spell by all kinds of melodious sounds. Smith relates, in his life of Nollekens, that he once found Colonel Hamilton playing so exquisitely to Gainsborough on the violin, that he exclaimed, "Go on, and I will give you the picture of the Boy at the Stile, which you have so often wished to purchase of me." The colonel proceeded, and the painter stood in speechless admiration, with the tears of rapture on his cheek. Hamilton then called a coach, and carried away the picture. This gentleman was a first-rate violin-player, and had the additional merit of having sparred with Mendoza!

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Of the personal history of this distinguished man, the penury of contemporary biography prevents me from saying more. Fuseli, when editing Pilkington's Dictionary of Painters, was, or affected to be, ignorant even of his Christian name; and so little did he feel the character of his works, that, on omitting some favourable notices in the supplement of the earlier editions, he says, with a sneer, posterity will judge whether the name of Gainsborough deserves to be ranked with those of Vandyke, Rubens, and Claude, in portrait and in landscape." With wiser taste and better feeling Walpole exclaims, "What frankness of nature in Gainsborough's landscapes, which entitle them to rank in the noblest collections!" Fuseli seems to have entertained an unaccountable dislike to our amiable and highly-gifted artist.

About a year after the promise obtained from Sheridan to attend his funeral, he went to hear the impeachment of Warren Hastings, and sitting with his back to an open window, suddenly felt something inconceivably cold touch his neck above the shirt collar. It was accompanied with stiffness and pain.

On returning home he mentioned what he felt to his wife and his niece; and on looking they saw a mark, about the size of a shilling, which was harder to the touch than the surrounding skin, and which he said still felt cold. The application of flannel did not remove it, and the artist, becoming alarmed, consulted one after the other the most eminent surgeons of London-John Hunter himself the last. They all declared there was no danger; but there was that presentiment upon Gainsborough from which none perhaps escape. He laid his hand repeatedly on his neck, and said to his sister, who had hastened to London to see him, "If this be a cancer, I am a dead man." And a cancer it proved to be. When this cruel disease fairly discovered itself, it was found to be inextricably interwoven with the threads of life, and he prepared himself for death with cheerfulness and perfect composure. He desired to be buried near his friend Kirby in Kew churchyard; and that his name only should be cut on his gravestone. He sent for Reynolds, and peace was made between them. Gainsborough exclaimed to Sir Joshua, "We are all going to heaven, and Vandyke is of the company," and immediately expired -August 2d, 1788, in the sixty-first year of his age. Sheridan and the President attended him to the grave.

In the spring which followed the death of Gainsborough, his widow, who survived him several years, made an exhibition of his works in Pall-Mall, to the amount of fifty-six pictures, and one hundred and forty-eight drawings. They were all marked for sale, and some of them sold; and the remainder were dispersed by auction. After experiencing a variety of fortune, the far-famed Blue Boy (the portrait of a youth in a blue dress), and the still more celebrated Cottage Door, found their way into the gallery of Lord Grosvenor. The former has a natural elevation of look and great ease of attitude; but the cerulean VOL. I.-C c

splendour of his coat is at first somewhat startling. The latter deserves a more particular commendation. It represents a cottage matron with an infant in her arms, and several older children around her, enjoying themselves at the door of a little rustic cabin. This lodge in the wilderness is deeply shut up in a close wooded nook; through the shafts of the trees glimpses of knolls and streams are obtained. There is uncommon breadth and mass about it, with a richness of colouring, a sort of brown and glossy goldenness, which is common in the works of the artist. The matron herself is the perfect beau-ideal of a youthful cottage dame-rustic loveliness exalted by natural gentility of expression.

In person Gainsborough was eminently handsome, and, when he wished to please, no one had in greater perfection a ready grace and persuasive manner-gifts that cannot be acquired. It is to be regretted that those who wrote any thing concerning him were careful in noting his eccentricities, and chronicling his absurdities, forgetting much that is noble and excellent in the man. Little minds retain little things. His associates, such as Jackson and Thicknesse, perceived but those weaknesses which reduced him to their own level; they were slow or unwilling to perceive those qualities which raised him above them. The companions of the artist saved the chaff of his conversation, and allowed the corn to escape. Their sole wish seems to be to show him as the poet painted himself—

"A thing unteachable in worldly skill,

And half an idiot too-more helpless still;"

and but for the splendid works of the man, which exhibit a mind that could think boldly and act wisely, they had succeeded.

He never attempted literary composition; he was more desirous to give than to receive instruction, and therefore paid no court to the learned. His letters

are nevertheless such as few literary men have composed; they are distinguished by innocent gayety and happy wit. He flutters from subject to subject, always easy and lively; agreeable when he trifles, and instructive even when he is extravagant. He has been reproached with occasional licentiousness in conversation; and something of the sort, I must admit, peeps out here and there in his letters. He was far, however, from being habitually gross.

He was decided in his resolutions. In the year 1784, he sent to the exhibition a whole length portrait, with instructions to hang it as low as the floor would allow. Some by-law interposed--the council remonstrated-Gainsborough desired the picture to be returned, which was complied with-and he never sent another.

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His drawings are numerous and masterly: no artist has left behind him so many exquisite relics of this kind. "I have seen," said his friend Jackson, at least a thousand, not one of which but what possesses merit, and some in a transcendent degree." Many of them are equal in point of character to his most finished performances. They have all great breadth and singular freedom of handling. His sketches of ladies are the finest things I have eve: seen. The Dutchess of Devonshire shows herself in side view and in front; she seems to move and breathe among the groves of Chatsworth. The names of many are lost, but this is not important. New light, however, has lately been thrown on those perishable things by the painter's grand-nephew, Richard Lane, in whom much of his spirit survives. He has copied and published some two dozen of those fine sketches, and he ought to publish more.

The chief works of Gainsborough are not what is usually called landscape, for he had no wish to create gardens of paradise, and leave them to the sole enjoyment of the sun and breeze. The wildest nooks of his woods have their living tenants, and in

all his glades and his valleys we see the sons and daughters of men. A deep human sympathy unites us with his pencil, and this is not lessened because all its works are stamped with the image of old England. His paintings have a national look. He belongs to no school; he is not reflected from the glass of man, but from that of nature. He has no* steeped his landscapes in the atmosphere of Italy like Wilson, nor borrowed the postures of his por traits from the old masters, like Reynolds. No academy schooled down into uniformity and imitation the truly English and intrepid spirit of Gainsborough.

It must not, however, be denied, that his productions are sometimes disfigured by the impatience of his nature, and the fiery haste in which he wrought. Wishing to do quickly what his mind conceived strongly, he often neglected, in the dashing vigour of his hand, many of those lesser graces which lend art so much of its attractiveness. He felt the whole indeed at once; he was possessed fully with the sentiment of his subject; he struck off his favourite works at one continuous heat of thought, and all is clear, connected, and consistent. But, like nature herself, he performed some of his duties with a careless haste; and in many, both of his portraits and his landscapes, we see evident marks of inattention and hurry.

"It is certain," says Reynolds, "that all those odd scratches and marks which, on a close examination, are so observable in Gainsborough's pictures, and which, even to experienced painters, appear rather the effect of accident than design-this chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance-by a kind of magic, at a certain distance, assumes form, and all the parts seem to drop into their proper places, so that we can hardly forbear acknowledging the full effect of diligence, under the appearance of chance and hasty negligence. That Gainsborough himself