energy with which they are dashed out. They furnish no comparisons-such as critics love to make-with the works of Velasquez, or Vandyke, or Reynolds; they have a better claim to distinction -they are truly original productions. His portrait of Charles Fox has been justly commended, nor does the circumstance of his having completed the likeness from the bust by Nollekens, as related by Smith, diminish his merit. When Fox, who sat opposite to Opie at the Academy dinner given in the exhibition-room, heard the general applause which his portrait obtained, he remembered that he had given him less of his time than the painter had requested, and said across the table, "There, Mr. Opie, you see I was right; every body thinks it could not be better. Now, if I had minded you, and consented to sit again, you most probably would have spoiled the picture." While this far-famed portrait was in progress, Opie became alarmed for his success: he was distracted by a multitude of hints which friends who came in swarms dropped, regarding the expression, the posture, and the handling. Fox was amused with the variety of opinions, and kindly whispered to Opie, " do n't mind what these people say you must know better than they do."

The ladies who sat for their portraits he found more difficult to deal with than the great leader of the Whigs. There was at first a want of grace and oftness in his female heads-he felt this early, and aboured to amend it--but it is said, that he did not wholly succeed till his second marriage. "Opie," aid one of his brethren, when he exhibited some female portraits soon after that event, "we never saw any thing like this in you before-this must be owing to your wife:" and it is likely that the compliment, though paid perhaps in jest, was nevertheless just. The habitual ruggedness of his personal manners yielded to the winning and graceful tact of Amelia Opie, and it is easy to believe that her

presence might have the same influence upon his pencil. The words in which she vindicates her husband from the charge of speaking his mind coarsely, and a desire to appear a grand natural character, are well worth transcribing.

"Of all employments portrait painting is perhaps the most painful and trying to a man of pride and sensibility, and the most irritating to an irritable man. To hear beauties and merits in a portrait often stigmatized as deformities and blemishes-to have high lights taken for white spots, and dark effective shadows for the dirty appearance of a snuff-taker:to witness discontent in the by-standers, because the painting does not exhibit the sweet smile of the sitter, though it is certain that a smile on canvass looks like the grin of idiocy; while a laughing eye, if the artist attempts to copy it, as unavoidably assumes the disgusting resemblance of progressive intoxication. Sitters themselves Mr. Opie rarely found troublesome; but persons of worship, as he called them, that is, persons of great consequence, either from talent, rank, or widely spreading connexions, are sometimes attended by others whose aim is to endeavour to please the great man or woman by flattery wholly at the expense of the poor artist; and to minister sweet food to the palate of the patron, regardless though it be wormwood to that of the painter. Hence arises an eulogy on the beauties and perfections of the person painted, and regrets that they are so inadequately rendered by the person painting; while frivolous objection succeeds to frivolous objection, and impossibilities are expected and required as if they were possibilities. I have too frequently witnessed this, and my temper and patience have often been on the point of deserting me, even when Mr. Opie's had not apparently undergone the slightest alteration-a strong proof that he possessed some of that self-command which is one of the requisites of good breeding."

He experienced no such difficulties in his historical compositions-the heroes or the beauties of other days had no friends to be fastidious about their merry eyes or their smiling lips, and he could exchange dark ringlets for tresses of gold, and distribute glowing complexions according to his own will and pleasure. He had, however, an equally painful battle to sustain with the men of taste and virtù, whose heads were crammed with the remembrance of the principal works of the great masters of Italy-men who had ridden post-haste through the continent, and returned with the incurable belief that every thing old was excellent-every thing new poor and degenerate. Originality was looked upon as something strange and outré-to trust to the strength of nature was weakness-to work so that the spirit and effect could be justified by reference to Rembrandt or Raphael, was to possess true taste, and to be imbued with the spirit of the great masters. Opie, it must be admitted, wanted poetic power to enable him to rise to the first eminence as an historical painter-but he had a sense of propriety of action and vigour of character which these connoisseurs wanted nerve to feel, and which have stamped no light value on many of his historical productions.

Those which have caught public fancy most are the Murder of James the First, of Scotland; the Presentation in the Temple; Jephthah's Vow; the Death of David Rizzio; Young Arthur taken Prisoner; Arthur with Hubert; Belisarius; Juliet in the Garden; and the Escape of Gil Blas and Musidora. Many others might be named, and many more praised; for he conceived without much delay, and executed with great readiness. He had no air-drawn visions of beauty before him which his pencil loved to follow; he sketched in his group, sought living nature to help him out with what was not in his mind's eye, and, bending his subject to his VOL. II.-O

model rather than elevating the model to suit the subject, enslaved himself to the literal flesh and blood which he copied. "He painted what he saw," says West, "in the most masterly manner, and he varied little from it. He saw nature in one point more distinctly and forcibly than any painter that ever lived. The truth of colour, as conveyed to the eye through the atmosphere, by which the distance of every object is ascertained, was never better expressed than by him. He distinctly represented local colour in all its various tones and proportions, whether in light or in shadow, with a perfect uniformity of imitation. Other painters frequently make two separate colours of objects in light and in shade, Opie never. With him no colour-whether white, black, primary, or compound-ever, in any situation, lost its respective hue."

His works were not the offspring of random fits of labour, after long indulgence in idleness; they were the well-considered progeny of his mind and hand-the fruit of daily toil, in which every hour had its allotted task. He sketched out a plan of weekly study, from which pleasure or persuasion seldom wiled him. "He was always in his painting-room," says Amelia Opie, "by half-past eight in winter, and by eight o'clock in summer; and there he generally remained, closely engaged in painting, till half-past four in winter, and till five in summer. Nor did he ever allow himself to be idle when he had no pictures bespoken; and as he never let his execution rust for want of practice, he, in that case, either sketched out designs for historical or fancy pictures, or endeavoured, by working on an unfinished picture of me, to improve himself by incessant practice in that difficult branch of art, female portraiture. Neither did he suffer his exertions to be paralyzed by neglect the most unexpected, and disappointment the most undeserved." "The world looks only at the brilliant result of an

artist's labour. We see a magnificent work, filled with divine shapes and glowing with the freshest hues of heaven and earth, and the idea never darkens in our fancy that he who created this prodigy is in dread of want, and perhaps even now knows not how he is to be fed to-morrow. "Though he had a picture in the Exhibition of 1801, which was universally admired, and purchased as soon as beheld"-I quote once more the words of his widow "he saw himself at the end of that year and the beginning of the next almost wholly without employment; and even my sanguine temper yielding to the trial, I began to fear that, small as our expenditure was, it must become still smaller. Not that I allowed myself to own that I desponded; on the contrary, I was forced to talk to him of hopes and to bid him look forward to brighter prospects, as his temper, naturally desponding, required all the support imaginable. But gloomy and painful indeed were those three alarming months; and I consider them as the severest trial I experienced during my married life. Even despondence did not make him indolent; he continued to paint regularly as usual, and, no doubt, by that means increased his ability to do justice to the torrent of business which soon afterward set in towards him, and never ceased to flow till the day of his death."

There is no doubt that Opie incurred a debt of gratitude to Wolcot for his frank and friendly en couragement, when he was a menial in his house in Cornwall, and for his anxious introduction of "the Cornish Wonder" to the novelty-gazers of Londoo. The poet often complained that the painter was ungrateful. He probably expected that when Opie had earned fame and name, he should still consider himself under the shadow of his patronage. I know not enough of the private history of the artist to decide, with certainty and exactness, in how far he was blameable for the coldness which took place