me, the cleverest thing he had ever written. was not one of those who believed, with Spenser,

That poets' wit surpasseth painters' far
In picturing the parts of beauty dayut."

He

Of his merits as a painter, I have already said much in the course of my narrative. His chief excellence lay in a certain dignity with which he invested his compositions. He desired to exalt all he touched; and this is true of his portraits, as well as of his historical pieces. The clear manner in which he makes his canvass tell his story is another merit of a high order; this made the pictures he painted for the Shakspeare Gallery more popular than the more imaginative works of Fuseli. His chief faults were defective drawing, dull colouring, and that want of pictorial conception which gives to his works the appearance of having come bit by bit, and with reluctance, from his mind. In his best works there is little to surprise, elevate, or electrify.

BEAUMONT.

WHEN Voltaire called on Congreve, he addressed him as a dramatist of wit and imagination. “I am not an author, sir," said the retired poet; "I am a gentleman."-" Sir," replied the sarcastic Frenchman, "had you been but a gentleman, I should not have visited you." The weakness thus rebuked is a general one, but not universal; and among the exceptions I know few more brilliant than the person of whose life and talents I am now about to write; he adorned the gentleman with the artist, and the artist with the gentleman, and stood high in the ranks both of genius and courtesy.

Sir George Howland Beaumont, baronet, was born on the 6th of November, 1753; his father died while he was yet a child, and left him to the care of his mother, a lady of taste and talent. Her maiden name was Rachel Howland: some property, it seems, came into the family through the marriage, as her son took her name; but no alliance could add to the dignity of his paternal descent. Among his ancestors he could point to Bohemond, Prince of Antioch, son of Robert Guiscard, who shook the throne of the Emperor of Constantinople in the battles of Durazzo and Larissa, and afterward planted, with Godfrey of Bouillon, the cross of the Franks on the walls of Jerusalem. This high descent connects the house of Beaumont with the royal families of France and England. His lineage has other claims to our attention; and to this Wordsworth alludes when, in the dedication of his poems to Sir George, he says, "Several of the best pieces were composed under the shade of your own groves, upon the classic ground of Coleorton; where I was animated by the recollection of those illustrious poets of your name and family who were born in that neighbourhood. and, we may be assured, did not wander with indifference by the dashing stream of Grace-Dieu, and among the rocks that diversify the forest of Charnwood." In one of his Coleorton inscriptions the poet speaks still more plainly :

"Here may some painter sit in future days,
Some future poet meditate his lays;

Not mindless of that distant age renown'd,
When inspiration hover'd o'er this ground-

The haunt of him who sang how spear and shield

In civil conflict met on Bosworth Field,

And of that famous youth full soon removed

From earth; perhaps by Shakspeare's self approved,
Fletcher's associate, Jonson's friend beloved."

He unites name, birth, and residence, in another poem.

"There, on the margin of a streamlet wild,
Did Francis Beaumont sport-an eager child,
There, under shadow of the neighbouring rocks,
Sang youthful tales of shepherds and their flocks,
Unconscious prelude to heroic themes,

Heart-breaking tears, and melancholy dreams."

Sir George was educated at Eton; where to classic knowledge he united the art of drawing: a book containing his boyish attempts is still extant. He made himself familiar with Greek and Roman lore, and with English dramatic poetry. Indeed, he grew so fond of Shakspeare, that he committed some whole plays to memory; and occasionally showed, on the boards of a private theatre, that he could represent, as well as understand and feel, the wit and passion of his favourite. He excelled so much in the personation of various characters, serious as well as gay, that friends were not wanting who thought he more than approached Garrick. His mother observed the progress of her son in learning and taste with no little pleasure; her powers of mind were such, that she could direct as well as appreciate his studies; and she lived to see him at the head, not of fashion, but of taste, and acknowledged, not only a fine judge, but a skilful master in the art of painting. Another person of equal merit was admitted to a share of his confidence and his pursuits. One evening, while Sir George was acting in private theatricals at North Aston, he observed a young lady of great beauty among the auditors, who seemed much moved with the performance: on inquiring, he found that she was Margaret Willis, granddaughter of Lord Chief Justice Willis, and resided with her father at Altrop. On being introduced to her, he found that her taste in all things nearly resembled his own; that she was a lover of painting, a greater lover of poetry: and that her taste was naturally excellent, and improved by an education at once elegant and pious. He married her in the year 1784; and an in

tercourse of forty years and upwards only served to prove how worthy she was of his love. The portraits of the bride and bridegroom were painted by their friend Sir Joshua Reynolds. Sir George has the look of an accomplished gentleman; his lady unites sense to loveliness.

Soon after his marriage he made with Lady Beaumont the tour of Italy. It was during this journey that he became a painter. He had formerly made drawings to fill up those hours of leisure which the opulent have at their disposal; having done what he wished them to do, they were thrown aside and forgotten. In the land of painters he resumed the pencil, made studies of scenes from nature, and from Claude, and the chief masters of the calling. On finding his hand and eye improving by practice, and the poetic spirit of the scene becoming more and more visible in his attempts, he persisted, till he had painted a landscape, in which, it is said, something both of Italy and England appeared.*

Of Wilson, who died in 1782, Sir George was a great admirer; his admiration, however, was not of the blind sort; he felt his extraordinary merits, but perceived his defects. "I think it will be allowed," he thus writes to a friend, “that the pictures on which Wilson's high reputation is founded are not very numerous whatever may have been the cause, it is certain he did not long possess that vigour of mind and hand which characterizes the Niobe. To the last, indeed, and in the weakest of his productions, a fine taste for lines and a classical feeling is discoverable, which must for ever give them a value in the opinions of those who are capable of relishing beauties of this kind. For my own part,

* According to another account Sir George had painted scenes both from the field and from the gallery before his visit to Italy; it is certain that from his youth up, he was well known to the first artists of the age, for taste, if not for skill; and that he loved to be in their company, and to talk of the art which they professed.

I have no hesitation, as far as my own judgment goes, to place him at the head of the landscape painters of this country. His sole rival is Gainsborough; and if it be allowed, as I think it must, that he had a finer and higher relish for colour, or, in the technical term, a better painter's eye than Wilson; on the other hand, Wilson was far his superior in elevation of thought and dignity of composition. Both were poets, and, to me, The Bard of Gray, and his Elegy in a Country Churchyard, are so descriptive of their different lines, that Í should certainly have commissioned Wilson to paint a subject from the first, and Gainsborough one from the latter and if I am correct in this opinion, the superior popularity of Gainsborough cannot sur prise us: since, for one person capable of relishing the sublime, there are thousands who admire the rural and the beautiful, especially when set off by such fascinating spirit and splendour of colour as we see in the best works of Gainsborough."

"That Wilson," continues Sir George," had great faults, must be granted; his subjects are sometimes meager, as in the 'Ceyx;' and sometimes too artificial, and decidedly composition; and in producing what he called hollowness, or space, he frequently divided the distances, so that they had too much the appearance of cut scenery at the theatre. His pencil, although feeble and negligent in his decline, is, in his best works, firm, bold, and decisive. I do not conceive his colouring to be his prime excellence : yet it is frequently sweet and airy, solemn and grand, as the subject required, and seldom or never out of harmony."

On his return from abroad, Sir George spoke with much freedom of the excellences and defects of the great masters of Flanders and Italy: this was reckoned heresy by some of the English painters; and by none more than by Reynolds, who was never wil