for genius and respect for honesty of purpose will subside when they cannot be enjoyed in peace; and the man who regularly invades our repose, we will rejoice to get rid of at last, though in genius he approached the gods. Barry's great object was to appropriate the receipts of the Academy exhibitions to the formation of a gallery of the Old Masters; Reynolds was anxious to devote them to the purchase of his own fine collection of foreign paintings for the use of the students-propositions which might have been reconciled-but which alarmed those who desired to employ the money in defraying the studies of young artists in Italy, and displeased others who watched over the increasing revenue with the vigilance of dragons, from the mere sordid wish of seeing it accumulate. From the love of gain, of art, or of contradiction, the members obliged neither, and disobliged both. Of these remarkable men, the Academy renounced one, and the other renounced the Academy-yet they most cordially disliked each other.. there be a man on earth," said the President to Bacon, the sculptor, "whom I seriously dislike, it is that Barry.

"If

Those whom the fame of his works, and the rumours of his open warfare with a man of such note as Reynolds, attracted to his study, were struck with the squalid aspect of his establishment, and his utter disregard of the advantages of dress. When at Rome, we have it settled to a painful certainty, that he wore a gold-laced hat; and there is no reason to doubt but that the rest of his dress corresponded-but how unlike the enthusiast of the Sistine was the enthusiast of the

Adelphi! His dress was coarse and mean; this arose partly from affectation-but not wholly so. His income was small and uncertain, and he was too proud and honest to dress fashionably at the expense of others. The man who contests the matter with fortune, will sometimes be worsted; and we must pity, not blame, the consequences of such distress. That he was never rich, there can be no doubt-but that he was never in want is also certain and it is very probable that he flattered himself with thinking, that men would say as he passed by, “that is Barry, the restorer of the antique spirit in art, and the painter of the Six Pictures in the Adelphi.-See how coarsely he is clad, and how careless he is," and that he would be honoured more for the breach than the observance of custom in such matters.

His residence in Castle Street, though wearing a decent exterior when he took possession, soon corresponded in look with the outward man of its master. The worst inn's worst room, in which the poet places the expiring Villiers, was equalled, if not surpassed, by that in which Barry slept, ate, and meditated in perfect satisfaction and security. His own character and whole system of in-door economy, were exhibited in a dinner he gave Mr. Burke. No one was better acquainted with the singular manners of this very singular man than the great statesman; he wished, however, to have ocular demonstration how he managed his household concerns in the absence of wife or servant, and requested to be asked to din

ner.

you

"Sir," said Barry, with much cheerfulness, know I live alone but if you will come and

1

help me to eat a steak, I shall have it tender and hot, and from the most classic market in London —that of Oxford." The day and the hour came, and Burke arriving at No. 36, Castle Street, found Barry ready to receive him; he was conducted into the painting room, which had undergone no change since it was a carpenter's shop. On one of the walls hung his large picture of Pandora, and round it were placed the studies of the Six Pictures of the Adelphi. There were likewise old straining frames-old sketches-a printing press, with which he printed his plates with his own hand- the labours too of the spider abounded, and rivalled in extent and colour pieces of old tapestry.

Burke saw all this-yet wisely seemed to see it not. He observed too that most of the windows were broken or cracked, that the roof, which had no ceiling, admitted the light through many crevices in the tiling, and that two old chairs and a deal table composed the whole of the furniture. The fire was burning brightly; the steaks were put on to broil, and Barry, having spread a clean cloth on the table, put a pair of tongs in the hands of Burke, saying, "Be useful, my dear friend, and look to the steaks till I fetch the porter." Burke did as he was desired: the painter soon returned with the porter in his hand, exclaiming, "What a misfortune! the wind carried away the fine foaming top as I crossed Titchfield Street:" they sat down together the steak was tender and done to a moment the artist was full of anecdote, and Burke often declared, that he never spent a happier evening in his life. Such is the story which has been often written and often repeated, and

always with variations. Something like the scene thus disclosed to Mr. Burke was exhibited some time afterwards to another eminent person-whose friendship has enabled me to enrich my narrative with the following graphic account:

"I wish (says Mr. Southey) I could tell you anything which might be found useful in your succeeding volumes. I knew Barry, and have been admitted into his den in his worst (that is to say his maddest) days, when he was employed upon the Pandora. He wore at that time an old coat of green baize; but from which time had taken all the green that incrustations of paint and dirt had not covered. His wig was one which you might suppose he had borrowed from a scare-crow; all round it there projected a fringe of his own gray hair. He lived alone in a house which was never cleaned; and he slept on a bedstead with no other furniture than a blanket nailed on the one side. I wanted him to visit me-no, he said; he could not go out by day, because he could not spare time from his great picture: and if he went out in the evening, the Academicians would waylay him, and murder him. In this solitary sullen life he continued, till he fell ill, very probably from want of food sufficiently nourishing; and after lying two or three days under his blanket, he had just strength enough left to crawl to his own door, open it, and lay himself down, with a paper in his hand, on which he had written his wish to be carried to the house of Mr. Carlisle (Sir Anthony) in Soho Square. There he was taken care of; and the danger from which he had thus escaped seems to have cured his mental hallucinations. He cast

his slough afterwards; appeared decently drest in his own gray hair, and mixed in such society as he liked.

"I should have told you, that a little before his illness, he had, with much persuasion, been induced to pass a night at some person's house in the country. When he came down to breakfast the next morning, and one asked how he had rested, he said, remarkably well: he had not slept in sheets for many years, and really he thought it was a very comfortable thing. He interlarded his conversation with oaths as expletives, but it was pleasant to converse with him :-there was a frankness and animation about him which won good-will, as much as his vigorous intellect commanded respect. There is a story of his having refused to paint portraits, and saying, in answer to applications, that there was a man in Leicester Square who did it. But this, he said, was false: for that he would at any time have painted portraits, and have been glad to paint them."

It was during these periods of misgiving and despondency that Barry thought of requesting a situation of moderate emolument from the government-he saw places of little labour and large profit filled by men of ordinary ability—and he thought ministers would prefer the help of the clever, if it were offered, to that of the dull. He failed to perceive that service of another kind than he could hope to render was the purchaseprice of such situations. He applied for the place of painter to the ordnance department-he knew so little of what he asked for, that he was surprised to find that it was house-painting only, and