of his profession, and acquired a knowledge of French, and a smattering of Latin, now found leisure to become sensible of a want which London could easily supply. It is reported that love of money first directed his eyes to the daughter of a pawnbroker who lived in his neighbourhood. Neither his courtship nor his marriage have been alluded to by his biographers; the first was short, and the second unhappy. His wife, a little woman with very dark eyes, and a handsome portion, had a mind of her own as well as the artist; and, loving gaiety, was not disposed to shut herself up from sun and air with a man of a morose turn, whose whole time was dedicated to the study of the dark masters. It is said that a kind word, and an affectionate shake by the hand, banished from his mind in general the remembrance of any wrong committed against him; and that such was his placability of nature, that he was willing to confide again in those who unworthily betrayed him. His wife, a childless and giddy woman, soon put his charity to the extreme proof; and he was compelled to sue for a divorce.

That domestic sorrow such as this had a serious influence upon his temper and his studies, who can doubt? but those who have drawn his character and delineated his life, avoid any allusion to his frail partner; they had knowledge and declined to use it-they were over-sensitive, and have not done justice to the memory of Opie by this omission. The only allusion to the circumstance is contained in one of the painter's own smart sayings. He was passing the church of St. Giles late one evening, in the company of a friend

of avowed sceptical opinions. "I was married at that church," observed Opie. "And I was christened there," said his companion. "Indeed!" answered the painter, "it seems they make unsure work at that church, for it neither holds in wedlock nor in baptism!"

Having freed himself from the encumbrance of an unfaithful wife, and got rid of the crowds of carriages which filled up the street, and annoyed his neighbours, he divided his time between his profession and the cultivation of his mind. He was conscious of his defective education; and, like Reynolds, desired to repair it, by mingling in the company of men of learning and talent, and by the careful perusal of the noblest writers. "Such," says his best biographer, "were the powers of his memory, that he remembered all he had read: and Milton, Shakespeare, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Cowper, Butler, Burke, and Dr. Johnson, he might, to use a familiar expression, be said to know by heart. A man of powerful understanding and ready apprehension, who " remembered all he read,” and who had nine of the greatest and most voluminous of our authors by heart, could never be at any loss in company, if he had tolerable skill in using his

stores.

To his intellectual vigour we have strong testimony. "Mr. Opie crowds more wisdom," said Horne Tooke, "into a few words, than almost any man I ever knew--he speaks as it were in axioms --and what he observes, is worthy to be remembered." "Had Mr. Opie turned his powers of mind," says Sir James Mackintosh," to the study of philosophy, he would have been one of the first

philosophers of the age. I was never more struck than with his original manner of thinking and expressing himself in conversation; and had he written on the subject, he would, perhaps, have thrown more light on the philosophy of his art than any man living." "He aimed at no competition with the learned," says Amelia Opie, "while with a manly simplicity, which neither feared contempt nor courted applause, he has often, even in such company, made observations originating in the native treasures of his own mind, which learning could not teach, and which learning alone could not enable its possessor to appreciate.

At the period of his first appearance there was considerable encouragement for works of an historic nature; West, Barry, Fuseli, and, occasionally, Reynolds, produced such—with more or less of success and applause. That this high feeling has now greatly subsided in England, there can be little doubt; even during the lifetime of Opie, commissions, as they are called, for such pictures, were becoming more and more rare; and now alas!-it is sufficient to mention two of the more striking instances-the "Satan" of Lawrence, and the "Fall of Nineveh" of Martin, remain in their studies. Opie, anxious for fame. and yet resolved to live, did well then in dividing his pencil between portraiture and history.

His chief excellence lies in the former; there he has great breadth, vigour, and natural force of character-touched, it must be allowed, in some instances, with a certain air of village audacity, which comes from the artist rather than from the sitter. His old men's heads-half fancy and half

portrait, are deficient in carefulness of finish; but this is more than compensated by that rough and happy 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, " don'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 softness in his female heads-he felt this early, and laboured to amend it--but it is said, that he did not wholly succeed till his second marriage.

Opie," said one of his brethren, when he exhibited some female portraits soon after that event, we never saw anything like this in you beforethis 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 bystanders, 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