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and you will go out of the world fretted, disappointed, and ruined. Nothing but my real regard for you could induce me to set these considerations in this light before you. Remember, we are born to serve and to adorn our country, and not to contend with our fellow citizens—and that, in particular, your business is to paint, and not to dispute.'

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It really appears that Barry imagined himself all this while one of the meekest beings that ever studied the antique. The fear of some and the hatred of others, he imputed to any cause save his own headlong impetuosity of temper: nay, he actually seems to have supposed that his scornful sallies and sarcastic criticisms would be received with thankfulness, since they sprung from nothing but zeal for the benefit of art. From the first day of his appearance in Rome, he took the station of a judge, and delivered opinions with the intrepidity of one grown gray in study and in fame. All this in a young man of three or four and twenty, who could not as yet appeal to the excellence of his own works as his warrant, was not likely to be received with gratitude, particularly by a proverbially thinskinned and irritable tribe. Yet he never conceived he was to blame, and wrote down art as largely his debtor for candour and boldness. He defied the world, but he defended himself to Burke. "Your friendship is, I think, as visible in the warm picture you have drawn of my contentious disposition, as in any other part of your generous conduct towards me; but then shall I assure you that I am not that censorious inspector and publisher of the defects of other artists? No;

you know me better, notwithstanding what you have said, and I know, whether from my vanity or my virtue, if I have any, you will never meet with an artist more warm and just to the merit of his brethren, or more inclined to overlook their deficiencies than I am."

A charge of a graver nature than infirmity of temper, after having long been whispered about in professional coteries has lately been set forth in Mr. Smith's Life of Nollekens. "Barry, the historical painter,” says this writer, "who was extremely intimate with Nollekens at Rome, took the liberty one night, when they were about to leave the English Coffee-house, to exchange hats with him. Barry's hat was edged with lace, and Nollekens' was a very shabby plain one. Upon his returning the hat next morning, he was requested by Nollekens to let him know why he left him his gold-laced hat. Why, to tell you the truth, my dear Joey,' answered Barry, I fully expected assassination last night, and I was to have been known by my gold-laced hat.' This villainous transaction, which might have proved fatal to Nollekens, I have often heard him relate, and he generally added, It's what the Old Bailey people would call a true bill against Jem.'

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Such is Smith's story; and it is well known to many that Nollekens often related it—but nevertheless we must receive it with distrust and suspicion. Barry was fierce, sullen, and sarcastic, but I cannot believe him capable of an atrocity. At all events he was not a fool-and that he should put the life of an innocent man in jeopardy at night to save his own, and in the morning acknowledge

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his guilt so gaily to his intended victim, appears incredible. The story must have originated in some practical joke some betting speculation, perhaps, upon the well-known weakness of Nollekens. No one who knew Barry could believe him guilty of conduct at once so base and so absurd; and indeed the sculptor appears to have sufficiently refuted the serious interpretation of his own story, by promoting the interests and defending the cause of Barry in the Royal Academy, when all others had forsaken him.

Barry had now remained five years in Rome. He had examined, and studied, and copied those works on which the world had set the seal of approbation. Nor had he laboured for subsistence, for the munificence of Burke and his brothers had placed him above want; he was requested to draw upon them for such sums as he might require beyond his stated allowance of fifty pounds a year. He had, in short, laid in an ample stock of knowledge; and was now about to return to England, to carry his acquirements into practice. Something like misgivings from time to time came across his mind; he had doubts of final success, and even fears, now and then, that he might have, after all mistaken the proper course of study, and bowed to unprofitable gods. "O, I could be happy," he very movingly says, " on my going home, to find some corner where I could sit down in the middle of my studies, books, and casts after the antique, to paint this work and others, where I might have models of nature when necessary, bread and soup, and a coat to cover me! I

should care not what became of my work when it was done; but I reflect with horror upon such a fellow as I am, and with such a kind of art, in London, with house rent to pay, duns to follow me, and employers to look for. Had I studied art in a manner more accommodated to the nation, there would be no dread of this."

On the 22d of April, 1770, he left Rome, and proceeded to examine the principal galleries which lay in his way home. His memorandums are numerous, and all marked by his peculiarity of character, and idolatry of the antique. The Venus and Apollo had blinded him to all other excellence. "I am arrived," said he, "at that unlucky pass, that nothing will go down with me but perfection, at least in some one of the grand essentials of a picture. In Turin I saw the Royal Collection of Pictures; but, except one or two by Guido, which I did not like, all the rest are Flemish and Dutch. Rubens, Rembrandt, Vandyke, Teniers, and Saalken, are without the pales of my church; and though I will not condemn them, yet I must hold no intercourse with them. God help you, Barry, said I, where is the use of your hairbreadth niceties and your antiques? Behold the handwriting upon the wall against you. In the country to which you are going, pictures of lemonpeels, oysters, and tricks of colour, are in as much request as they are here." There were moods, nevertheless, in which he felt the difficulty of judging wisely of a work of genius, and he spoke truly when he said, "One painter is a very improper person to give an account of another that

is out of the pale of his school; they must think of one-another as the Catholics and Calvinists do -all without-doors is damnation."

He reached Milan. He was unnoticed and unknown; his enemies were far behind; and he seemed in a fair way of returning to London to tranquillity and peace. But even here controversy fell in his way, and he embraced it. The Medusa's head of Leonardi da Vinci-with its gloomy brow, watery eyes, and looks full of agony-had gained that eminent painter a place in Barry's esteem, and he went to pay a visit to his celebrated Last Supper. His own account of what followed is too characteristic to be omitted, and too dramatic to be abridged.

"When I came into the Reffetorio I found a scaffold erected, which on ascending I saw one half of the picture covered by a great cloth: on examining the other part that was uncovered, I found the skin of colour which composed the picture to be all cracked into little squares of about the eighteenth of an inch over, which were for the most part in their edges loosened from the wall and curling up: however, nothing was materially lost. I saw that the picture had been formerly repaired in some few places; yet as this was not much, and as the other parts were untouched, there was nothing to complain of. The wonderful truth and variety of the expressions, so well described by Vassari and Rubens, and the admirable finesse of finish and relievo taken notice of by Armineni, were still remaining. Whilst I was examining this part of the picture, two gentlemen came upon the scaffold, and drew aside the

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