of the many shining qualities I might have really found in him."

Critics were not wanting who found personalities in his paintings as well as in his Lectures. In the emaciated limb which belongs to the garter of one whom he precipitates into Tartarus in the Adelphi Paintings, some one detected the noticeable leg of a nobleman who had given grievous offence to the artist. He defended himself with warmth. "What

I particularly valued in my work," he said, "was a dignity, seriousness, and gravity, infinitely removed from all personality." As he had admitted his friends freely to the joys of Elysium, it continued to be supposed that he was very capable of pushing his enemies as unceremoniously into Tartarus.

Barry thought so well of the Adelphi Series, that he resolved to engrave them, and accordingly began to etch them on copper with his own hand. But he was unequal to an undertaking which required nice delicacy of finish; and his subscribers were astonished when the rough offspring of his graver were put into their hands. They had expected something, probably, superior to the works of mere engravers, and one of them expressed surprise at the coarseness of the workmanship. "Pray, sir," said Barry, "can you tell me what you did expect?" "More finished engravings, sir," was the answer. Nollekens recommended them to his patrons, and these were not few-but Barry was not always disposed to be thankful for acts of kindness. The sculptor, a blunt, straight-forward man, without any sense of delicacy, offended the painter's pride by calling out in the presence of others, "Well, Jem, I have been very successful for you this week-I have got you three more subscribers for your prints." Barry bade him, with an oath, mind his own affairs--if the nobility wanted his engravings they knew where he was to be found. The Six

Engravings were finished in 1792-all the impressions were taken with his own hand from a press erected on purpose

The Society of Arts had indulged him with two exhibitions of his paintings, which yielded in clear profit five hundred pounds; to this sum he added two hundred pounds more, the produce of his engravings; and to astonish his friends, make his enemies stare, and show that his good sense had survived every vicissitude of fortune and controversy, he placed the money in the funds, and secured to himself an income of sixty pounds a-year. It ought not to be omitted that Lord Romney gave him one hundred guineas for a portrait copied into one of the Six Pictures-that Timothy Hollis left one hundred pounds to "the Painter of the work upon Human Culture in the Adelphi,”—and that Lord Radnor presented him with fifty pounds, made payable in a check to the bearer, out of respect to the sensitive feelings of the artist. He always, too, remembered the kindness of the Prince of Wales, who honoured him with several sittings, and spoke to him with a courtesy to which he had not been much accustomed.

Those works secured him fame, and bread at least, if not entire independence-but the professorship of painting, a place of dignity, and which none could fill more worthily, became to him a source of sorrow and misfortune. Historical painting was the divinity he professed to worship, but controversy was the false saint at whose shrine he offered up repose of mind, social happiness, and the best friendships he had formed. The period of his professorship was one of continual bickering and personal dispute. Whatever he imagined could be useful to the Academy he proposed without scruple--whatever he proposed, he urged with vehemence--contradiction he regarded as insult, and repaid with invective--nor did the heat excited

in the council-room cool out of doors; like the anxious wife in the Poet's Tale, Barry, "nursed his wrath to keep it warm"-and at the next meeting took his seat only to resume his vituperation. Unwearied sarcasm and ever hot invective will exhaust mortal patience in the upshot; reverence 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. "If there be a man on earth," said the President to Bacon, the sculptor, "whom I seriously dislike, it is that Barry."

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 dinner. "Sir," said Barry, with much cheerfulness, "you know I live alone-but if you will come and 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, in which he printed his plates with his own handthe 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 afterward 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 any thing 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. VOL. II.-K