"It is with a melancholy gratification that I dwell on the remembrance of social and friendly joys, which the grave has superseded, though I trust not for ever extinguished. The Painter and the Poet, so kindly just to each other, were not only animated in their days of health with similar sensibility, but resemble each other in one most affecting circumstance of their mortal pilgrimage: it was the dstiny of each to lose the use of his enchanting faculties before his departure; or, to cite a most expressive line of Churchill,

'To sit the monument of living Death.'

"They were both such delightful associates, in their happier days, that in the wane of life I cannot but feel their loss as irreparable.

"The result attending this conviction is most effectually soothed by the hope that I may a little contribute 'to keep their memories green on the earth,' by tender and faithful records of those particular talents and virtues in each which excited my constant solicitude for the welfare of both during many years, and rendered them objects for ever of my indellible affection."

"We may consider an ardent and powerful imagination, acute and delicate sensibility, and a passion for study, as the three qualities peculiarly essential towards forming a great Artist. Of these three important endowments I believe Nature to have bestowed a larger portion on Romney than on Reynolds; but in her bounty to the latter she added some inestimable qualities, which more than turned the scale in his favour. They rendered him pre-eminent in these three great objects of human pursuit, in fortunr, in felicity, and in fame.

"She gave her favourite what his friend and biographer, Mr. Malone, has described as the mitis sapientia Laeli, that mild and serene wisdom which enables a man to exert whatever talents he possesses with the fullest and happiest effect. She gave him the securest panoply against the arrows of wordly contention, highly-polished good humour, which conciliates universal esteem, and disarms, if it does