and is thinking solely of the eager faces before him, and of the budding Aaron's rod of English art, his dignified sentences attain a clear and almost an impassioned accent. He is thoroughly engaged in brain and hand; his whole heart is bound up in what he is saying, and we listen not merely to a splendid painter or a deep and trained thinker, but to a spirited enthusiast. When we consider what men formed part of his audience on the successive anniversaries of the 10th of December, we need not wonder that a sympathetic flame passed between the teacher and the taught. On the evening when Sir Joshua Reynolds delivered the first of these Discourses, Flaxman, Cosway, and Bacon sat among the students; on the evening when he pronounced the last of them, J. W. M. Turner was one of his audience; while in the meantime Morland and Northcote, Howard and Callcott, Stothard and Lawrence were among the youths destined to eminence who listened to the silver-tongued first President. The Discourses were originally published, each separately at the price of three shillings, as soon as convenient after the date of delivery, anonymously, and in a quarto form. In 1778 the first seven were reprinted, still anonymously, with the present dedication to the King and the address to the members of the Royal Academy, in an octavo volume. Almost simultaneously a translation of the seven into Italian appeared in a very pretty shape in Florence, with a portrait of Reynolds by F. Corsi, engraved by Faucci. This translation, Delle Arti del Disegno, was stated in a graceful preface to be "nata sul Tamigi e quasi sotto gli occhi dell' Autore," and, though unsigned, is known to have been from the pen of Joseph Baretti, the honest man who stabbed a rogue in the Haymarket in 1769. He was Foreign Secretary to the Royal Academy. After 1778 the Discourses continued to appear annually in quarto form, and were not collected again until after the author's death. They were edited successively by Farington, Beechey, and Malone, and have been reprinted very frequently. A copy of them is presented to every student who gains a prize of any kind in the classes of the Royal Academy. There are many ways in which it would be possible to annotate the Discourses of Reynolds. At the end of the present volume I have simply offered a few illustrations of such words or names as might be expected at the present day to check the attention of a fairly instructed reader. The style of the book is so far rhetorical that we find in it none of the peculiar allusions which make a commentary so needful to the punctilious reader of Smollett or Walpole. I have not attempted to correct or establish the opinions which Reynolds lays down respecting the history of painting. The tiro nowadays, with a few books of reference around him, can easily know more about the painters than Reynolds did. But if we have studied the artists more, we have neglected the critics entirely, and I have thought it not impertinent to give a few lines of illustration when their names are introduced. I have also amused myself by transcribing from the British Museum copy of Malone's Life and Works of Reynolds, which belonged to William Blake, a few hitherto inedited notes and verses which the famous visionary has scribbled on the margin. In his Life of Blake Gilchrist described this curious relic, which he supposed to date from about 1820. I have printed nothing which had already seen the light in the chapter which Gilchrist dedicates to these notes of Blake's. They occur only in the first volume of the work, but they are extremely numerous, disfiguring almost every page. The title contains this quatrain, which I may print, as it has been incorrectly given in both the editions of Gilchrist : Degrade first the Arts if you'd mankind degrade; That is Blake's final judgment on the Discourses of Reynolds, a book with which it was impossible that his transcendental and ill-trained enthusiasm could be in sympathy. To have printed many of his entertaining diatribes would have been to edit Blake under the guise of editing Reynolds, but I hope that the specimens given may amuse, and yet suffice. EDMUND Gosse. CONTENTS The advantages proceeding from the institution of a Royal Academy-Hints offered to the consideration of the professors and visitors :-That an implicit obedience to the rules of art be exacted from the young students;- That a premature disposition to a masterly dexterity be repressed; The course and order of study--The different stages of art -Much copying discountenanced-The artist at all times The great leading principles of the grand style--Of beauty -The genuine habits of nature to be distinguished from those General ideas, the presiding principle which regulates every part of art; invention, expression, colouring, and drapery-Two distinct styles in history painting; the grand, and the ornamental-The schools in which each is to b |