well as with your pencil; and every one to whom I shewed your letters, felt an interest in your little adventures, as well as a satisfaction in your description; because there is not only a taste, but a feeling in what you observe, something that shews you have an heart; and I would have you by all means keep it. I thank you for Alexander; Reynolds sets an high esteem on it, he thinks it admirably drawn, and with great spirit. He had it at his house for some time, and returned it in a very fine frame; and it at present makes a capital ornament of our little dining-room between the two doors. At Rome you are, I suppose, even still so much agitated by the profusion of fine things on every side of you, that you have hardly had time to sit down to methodical and regular study. When you do, you will certainly select the best parts of the best things, and attach yourself to them wholly. You, whose letter would be the best direction in the world to any other painter, want none yourself from me, who know little of the matter. But, as you were always indulgent enough to bear my humour under the name of advice, you will permit me now, my dear Barry, once more to wish you in the beginning at least, to contract the circle of your studies. The extent and rapidity of your mind carries you to too great a diversity of things, and to the completion of a whole, before you are quite master of the parts, in a degree equal to the dignity of your ideas. This disposition arises from a generous impatience, which is a fault almost characteristic of great genius. But it is a fault nevertheless, and one which I am sure you will correct, when you consider that there is a great deal of mechanic in your profession, in which, however, the distinctive part of the art consists, and without which the first ideas can only make a good critic, not a painter. I confess I am not much desirous of your composing many pieces, for some time at least. Composition (though by some people placed foremost in the list of the ingredients of an art I do not value near so highly. I know none, who attempts, that does not succeed tolerably in that part : but that exquisite masterly drawing which is the great school where you are, has fallen to the lot of very few, perhaps to none of the present age, in its highest perfection. If I were to indulge a conjecture, I should attribute all that is called greatness of style and manner of drawing, to this exact knowledge of the parts of the human body, of anatomy and perspective. For, by knowing exactly and habitually, without the labour of particular and occasional thinking, what was to be done in every figure they designed, they naturally attained a freedom and spirit of outline; because they could be daring without being absurd: whereas, ignorance, if it be cautious, is poor and timid; if bold, it is only blindly presumptuous. This minute and thorough knowledge of anatomy, and practical as well as theoretical perspective, by which I mean to include foreshortening, is all the effect of labour and use in harticular studies, and not in general compositions. Notwithstanding your natural repugnance to handling of carcasses, you ought to make the knife go with the pencil, and study anatomy in real, and if you can, in frequent dissections. You know that a man who despises as you do, the minutiæ of the art, is bound to be quite perfect in the noblest part of all; or he is nothing. Mediocrity is tolerable in middling things, but

not at all in the great. In the course of the studies I speak of, it would not be amiss to paint portraits often and diligently. This I do not say as wishing you to turn your studies to portrait-painting, quite otherwise; but because many things in the human face will certainly escape you, without some intermixture of that kind of study. Well, I think I have said enough to try your humility on this subject. But I am thus troublesome from a sincere anxiety for your success. I think you a man of honour and of genius, and I would not have your talents lost to yourself, your friends, or your country, by any means. You will then attribute my freedom to my solicitude about you, and my solicitude to my friendship. Be so good to continue your letters and observations as usual. They are exceedingly grateful to us all, and we keep them by us." p. 86.

If this letter shews Mr. Burke's discernment in what was necessary to Barry as an artist, the following will not appear less necessary for his consideration as a man. In both cases, indeed, as well as in the whole of Mr. Burke's correspondence, we must admire his judicious as well as friendly advice, and regret that it was not in all respects followed.

"As to any reports concerning your conduct and behaviour, you may be very sure they could have no kind of influence here; for none of us are of such a make, as to trust to any one's report, for the character of a person, whom we ourselves know. Until very lately, I had never heard of any thing of your proceedings from others: and when I did, it was much less than I had known from yourself, that you had been upon ill terms with the artists and virtuosi in Rome, without much mention of cause or consequence. If you have improved these unfortunate quarrels to your advancement in your art, you have turned a very disagreeable circumstance, to a very capital advantage. However you may have succeeded in this uncommon attempt, permit me to suggest to you, with that friendly liberty which you have always had the goodness to bear from me, that you cannot possibly have always the same success, either with regard to your fortune or your reputation. Depend upon it, that you will find the same competitions, the same jealousies, the same arts and cabals, the emulations of interest and of fame, and the same agitations and passions here, that you have experienced in Italy; and if they have the same effect on your temper, they will have just the same effects on your interest; and be your merit what it will, you will never be employed to paint a picture. It will be the same at London as at Rome; and the same in Paris as in London: for the world is pretty nearly alike in all its parts: nay, though it would perhaps be a little inconvenient to me, I had a thousand times rather you should fix your residence in Rome than here, as I should not then have the mortification of seeing with my own eyes, a genius of the first rank, lost to the world, himself, and his friends, as I certainly must, if you do not assume a manner of acting and thinking here, totally different from what your letters from Rome have described to me. That you have had just subjects of indignation

always, and of anger often, I do no ways doubt; who can live in the world without some trial of his patience? But believe me, my dear Barry, that the arms with which the ill dispositions of the world are to be combated, and the qualities by which it is to be reconciled to us, and we reconciled to it, are moderation, gentleness, a little indulgence to others, and a great deal of distrust of ourselves; which are not qualities of a mean spirit, as some may possibly think them; but vir. tues of a great and noble kind, and such as dignify our nature, as much as they contribute to our repose and fortune; for nothing can be so unworthy of a well composed soul, as to pass away life in bickerings and litigations, in snarling and scuffling with every one about us. Again and again, dear Barry, we must be at peace with our species; if not for their sakes, yet very much for our own. Think what my feelings must be, from my unfeigned regard to you, and from my wishes that your talents might be of use, when I see what the inevitable consequences must be, of your persevering in what has hitherto been your course ever since I knew you, and which you will permit me to trace out to you beforehand. You will come here; you will observe what the artists are doing, and you will sometimes speak a disapprobation in plain words, and sometimes in a no less expressive silence. By degrees you will produce some of your own works. They will be variously criticised; you will defend them; you will abuse those that have attacked you; expostulations, discussions, possibly challenges, will go forward; you will shun your brethren, they will shun you. In the mean time gentlemen will avoid your friendship, for fear of be. ing engaged in your quarrels: you will fall into distresses, which will only aggravate your disposition for farther quarrels; you will be obliged for maintenance to do any thing for any body; your very talents will depart, for want of hope and encouragement, 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." p. 154.

From other parts of this correspondence, it appears further that more of ill will and wrangling passed and repassed between him and others at Rome, than his friends approved of.' For this his biographer makes the following apology:

"Barry was a man who seldom saw with the eyes of others; his views and opinions were peculiar to himself, and as his own, often widely differing from those of ordinary minds. he had an unguarded force of language and manner to maintain them, which, with those who could not cope with him, created enemies; and when enemies once declare themselves, one must be cautious of reports; there is therefore nothing to say on this matter in addition to what the reader has found in the correspondence; who must have been delighted with the elegant and friendly exhortations often thrown out by Mr. Edmund Burke, not so much to curb the irritable and boisterous temper of the young artist, as to sooth and allay it."

·

After an absence of five years mostly spent at Rome, he arrived in England in 1771, and claimed the admiration of the public, not unsuccessfully, by his ' Venus,' and his Jupiter and Juno,' the former one of his best pictures. In his Death of Wolf' he failed, principally from his introducing naked figures, and he yielded reluctantly to Mr. West's more popular picture. This which he painted in 1776, was the last he exhibited at the Royal Academy.

About 1774 we find him averse to portrait-painting, from a dread of being confined to the modern costumes of dress, which we can remember were at that time rather ungraceful. It is well known, however, that he violated his own principles in some of the figures introduced in his great work in the Society's rooms, Adelphi, when he was under no kind of constraint; but this difference between judgment and practice was in many instances remarkable in Barry, as we shall have occasion to notice hereafter.

About this time likewise he began to be jealous of the extreme intimacy of the Burkes with Sir Joshua Reynolds, which led him to suppose that those friends overlooked his merits to aggrandize Sir Joshua's.' Some letters that passed betwixt him and Mr. Burke on this subject, place his temper in no very pleasing light, and although the Burkes never ceased to serve him when they could, it is evident that the mutual warmth of friendship was abated. The immediate cause of the breach was this: Dr. Brocklesby requested Mr. Burke to sit to Barry for a portrait; Mr. Burke mady various applications to the artist for an opportunity during two years, all which Barry shifted off on pretence of business. At length Mr. Burke thought it necessary to apologize for his importunity in a very polite and complimentary letter. Barry, in his answer, mistook, or affected to mistake this for irony, and Mr. Burke rejoined in the following letter.

" TO JAMES BARRY, ESQ.

"SIR,-I have been honoured with a letter from you, written in a style, which from most of my acquaintances I should have thought a little singular. In return to an apology of mine for an unseasonable intrusion, couched in language the most respectful I could employ, you tell me that I attack your quiet and endeavour to make a quarrel with you. You will judge of the propriety of this matter, and of this mode of expression.

"When I took the liberty of offering myself to sit for my picture on Saturday last, I could not possibly mean to offend you. When you declined the offer in the manner in which you declined offers of the same kind several times before, I confess I felt that such importunity on my part, and on such a subject, must make me look rather little in the eyes of others, as it certainly did in my own. The desire of being painted is one of the modes in which vanity sometimes displays itself.

I am however mistaken, if it be one of the fashions of that weakness in me. I thought it necessary, on being dismissed by you so often to make you at length some apology for the frequent trouble I had given you. I assured you that my desire of sitting solely arose from my wish to comply with the polite and friendly request of Doctor Brocklesby. I thought I should be the more readily excused on that account by you, who, as you are a man informed much more than is common, must know, that some attention to the wishes of our friend even in trifles, is an essential among the duties of friendship; I had too much value for Dr. Brocklesby's to neglect him even in this trivial article. Such was my apology. You find fault with it, and I should certainly ask your pardon, if I were sensible that it did or could convey any thing offensive.

"When I speak in high terms of your merit and your skill in your art, you are pleased to treat my commendation as irony. How justly the warm (though unlearned and ineffectual) testimony I have borne to that merit and that skill upon all occasions, calls for such a reflexion I must submit to your own equity upon a sober consideration. Those who have heard me speak upon that subject have not imagined my tone to be ironical; whatever other blame it may have merited. I have always thought and always spoke of you as a man of uncommon genius, and I am sorry that my expression of this sentiment has not had the good fortune to meet with your approbation. In future, however, I hope you will at least think more favourably of my sincerity; for if my commendation and my censure have not that quality, I am conscious they have nothing else to recommend them.

"In the latter part of your letter you refuse to paint the picture, except upon certain terms. These terms you tell me are granted to all other painters. They who are of importance enough to grant terms to gentlemen of your profession may enter into a discussion of their reality or their reasonableness. But I never thought my portrait a business of consequence. It was the shame of appearing to think so by my importunity that gave you the trouble of my apology. But that I may not seem to sin without excuse, because with knowledge, I must answer to your charging me, that "I well know that much more is required by others," that you think far too highly of my knowledge in this particular. I know no such thing by any experience of my own. I have been painted in my life five times; twice in little, and three times in large. The late Mr. Spencer, and the late Mr. Sisson painted the miniatures. Mr. Worlidge and Sir Joshua Reynolds painted the rest. I assure you upon my honour, I never gave any of these gentlemen any regular previous notice whatsoever.

"They condescended to live with me without ceremony; and they painted me, when my friends desired it, at such times as I casually went to admire their performances. and, just as it mutually suited us. A picture of me is now painting for Mr. Thrale by Sir Joshua Reynolds; and in this manner; and this only. I will not presume to say, that the condescension of some men forms a rule for others. I know that extraordinary civility cannot be claimed as a matter of strict justice. In that view possibly you may be right. It is not for me to dis