or cast him as she eventually did, into a life-long line of political contention and enlightened statesmanship, embracing not only the interests of our own nation, but of the world. Yet this trying process had no effect in deadening his affections. More than once his tears and his pen, while executing the trust reposed in him as executor by the departed, proved that the same warmth and worth that had stamped the little-known man of letters in 1758, imbued the great statesman at the summit of fame, in 1792. His Hail and Farewell to the artist forms a literary portrait of the highest order.
Goldsmith, nearly twenty years previously, had judged Reynolds not less kindly than justly in the jocular epitaph in Retaliation—
Nor should it be here omitted that a fourth worthy son of Ireland, Lord Charlemont, participated not less warmly in these feelings. In his visits to England, hours were given to conversation with Reynolds upon art and Italy in which he was well informed. He occasionally dined with the President to meet Burke, Malone, and other men of note and literature; had his portrait painted; received for private perusal the MS. of Reynolds’s Flemish Travels, until frequent communication instructed both that nature had tinctured their minds with kindred elements of good
- ↑ It is not unlikely that this unfinished line may have been the last from his pen. It had been carelessly omitted in his printed works, although noting another fine quality in the deceased, till I recovered and introduced it in the edition in four 8vo. volumes (including above a volume of new matter) in 1837.
