there were two copies. One was destroyed by Lord Nottingham, the other remained long in the hands of Lady Burlington; but Pope, finding that in several places the Papists of the time of Charles II. and James, were represented in an unfavourable light, prevailed upon her to burn them.”
The conclusion of the Ireland forgery left him free to pursue the more grateful employment of collecting and editing the works of his dear friend Reynolds. This had been early designed, sanctioned by the approval of Burke, as the most appropriate tribute to the memory of the departed. He had been two years employed also upon an enlarged and revised history of the stage—but this was put aside for a time. Reynolds commanded more immediate attention; and his eyes found relief in ceasing to decipher old papers. To Lord Charlemont the intention as usual had been communicated, who thus replies, November 1794:—“I am glad to find that our ever-to-be-lamented Sir Joshua’s works are in such forwardness. I have read his Journey to Flanders which he lent me in MS., and like it extremely. It is the best voyage pittoresque now extant.”
The work appeared in the spring of 1797. No methodical or extended biography was attempted. A plain, unpretending outline gives us the main facts of his career, followed by the Discourses, Idlers, a Journey to Flanders and Holland, Notes upon Du Fresnoy’s Art of Painting. These were his own. But with them are printed, as Mason did in 1783 at York in order to complete the basis for Reynolds’s notes—Masons translation of Du Fresnoy, Dryden’s
