with whom an epoch closed and tradition died, and Byron, whose voice, not always tuneful, or always sincere, was carried nevertheless upon the storm which startled the teeming world into the birth of a new order. Walpole wrote of her " her youthful figure, glowing good nature, sense and lively modesty, and modest familiarity, make her a phenomenon "; and this is the more to be noted and admired, when one reflects how rarely a woman who has succeeded in distinguishing herself for wit or knowledge can resist the temptation to pedantry-as it was in Mrs. Montague— to eccentricity, like that of George Sand-or moral grandeur of the kind with which George Eliot first abashed and at last fatigued her audience. She was equally at home in the world of letters and in the world of affairs. At the time of the great rebellion there was more storm and stress; under the Tudor sovereigns there was probably a more splendid exuberance; while the public life of our own day is unquestionably marked by greater propriety and solemnity of loquacity; still the political côterie which was attracted and held together by the wit and charm of the beautiful Duchess yields to no other of any period in the variety and interest of its component figures. It is true, of course, that for a person of quality literary toil relieves itself of much of the pains and anxiety of which Wordsworth complains-flattery comes even if fluency linger. Her verses, however, were praised by Walpole, to all appearance with at least as much sincerity as usual, and Coleridge

exclaims:

O lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure,
Whence learned you that heroic measure?

Unlike our modern impressionists, who tend a sickly sprout of egoism with curious care in nervous jealousy of the ancients, Reynolds felt with Bentley that those who claim to use what their forerunners earned in fame or faculty, must first qualify for membership of the same circle. His art was deliberately and elaborately composite, and thereby became not artificial, but simply adequate to the widest possible range of perception and selection. His aim was to combine into a form that should remain personal and national the full-glowing audacity of Rubens with the critical depth of Rembrandt, adding thereto meanwhile something of the touch of Correggio, under which.. flowers as if by magic suddenly

bud for ever to perfection. He bought pictures as investments, on the chance of hitting upon another and yet another hidden secret of perfection. In his own words, he looked upon himself "as playing a great game."

Reynolds painted not a few great pictures of great men, who, like Johnson, Yorick and Heathfield, remain for us immortal because typical and essential. But all this, and perhaps more, had already been achieved by Dürer, for example, with himself, by Titian with Charles V, by Velasquez with Innocent X-embodiments each and all, full grown and full flavoured, of masculine energy, by the side of which the women of the same style and time for the most part show frankly animal and prosaic, like Rubens' peach-coloured beauties, or the lady in Lotto's family group at the National Gallery, who despises and resents the constant inadequacy of her wool-gathering mate.' Even the maturely dimpled Gioconda, upon whom critics have operated like conjurers, extracting with a flourish only what they themselves have furtively concealed, puzzles and affronts far more than she seduces the beholder. Van Dyck, it is true, had gone from one to another of a whole peerage of ladies, but not before his art had reached its furthest limits, and borne its ripest fruit. Superior both to his craft and to his theme, like Sir Godfrey after him, he dealt summarily with his sitters and according to pattern, with a sort of light-fingered nonchalance as became the gentleman into which he had suddenly blossomed under English skies.

But Time, as he wove new figures, brought to the painter new ideals and new chances. It remained, therefore, for our own gentle Reynolds to discover and to perpetuate the eternal feminine of aristocracy—courage without coarseness, freedom without license, and tenderness with no weakness of subservience, all that, in short, which is the crown of the gentle life, where growth is protected and opportunity assured. Of such we have here an example in the fairest flower of an ancient stem rooted in the soil of a free country. Reynolds by a supreme effort has risen to the height of a unique opportunity. He has caught and fixed that grace which was too hard for Gainsborough. . . .

'This fragment having remained unpublished, Mr. Strong made use of this particular criticism of Lotto's pictures in the article on the Lotto at Wilton (cf. page 67).

X. Royal Society of British Artists.1

The Royal Society of Artists, though junior to the Royal Academy, is more than a hundred years old, that is to say old enough to have learnt caution in the pursuit of ideals and stability in the presence of change. The prize of their high calling—in Reynolds's phrase, "the honourable appellation of an English school"-the allied societies have not taken by storm; but it may be hoped that what has been patiently won will be firmly held. And even at the present day, when the very respectability of English effort and achievement is ridiculed, in a mixture of French and English, we can say to a society that must have seen at least four-and-twenty leaders of revolt:

O passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque finem!

The studies and other such opera minora contributed by prominent Academicians-from the rich men's tables, as it were-are a pleasing and instructive feature of these gatherings. For it often happens that the remarks a man makes when he is least on his good behaviour are the most characteristic and piquant of all. In the Central Gallery there are five studies by Sir Frederick Leighton which in their first freshness and impulsiveness are almost more significant of his power than all the luxurious labour of his finished works.

Ruskin once said that the only man who could put his pencil to full speed and yet retain perfect command over it was Dürer, and the President is certainly the only man who could have safely let himself go the shortest way to such heights and depths as these. With all the simplicity and concentration of Turner vignettes, these studies have a quality which, as it is the outcome of passion fed with knowledge, Turner failed to give-that is to say, they are classical, not in the conventional, but in the real sense of the word. Turner would have been no more impressed by Marathon in itself than by Mortlake, and he would have translated his impression into poetry or prose according to the weather. But here there is no obtrusive conquest of technical difficulties; no labels prepare the

'From an old proof found among Strong's papers; perhaps for the "Guardian."