an inspiration, that necessarily brought with it carelessness and profligacy.  By his polished manners, his manly virtues, and his prudential views, which mainly formed his taste, and enabled him to disseminate taste, Sir Joshua rescued art from this degrading prejudice, which, while it flattered vanity and excused vice, made the objects of the flattery contemptible and inexcusable.  If genius be a gift, it is one that passes through the mind, and takes its colour; the love of all that is pure, and good, and great, can alone invest genius with that habit of thought which, applied to practice, makes the perfect painter.  Castiglione considered painting the proper acquirement of the perfect gentleman—­Sir Joshua Reynolds thought that to be in mind and manners the “gentlemen,” was as necessary to perfect the painter.  The friend of Johnson and Burke, and of all persons of that brilliant age, distinguished by abilities and worth, was no common man.  In raising himself, he was ever mindful to raise the art to which he had devoted himself, in general estimation.

We have noticed a charge against the writer of the Discourses, that he did not pursue that great style which he so earnestly recommended.  Besides that this is not quite true—­for he unquestionably did adopt so much of the great manner as his subjects would, generally speaking, allow—­there was a sufficient reason for the tone he adopted, that it was one useful and honourable, and none can deny that it was suited to his genius.  He was doubtless conscious of his own peculiar powers, and contemplated the degree of excellence which he attained.  He felt that he could advance that department of his profession, and surely no unpardonable prudential views led him to the adoption of it.  It was the one, perhaps, best suited to his abilities; and there is nothing in his works which might lead us to suspect that he would have succeeded so well in any other.  The characteristic of his mind was a nice observation.  It was not in its native strength creative.  We doubt if Sir Joshua Reynolds ever attempted a perfectly original creation—­if he ever designed without having some imitation in view.  We mean not to say, that in the process he did not take slight advantages of accidents, and, if the expression may be used, by a second sort of creation, make his work in the end perfectly his own.  But we should suppose that his first conceptions for his pictures, (of course, we speak principally of those not strictly portraits,) came to him through his admiration of some of the great originals, which he had so deeply studied.  In almost every work by his hand, there is strongly marked his good sense—­almost a prudent forbearance.  He ever seemed too cautious not to dare beyond his tried strength, more especially in designing a subject of several figures.  His true genius as alone conspicuous in those where much of the portrait was admissible; and such was his “Tragic Muse,” a strictly historical picture:  was