“Johnson was a frequent and a welcome guest.  Though the sage was not seldom sarcastic and overbearing, he was endured and caressed, because he poured out the riches of his conversation more lavishly than Reynolds did his wines.”  He was compelled, a sentence or two after, to add, “It was honourable to that distinguished artist, that he perceived the worth of such men, and felt the honour which their society shed upon him; but it stopped not here, he often aided them with his purse, nor insisted upon repayment.”—­P. 258.  We have marked “insisted”—­it implies repayment was expected, if not enforced; and it might have been said, that a mutual “honour” was conferred.  Speaking of Northcote’s and Malone’s account of Sir Joshua’s “social and well-furnished table,” he adds, “these accounts, however, in as far as regards the splendour of the entertainments, must be received with some abatement.  The eye of a youthful pupil was a little blinded by enthusiasm.  That of Malone was rendered friendly, by many acts of hospitality, and a handsome legacy; while literary men and artists, who came to speak of books and paintings, cared little for the most part about the delicacy of the entertainment, provided it were wholesome.”  Here he quotes at length, no very good-natured account of the dinners given by Courteney.—­P. 273.  Even his sister, poor Miss Reynolds, whom Johnson loved and respected, must have her share of the writer’s sarcasm.  “Miss Reynolds seems to have been as indifferent about the good order of her domestics, and the appearance of her dishes at table, as her brother was about the distribution of his wine and venison.  Plenty was the splendour, and freedom was the elegance, which Malone and Boswell found in the entertainments of the artist.”—­P. 275.  If Reynolds was sparing of his wine, the word “plenty” was most inappropriate.  Even the remark of Dunning, Lord Ashburton, is perverted from its evident meaning, and as explained by Northcote, and the perversion casts a slur upon Sir Joshua’s guests; yet is it well known who they were.  “Well, Sir Joshua,” he said, “and who have you got to dine with you to-day?—­the last time I dined in your house, the company was of such a sort, that by ——­, I believe all the rest of the world enjoyed peace for that afternoon.”—­P. 276.  This is a gross idea, and unworthy a gentle mind.  “By an opinion so critically sagacious, and an apology for portrait-painting, which appeals so effectually to the kindly side of human nature, Johnson repaid a hundred dinners.”—­P. 276.  The liberality to De Gree is shortly told.—­P. 298.  “I have said that the President was frugal in his communications respecting the sources from whence he drew his own practice—­he forgets his caution in one of these notes.”—­P. 303.  We must couple this with some previous remarks; it is well known that Sir Joshua, as Northcote tells us, carefully locked up his experiments, and for more reasons than one:  first, he was dissatisfied,