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LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET,

AND CHARING CROSS.

PREFACE.

In order to understand the part I have had in this book, and the circumstances under which I undertook it, it is necessary that I should inform

that I should inform my readers that it had been a cherished object of the late excellent and much-regretted painter, C. R. Leslie, R.A., for several years before his death, to do justice to the memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds, which he believed had suffered from the tone of Allan Cunningham's Biography of that great painter, contained in his 'Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.'

In the unfinished draft of a preface to his (unfortunately) unfinished work-written on his death-bed-I find this statement of Mr. Leslie's main object in writing a new Life of Reynolds

"As the impression made on my mind by all I have read and heard of Reynolds is very different from the estimate formed of his character by Allan Cunningham, I have endeavoured to show that he did not deserve the imputations that are dispersed through the most popular account that has yet been published of him, nor the aspersions on his character to be found in that author's Lives of Hogarth, Wilson, and Gainsborough.

"To this end," he continues, "I have arranged in

this volume many more particulars than have hitherto been published in any one account of Sir Joshua Reynolds.

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Among these are some anecdotes which were related to me, or to others from whom I received them, by Sir George Beaumont, the Earl of Egremont, Sir William Beechy, Mr. Stothard, Mr. Rogers, Lord Holland, and Sir Martin Shee; all of whom were personally acquainted with Reynolds.

"Of the materials I have used, which have appeared in print, though not in any Life of Sir Joshua, the accounts given of him in Madame d'Arblay's Memoirs, and in the Memoirs of her father, Dr. Burney, are extremely interesting. That lady carries us into his town and country house, places us at his table, in his own drawing-room, or in the drawing-rooms of his friends, where we see and hear him, with Johnson, Burke, Gibbon, Sheridan, Jackson of Exeter, and other people of eminence."

Mr. Leslie then refers to the Collections illustrating the Life of Sir Joshua, published by the late W. Cotton, Esq.,' an enthusiast on the subject, to which he had devoted many years of research, crowned by his bequest to Plymouth of the Cottonian Library. For the purpose of these works Mr. Cotton had had placed in his hands most of the papers left by Sir Joshua, and then in the possession of his grand-niece, Miss Gwatkin, of

1 'Sir Joshua Reynolds and his Works. Gleanings from his Diary, unpublished Manuscripts, and from other Sources.' London, Longman, Colnaghi, and Co.; and Plymouth, Roger Lidstone, 1856. AndSir Joshua Reynolds's Notes and Observations on

Pictures, &c. &c.; also the Rev. W. Mason's Observations on Sir Joshua's Method of Colouring, unpublished Letters of Johnson, Malone, and others; with an Appendix containing a transcript of Sir Joshua's Account-book.' London, John Russell Smith, 1859.

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