with shape or with form, and may be compared to sounds which can be described but not drawn.

How and at what period the love of art came upon Romney, has not been clearly shown. Cumberland asserts, that it was inspired by the cuts in the Universal Magazine. Hayley, who probably had the story from the painter, says, that he consumed the time of his fellow-workmen in sketching them in various attitudes: while the artist's son states, that Da Vinci's Treatise on Painting, illustrated by many fine engravings, was early in his hands. All these stories may be true: genius draws its materials from many sources. The sight of a few fine prints in an obscure village in Yorkshire awakened the spark in Stothard; the carved figures in an old pictureframe did as much for Chantrey; and Wilkie's sense of the mingled comic and serious was first shown in drawing the head of one of his schoolfellows, who sat to learn his neglected lesson on that bad eminence, the stool of shame. ney himself used to relate, that one day in church he saw a man with a most singular face, from which he could never take his eye; he spoke of it when he went home, and his parents desired him to describe the man. He took a pencil, and from memory delineated the face so skilfully, and with such strength of resemblance, that they immediately named the person he meant; and the boy was so pleased with this, that he began to draw with more serious application.

Rom

Cumberland, with some boldness, describes the artist as "a child of nature, who had never seen or heard any thing that could elicit his genius or

urge him to emulation, and who became a painter without a prototype." His genius, indeed, was the gift of nature; but his skill of hand and his knowledge of colours had to be obtained at the common price study and application.

A regular instructor came in the hour of need: this was an eccentric young painter, whose love of fine dress, and loftiness of carriage, obtained for him among the peasantry of the North the title of Count Steele. This person had derived some knowledge from one Wright, a painter of shipping in Liverpool; and had moreover studied for a year in Paris; and making his appearance in Lancashire as a painter of domestic pictures, attracted some notice. It happened that Romney had at this period not only covered many deals and boards in the shop with sketches of his fellow-workmen, but had ventured farther, and made a drawing of Mrs. Gardiner, a lady of some taste and discernment, who on seeing his performance commended him much, and encouraged him to proceed. All this was represented to his father, and something like a consultation was held, when it was resolved that he should be placed under a regular practitioner; and as Steele was then at Kendal, and wanted a pupil, it was determined to place him in his studio. To Steele Romney was accordingly conducted, and, at the age of nineteen, bound apprentice for four years, to learn "the art or science of painting, and to obey all lawful and reasonable commands." The premium was fixed at twenty pounds. Romney was not one of those fortunate men, who choose sagacious friends, or make

happy engagements, in their youth. Williamson the alchemist, whom he continued to speak of with tears of admiration long after he had risen to fame, was at the best but a worthless vagabond; and Count Steele, though an artist of some talent, and no despicable dauber, as Cumberland represents him, had failings which proved ruinous to himself and injurious to his pupil. His love of dress involved him in debts which he could not easily discharge, and his love of idleness made matters worse misrule was mistress of his household. Romney complained that he had to grind colours frequently which he was not allowed to use, and was made a drudge. He confessed, however, that he acquired considerable knowledge in the preparation and mixing of colours, through his own spirit of observation, as well as from his master's instruction, whose boast it was that he had studied chiaro scuro under Vanloo.

The master of Romney found by and by that painting portraits at four guineas each was but a slow way of acquiring a fortune: he sought to mend his income by marriage: and his French airs and finery aided him in securing the affections of a young lady of some fortune, with whom he resolved to elope to Gretna Green. She was vigilantly guarded: nevertheless Count Steele, through the active agency of Romney, carried her triumphantly over the border, leaving his pupil to superintend the studio during the honeymoon. The extreme sensibility of Romney's nature is repeatedly alluded to by Hayley; and it is noteworthy, how many of the most important actions of his life, whether to his discredit or his honour,

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are traced by this sagacious friend to the samé source. His extreme sensibility brought a fever upon him at the conclusion of the Count's elope ment affair; and his extreme sensibility made him fall in love with a young woman, who attended him during his sickness. Of this wedding, his friend. the poet, and his own son, give accounts somewhat different. "The juvenile pupil, left desolate and sick in the lodgings of his distant master," says Hayley, was attended by a young woman of the house, whom he described as a person of a compassionate character. The pity so na tural to a female attendant on a young lonely invalid, and the gratitude of a lively conva lescent, produced an event which can hardly surprise any person acquainted with human nature a precipitate marriage. George Romney, the inexperienced apprentice to a painter himself of little experience, was married in Kendal, to Mary Abbot, of Kirkland, on the 14th day of October, 1756."-" He had a nice perception of what is beautiful in the forms of nature," says the Rev. John Romney, "an imagination that exaggerated its realities, and a quick susceptibility of impression from such objects as delighted his fancy: the consequence was, that he became enamoured of a young female, into whose society he had happened to be introduced soon after he came to Kendal. The object of his affection was in the same rank of life with himself, and respectably connected. She excelled more in symmetry of form than in regularity of features; yet in this latter particular she was far from deficient. She had had the misfortune to

lose her father when she was a child: her mother was, however, an amiable and prudent woman, and discharged her maternal duties ably; instilling into the minds of her two daughters the principles of morality and religion, and illustrating her precepts by her own correct example."

His precipitate marriage drew upon him the rebuke of his parents; and he vindicated himself with some firmness and skill. "If you consider every thing deliberately," he wrote, "you will find it to be the best affair that ever happened to me: because, if I have fortune, I shall make a better painter than I should otherwise have done, as it will be a spur to my application; and my thoughts being now still, and not obstructed by youthful follies, I can practise with more diligence and success than ever." In fulfilment of his own maxims, he devoted himself to his art with the most resolute industry; his application was incessant: and having no other models to study from, save those of nature, he acquired a style peculiar to himself, which in his higher fortunes he modified, but never abandoned. To his wife, too, he was in those early days kind and indulgent; indeed, she seems to have been in every respect worthy of his affections: she supplied him secretly with money in his professional tours with Steele, conveying half a guinea at a time under the seal of her letter; and he rewarded her regard by an acceptable present of his own portrait in oil an early essay, hard, dry, and laboured.

Though Hayley quotes, for the purpose of rejecting, the celebrated dictum of Parolles