he said; "that, to be sure, was a masterpiece." I asked what he thought of Mrs. Inchbald? He said, "Oh! very highly; there was no affectation in her. I once took up her Simple Story' (which my sister had borrowed from the circulating library), and looking into it I said, 'My God! what have you got here?' and I never moved from the chair till I had finished it. Her Nature and Art' is equally fine-the very marrow of genius." She seems to me, I added, like Venus writing books. "Yes, women have certainly been successful in writing novels, and in plays, too. I think Mrs. Centlivre's are better than Congreve's. Their letters, too, are admirable; it is only when they put on the breeches, and try to write like men, that they become pedantic and tiresome. In giving advice, too, I have often found that they excelled; and when I have been irritated by any trifling circumstance, and have laid more stress upon it than it was worth, they have seen the thing in a right point of view and tamed down my asperities." On this I remarked that 1 thought in general it might be said that the faculties of women were of a passive character. They judged by the simple effect upon their feelings without inquiring into causes. Men had to act; women had the coolness and the advantages of bystanders, and were neither implicated in the theories nor passions of men. While we.

were proving a thing to be wrong, they would feel it to be ridiculous. I said I thought they had more of common-sense, though less of acquired capacity, than men. They were freer from the absurdities of creeds and dogmas, from the virulence of party in religion and politics (by which we strove to show our sense and superiority), nor were their heads so much filled with the lumber of learned folios. I mentioned as an illustration, that when old Baxter (the celebrated casuist and Nonconformist divine) first went to Kidderminster to preach, he was almost pelted by the women for main

taining from the pulpit the then fashionable and orthodox doctrine that "hell was paved with infants' skulls." The theory which the learned divine had piled up on arguments and authorities is now exploded; the commonsense feeling on the subject, which the women of that day took up in opposition to it as a dictate of humanity, would be now thought the philosophical one. "Yes," said Northcote, "but this exploded doctrine was knocked down by some man, as it had been set up by one; the women would let things remain as they are without making any progress in error or wisdom. We do best together; our strength and our weakness mutually correct each other." Northcote then read me from a manuscript volume lying by him a character drawn of his deceased wife by a Dissenting minister (a Mr. Fox, of Plymouth), which is so beautiful that I shall transcribe it here:

"Written by Mr. John Fox on the death of his wife, who was the daughter of the Rev. Mr. Isaac Gelling.

"My dear wife died, to my unspeakable grief, Dec. 19th, 1762. With the loss of my dear companion died all the pleasure of my life. And no wonder ; I had lived with her forty years, in which time nothing happened to abate the strictness of our friendship or to create a coolness or indifference, so common and even unregarded by many in the world. I thank God I enjoyed my full liberty, my health, such pleasures and diversions as I liked, perfect peace and competence, during the time; which were all seasoned and heightened every day more or less by constant marks of friendship, most inviolable affection, and a most cheerful endeavour to make my life agreeable. Nothing disturbed me but her many and constant disorders, under all which I could see how her faithful heart was strongly attached to me. And who could stand the shock of seeing the attacks of death upon her, and then her final dissolution? The consequences to

me were fatal. Old age rushed upon me like an armed man: my appetite failed, my strength was gone, every amusement became flat and dull; my countenance fell, and I have nothing to do but to drag on a heavy chain for the rest of my life, which I hope a good God will enable me to do without murmuring, and, in conclusion, to say with all my soul

"TE DEUM LAUDAMUS!"

This was written on a paper blotted by tears, and stuck with wafers into the first page of the family Bible.

Mr. John Fox died 22nd of October, 1763; he was born May 10th, 1693.

Conversation the Sixth.

NORTHCOTE alluded to a printed story of his having hung an early picture of Haydon's out of sight, and of Fuseli's observing on the occasion, "By G―d, you are sending him to heaven before his time!" He said there was not the least foundation for this story; nor could there be, he not having been hanger that year. He read out of the same publication a letter from Burke to a young artist of the name of Barrow, full of excellent sense, advising him by no means to give up his profession as an engraver till he was sure he could succeed as a painter, out of idle ambition and an unfounded contempt for the humbler and more laborious walks of life. "I could not have thought it of him," said Northcote; "I confess he never appeared to me so great a man." I asked what kind of looking man he was? Northcote answered, “You have seen the picture? There was something I did not like-a thinness in the features and an expression of hauteur, though mixed with condescension and the manners of a gentle

man.

I can't help thinking he had a hand in the 'Discourses'—that he gave some of the fine graceful turns; for Sir Joshua paid a greater deference to him than to anybody else, and put up with freedoms that he would only have submitted to from some peculiar obligation. Indeed Miss Reynolds used to complain that, whenever any of Burke's poor Irish relations came over, they were all poured in upon them to dinner; but Sir Joshua never took any notice, but bore it all with the greatest patience and tranquillity. To be sure there was another reason: he expected Burke to write his Life, and for this he would have paid almost any price. This was what made him submit to the intrusions of Boswell, to the insipidity of Malone, and to the magisterial dictation of Burke; he made sure that out of these three one would certainly write his Life, and insure him immortality that way. He thought no more of the person who actually did write it afterwards than he would have suspected his dog of writing it. Indeed, I wish he could have known; for it would have been of some advantage to me, and he might have left me something not to dwell on his defects--though he was as free from them as any man; you can make any one ridiculous with whom you live on terms of intimacy.

but

"I remember an instance of this that happened with respect to old Mr. Mudge, whom you must have heard me speak of, and who was esteemed an idol by Burke, Dr. Johnson, and many others. Sir Joshua wanted to reprint his sermons and prefix a life to them, and asked me to get together any particulars I could learn of him. So I gave him a manuscript account of Mr. Mudge, written by an old schoolfellow of his (Mr. Fox, a Dissenting minister in the West of England); after which I heard no more of the Life. Mr. Mudge was in fact a man of extraordinary talents and great eloquence; and by representing in a manner the High Church

notions both of Dr. Johnson and Sir Joshua (for both were inclined the same way), they came to consider him as a sort of miracle of virtue and wisdom. There was, however, something in Mr. Fox's plain account that would strike Sir Joshua, for he had an eye for nature; and he would at once perceive it was nearer the truth than Dr. Johnson's pompous character of him, which was proper only for a tombstone; it was like one of Kneller's portraits-it would do for anybody. That," said Northcote, "is old Mr. Mudge's definition of beauty, which Sir Joshua has adopted in the Discourses'—that it is the medium of form. For what is a handsome nose? A long nose is not a handsome nose- -neither is a short nose a handsome one: it must then be one that is neither long nor short, but in the middle between both. Even Burke bowed to his authority, and Sir Joshua thought him the wisest man he ever knew. Once when Sir Joshua was expressing his impatience of some innovation, and I said, 'At that rate, the Christian religion could never have been established:' 'Oh!' he said, 'Mr. Mudge has answered that'-which seemed to satisfy him.”

I made some remark, that I wondered he did not come up to London, though the same feeling seemed to belong to other clever men born in Devonshire (as Gandy), whose ambition was confined to their native county, so that there must be some charm in the place. "You are to consider," he replied, "it is almost a peninsula, so that there is no thoroughfare, and people are therefore more stationary in one spot. It is for this reason they necessarily intermarry among themselves, and you can trace the genealogies of families for centuries back; whereas in other places, and particularly here in London, where everything of that kind is jumbled together, you never know who any man's grandfather was. There are country squires and plain gentry down in that part of the world who have occupied the same estates long