such,) setting aside Mr. Taylor's natural ability for the labor, he
found himself pre-eminently elected to complete and issue the "Life and
Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds." The request of Mr. Murray, the publisher,
appears, however, to have spurred him to the actual acceptance of the
work. Some idea of these volumes, with their varied interest of life and
art, may be briefly conveyed by quoting from the Preface, where Mr.
Taylor writes:--

"The life of a painter, more than most men, as a rule, derives its
interest from his work and from the people he paints. When his sitters
are the chief men and women of his time, for beauty, genius, rank,
power, wit, goodness, or even fashion and folly, this interest is
heightened. It culminates when the painter is the equal and honored
associate of his sitters. All these conditions concur in the case of
Reynolds. It is impossible to write a Life and Times of the painter
without passing in review--hasty and brief as it must be--the great
facts of politics, literature, and manners during his busy life, which
touched, often very closely, the chief actors in a drama taking in the
most stirring events of the last century, and containing the germs of
many things that have materially operated to shape our arts, manners,
and institutions.

"By the use of these materials, I have attempted to carry out Mr.
Leslie's intention of presenting Sir Joshua in his true character, as
the genial centre of a most various and brilliant society, as well as
the transmitter of its chief figures to our time by his potent art."

It is only by turning over the pages of each chapter, and observing
closely the brackets wherein Mr. Taylor's portion of the work is
enclosed, that we discover how great his labor has been, and how well
fulfilled. His interpolations are flung, like the Fribourg Bridge, fine
and strong, welding together opposing points, and never inserted like a
wedge. A happy instance of this appears in the first volume, where Mr.
Taylor says, speaking of Johnson, after the death of his mother, "The
regard of such men as Reynolds was henceforth the best comfort of that
great, solitary heart; and the painter's purse and house and pen were
alike at his friend's service." "For example," Leslie continues, "in
this year Reynolds wrote three papers for the 'Idler.' 'I have heard Sir
Joshua say,' observes Northcote, 'that Johnson required them from him on
a sudden emergency, and on that account he sat up the