d friends of Johnson's were the Thrales. Mr. Thrale was
a rich brewer, and a man of parts, and his wife was one of the
brightest women of her day. Johnson was a constant visitor at their
house, and became at last, practically, a member of the family. The
Thrales's drawing-room at their Streatham villa was the scene of many
brilliant gatherings, where intellectual people met for conversation
and discussion. Johnson was the autocrat of this circle. He was often
rude, even insolent, in expressing his opinion, and wounded many by
his sarcasm. But his vast stores of information, his keen mind and
ready wit, made his conversation an intellectual feast.

It was an ambition of Mr. Thrale to ornament his house with a gallery
of portraits of contemporary celebrities, and it was for this
collection that Reynolds painted the portrait of Johnson, reproduced
in our illustration. It was really a repetition of a portrait he had
previously painted for their common friend and club-fellow, Bennet
Langton.

Here we see the sage at the age of sixty odd years, precisely as he
appeared among his friends at Streatham. The painter has straightened
the wig, which was usually worn awry, but otherwise it is the very
Dr. Johnson of whom we read so much, with his shabby brown coat, his
big shambling shoulders, and coarse features.

A remarkable thing about the portrait is that Reynolds succeeded so
well in showing us the man himself under this rough exterior. The
inferior artist paints only the outside of a face just as it looks to
a stranger who knows nothing of the character of the sitter. The
master paints the face as it looks to a friend who knows the soul
within. Now, Reynolds was not only a master, but he was, in this case,
painting a friend. So he put on the canvas, not merely the eccentric
face of Dr. Johnson as a stranger might see it, but he painted in it
that expression of intellectual power which the great man showed among
his congenial friends. Something, too, is suggested in the portrait of
that sternly upright spirit which hated a lie.

It is a portrait of Johnson the scholar, the thinker, and the
conversationalist. He seems to be engaged in some argument, and is
delivering his opinion with characteristic authoritativeness. The
heavy features are lighted by his thought. One may fancy that the talk
turns upon patriotism, when Johnson, roused to indignation by the
false pretences of many would-be patriots, exclaims, "Sir, patriotism