cing-master's leg and his frizzled barber's-block
head, comes as near a caricature as a flattered likeness of the original
(which was a caricature) dares to do. To have had to paint that was
enough to have vulgarized any pencil. The defect of many of Lawrence's
female portraits was a sort of artificial, sentimental _elegantism_.
Pictures of the fine ladies of that day they undoubtedly were; pictures
of _great_ ladies, never; and, in looking at them, one sighed for the
exquisite simple grace and unaffected dignity of Reynolds's and
Gainsborough's noble and gentle women.

The lovely head of Lady Nugent, the fine portrait I have mentioned of
Mrs. W----, the splendid one of Lady Hatherton, and the noble picture of
my grandmother, are among the best productions of Lawrence's pencil; and
several of his men's portraits are in a robust and simple style of art
worthy of the highest admiration. His likeness of Canning (which, by the
bye, might have passed for his own, so great was his resemblance to the
brilliant statesman) and the fine portrait he painted for Lord Aberdeen,
of my uncle John, are excellent specimens of his best work. He had a
remarkable gift of producing likenesses at once striking and favorable,
and of always seizing the finest expression of which a face was capable;
and none could ever complain that Lawrence had not done justice to the
very best look they ever wore. Lawrence's want of conscience with regard
to the pictures which he undertook and never finished, is difficult to
account for by any plausible explanation. The fact is notorious, that in
various instances, after receiving the price of a portrait, and
beginning it, he procrastinated, and delayed, and postponed the
completion, until, in more than one case, the blooming beauty sketched
upon his canvas had grown faded and wrinkled before the image of her
youthful loveliness had been completed.

The renewal of intercourse between Lawrence and my parents, so soon to
be terminated by his death, was the cause to me of a loss which I shall
never cease to regret. My father had had in his library for years
(indeed, as long as I remember) a large volume of fine engravings of the
masterpieces of the great Italian painters, and this precious book of
art we were occasionally allowed to look at for an hour of rare delight;
but it belonged to Sir Thomas Lawrence, and had accidentally been kept
for this long space of time in my father's possession. One of my
mother's