'Mr. Opie, sir, says I ought to be.'
'Hee zays zo, does hee? ha, ha, ha, ha! he wants your vather's money.'
He received many visitors in his studio. He was constantly at home, and liked to talk over his work, for he never paused on account of the callers. He never let go his palette even. He went to the door with a 'Gude God!' his favourite exclamation in his west country dialect, 'what, is it you? Come in:' and then climbed his way back to his canvas, asking and answering in his cool, self-possessed way, all about the news of the day. Yet he was violent and angry, and outspoken sometimes, was Sir Joshua's loyal pupil.
'Look at the feeling of Raphael!' said some one to him.
'Bah!' cried the little man. 'Look at Reynolds; he was all feeling! The ancients were baysts in feeling, compared to him.' And again: 'I tell 'ee the King and Queen could not bear the presence of he. Do you think he was overawed by they? Gude God! He was poison to their sight. They felt ill at ease before such a being—they shrunk into themselves, overawed by his intellectual superiority. They inwardly prayed to God that a trap-door might open under the feet of the throne, by which they might escape—his presence was too terrible!'
Certainly he was possessed by no extravagant notions of the divinity of blood-royal.
'What do you know,' he was asked, 'of the Prince of Wales, that he so often speaks of you?'
'Oh, he knows nothing of me, nor I of him—it's only his bragging!' the painter grandly replied.
He could comprehend the idea of distinction of ranks little more than old Mr. Nollekens, who would persist in treating the royal princes quite as common acquaintances, taking them by the button-hole, forgetful altogether of the feuds of the king's family, and asking them how their father did? with an exclamation to the heir-apparent of, 'Ah! we shall never get such another when he's gone!' Though there was little enough veneration for the king in this, as Nollekens proved, when he measured the old monarch, sitting for his bust, from the lip to the forehead, as though he had been measuring a block of marble, and at last fairly stuck the compasses into his Majesty's nose. Even the king, who was not very quick at a joke, could not fail to see the humour of the situation, and laughed immensely.
Modern taste prefers Northcote's portraits to his more pretentious works. The glories of Mr. Alderman Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery have pretty well passed away. However, Northcote's pictures were among the best of the collection. His 'Arthur and Hubert,' and the 'Murder of the Princes in the Tower,' and 'The Interment of the Bodies by torchlight,' were very forcible and dramatic works of art, and possessed more natural attractions than the pictures of many of his competitors. His pupilage with Sir Joshua prevented his falling into the washed leather and warm drab errors of tone that then distinguished the English school of historical painting. In the picture of the Burial of the Princes, Fuseli criticised—