There was little or no play of countenance, beyond cheerfulness or sadness, in the features of Sir Joshua; but in his eyes there was a searching look, that seemed, upon his introduction to any person of whom he had thought before he had seen, to fix, in his painter’s mind, the attitude, if it may be so called, of face that would be most striking for a picture. But this was rarely obvious, and never disconcerting; he was eminently unassuming, unpretending, and natural.[50]
Dr. Burney has left amongst his papers a note of an harangue which he had heard from Sir Joshua Reynolds, at the house of Dudley Long, when the Duke of Devonshire, and various other peers, were present, and when happiness was the topic of discussion. Sir Joshua for some time had listened in silence to their several opinions; and then impressively said: “You none of you, my lords, if you will forgive my telling you so, can speak upon this subject with as much knowledge of it as I can. Dr. Burney perhaps might; but it is not the man who looks around him from the top of a high mountain at a beautiful prospect on the first moment of opening his eyes, who has the true enjoyment of that noble sight: it is he who ascends the mountain from a miry meadow, or a ploughed field, or a barren waste; and who works his way up to it step by step; scratched and harassed by thorns and briars; with here a hollow, that catches his foot; and there a clump that forces him all the way back to find out a new path;—it is he who attains to it through all that toil and danger; and with the strong contrast on his mind of the miry meadow, or ploughed field, or barren waste, for which it was exchanged,—it is he, my lords, who enjoys the beauties that suddenly blaze upon him. They cause an expansion of ideas in harmony with the expansion of the view. He glories in its glory; and his mind opens to conscious exaltation; such as the man who was born and bred upon that commanding height, with all the loveliness of prospect, and fragrance, and variety, and plenty, and luxury of every sort, around, above, beneath, can never know; can have no idea of;—at least, not till he come near some precipice, in a boisterous wind, that hurls him from the top to the bottom, and gives him some taste of what he had possessed, by its loss; and some pleasure in its recovery, by the pain and difficulty of scrambling back to it.”
MRS. REYNOLDS.
Mrs. Reynolds also had her coteries, which were occasionally attended by most of the persons who have been named; equally from consideration to her brother, and personal respect to herself.
Mrs. Reynolds wrote an essay on Taste, which she submitted, in the year 1781, to the private criticism of her sincere friend, Dr. Johnson.
But it should seem that the work, though full of intrinsic merit, was warpt in its execution by that perplexity of ideas in which perpetual ponderings, and endless recurrence to first notions, so subversive of all progression, cloudily involved the thoughts, as well as the expressions, of this ingenious lady; for the award of Dr. Johnson, notwithstanding it contained high praise and encouragement for the revision of the treatise, frankly avows, “that her notions, though manifesting a depth of penetration, and a nicety of remark, such as Locke or Pascal might be proud of, must everywhere be rendered smoother and plainer; and he doubts whether many of them are very clear even to her own mind.”
Probably the task which he thus pointed out to her of development and explanation, was beyond the boundary of her powers; for though she lived twenty years after the receipt of this counsel, the work never was published.