was wont to sing to Humphrey. Pecuniary difficulties drove Collins from Bath, and he established himself in Dublin, whereupon the young Humphrey, who was then but twenty-two, returned to London and settled in King Street, Covent Garden, not far from his patron, Sir Joshua Reynolds.
A purchase by George III. from an exhibition in Spring Gardens, two years later, was probably the commencement of Humphrey's success, and led to the King commissioning him to paint his Consort and members of the Royal Family. At Windsor, by the way, are three notable and beautiful miniatures by him of Queen Charlotte, all after Gainsborough, two of them representing her as quite young and not a little attractive. In one of them the likeness to an eminent living member of the Royal Family is very marked.
Doubtless Humphrey had ambition as an artist, and, accompanied by George Romney, he went to Italy in 1773, as all who could afford it did in those days.
Cumberland, the dramatist, celebrated the event by some indifferent verses; of the miniature painter he says:
"Crown'd with fresh roses, graceful Humphrey stands,
While beauty grows immortal from his hands."
Romney returned sooner than Humphrey; a coolness sprang up between them, as to which Allan Cunningham makes Humphrey to blame, and rather ill-naturedly remarks that he was "a gossip and an idler." The same critic has observed that he, Humphrey, used to call and read the newspaper to Sir Joshua Reynolds, when, in his declining days, the great painter's eyesight failed—a misfortune destined to overtake the miniaturist himself a few years later.
R. DUDMAN.
WILLIAM COBDEN.