[SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS AT BLENHEIM.]
Sir Joshua had now reached his sixty-sixth year; his fame was high; his influence on the taste and refinement of the country was not disputed; and his artistic powers remained unimpaired. His career had indeed been characterized by the strictness and temperance essential to the possession of “a healthy body and a vigorous mind;” he had realized a fortune; he had associated with the noble and beautiful of the land; and his wealth, his heavy purse, and hospitable table, gave him dignity in the eyes not only of many who were incapable of appreciating his merits, but of others to whom his fine abilities were no mystery. But his days were numbered. In the month of July, 1789, while finishing a portrait of Lady Hertford, he was aware of a sudden loss of sight in his left eye; and, laying down his pencil for the last time, he sat for a while in sad and pensive reflection. Goldsmith had already been laid at rest in the Temple Church; the eyes of Burke had overflowed with tears, and his voice faltered by the death-bed of Johnson; and the immortal painter was ere long to follow. He in a short time altogether lost the sight of his left eye, and determined to paint no more; yet under this affliction he strove to appear happy, cheerful, and resigned. His illness was borne with much fortitude, and whatever he had to suffer was endured without complaint or irritability. He amused and diverted himself in his drawing-room by changing the position of his pictures, and exhibiting them to his friends. Besides, like some imprisoned knight of old, he took a fanciful liking for a little bird, which became so tame and docile that it perched on his hand, while he fed and talked to it almost as he would have done to a human being. At length, one bright summer morning, the feathered warbler made its escape by an open window; and Sir Joshua was so inconsolable for the loss, that he roamed for hours about Leicester Square in the hope of seeing and recovering so harmless and cheerful a companion.
On the occasion of the gold medals being bestowed on the students of the Academy in 1790, Sir Joshua went thither for the last time, with all due pomp and circumstance, to deliver an address. With unabated admiration, he recalled to their memory the triumphs achieved by the genius of his great idol, and concluded by earnestly desiring that the last words he should pronounce from the presidential chair might be the name of Michael Angelo. The crowd being unusually large, a beam in the floor gave way with a loud crash. All rushed to the door, stumbling over each other, except the venerable president, who remained silent, composed, and dignified. Fortunately no damage was done, and the proceedings were resumed.
Sir Joshua offered to the Royal Academy his collection of paintings by the great masters at a low price. But, much to his mortification and amazement, his proposal was declined; and he exhibited them publicly in the Haymarket for the benefit of his servant Ralph. This transaction gave rise to the suspicion that Reynolds shared in the profits; and two lines of Butler—
“A squire he had whose name was Ralph,
Who in the adventure went one-half,”—
were applied with audacious and merciless malevolence. He was soon beyond the reach of such assailants and their weapons of offense. After a visit to Beaconsfield, the residence of his mighty friend Burke, his health and spirits sunk with the rapidity which frequently heralds a speedy dissolution; and on the 23d of February, 1792, he expired, with little apparent pain, in the sixty-ninth year of his prosperous life. His body was laid in St. Paul’s Cathedral, by the side of Sir Christopher Wren; and a monument, graven by Flaxman, has since been erected to his memory.