My eldest Son John having spoken disrespectfully of his little Sister, whom I keep by me in Spirits of Wine, and in many other Instances behaved himself undutifully towards me, I do disinherit, and wholly cut off from any Part of this my Personal Estate, by giving him a single Cockle-Shell.
To my Second Son Charles, I give and bequeath all my Flowers, Plants, Minerals, Mosses, Shells, Pebbles, Fossils, Beetles, Butterflies, Caterpillars, Grasshoppers, and Vermin, not above specified: As also all my Monsters, both wet and dry, making the said Charles whole and sole Executor of this my Last Will and Testament, he paying or causing to be paid the aforesaid Legacies within the space of Six Months after my Decease. And I do hereby revoke all other Wills whatsoever by me formerly made.’—Tatler, Vol. IV. No. 216.
[36]. Kellerman lately left his heart to be buried in the field of Valmy where the first great battle was fought in the year 1792, in which the Allies were repulsed.
[37]. How careful is Sir Joshua, even in a parenthesis, to insinuate the obligations of this great genius to others, as if he would have been nothing without them.
[38]. If Sir Joshua had had an offer to exchange a Luca Giordano in his collection for a Claude Lorraine, he would not have hesitated long about the preference.
[39]. Written in 1788.
[40]. Gainsborough.
[41]. Sir Joshua himself wanted academic skill and patience in the details of his profession. From these defects he seems to have been alternately repelled by each theory and style of art, the simply natural and elaborately scientific, as it came before him; and in his impatience of each, to have been betrayed into a tissue of inconsistencies somewhat difficult to unravel.
[42]. He had been before speaking of Boucher, Director of the French Academy, who told him that ‘when he was young, studying his art, he found it necessary to use models, but that he had left them off for many years.’
[43]. These are Sir Joshua’s words.