Exhibition at Somerset-house. The Royal Academy’s rooms were there. See vol. VI. Conversations of James Northcote, note to p. 435.
[91]. His life spins round on its soft axle.
‘Or she from west her silent course advance
With inoffensive pace that spinning sleeps
On her soft axle.’
Paradise Lost, VIII. 165.
Age cannot wither. Antony and Cleopatra, II. 2.
[92]. Captain Englefield and his crew. ‘Captain Englefield and his crew escaping from the wreck of the Centaur’ was Northcote’s first ‘historical’ picture.
One Jeffrey ... artist. ? James Jeffreys (1757–1784), who obtained the gold medal for the best historical picture in 1774, and whose ‘Destruction of the Spanish Batteries before Gibraltar’ was engraved by Woollett.
[93]. His story of Isabella. The Decameron, Fourth Day, Fifth Novel.