Reynolds was now in the full tide of his powers. He had been knighted by the king, his lectures before the Academy were strong in a literary way as well as practical for art students. He was now producing some of his most beautiful portraits of women and children. He was strong in his portraiture of men yet almost more than any other painter has he mastered the secret of representing the elusive charm of a beautiful women and lovely children. As examples of the former let us think of the portraits of Lady Hamilton who had been a nurse-maid at Hawarden, of Angelica Kauffman, [previously Kauffmann] the Duchess of Devonshire, Miss Bingham, and the Waldegrave sisters, nieces of Horace Walpole.

Then, who that has ever seen it can forget the transcendent beauty of that portrait of Mrs. Siddons, in which she personates the tragic muse? She wished to be painted so, and Reynolds, instead of posing her himself, asked her to give him her own idea of the position appropriate for such a representation. She immediately assumed the attitude in which she has so gloriously come down to us in Reynolds' picture. How beautiful she is as she sits there wearing a look divine, with her matchless arm upraised, her luxuriant hair bound with a diadem, not of rank but of genius, her beautiful neck and breast adorned with woven pearls, and, falling all about her, her voluminous draperies, while on either hand the spirits of her art attend, the one bearing the dagger, the other the poisoned cup!

It must have been a proud day for the happy artist when he looked upon this great picture of a great woman completed. No wonder he did what was very unusual with him—signed his full name in running characters on the edge of her drapery. When the lovely Mrs. Siddons, examining the finished picture, wondered at what appeared to her to be a line of embroidery on her robe which on closer examination proved to be merely the painter's name, what pleasure he must have given and felt as he gallantly excused himself for his apparent vanity by saying, "I could not lose the honor this opportunity afforded me of going down to posterity on the hem of your garment." In all the annals of knighthood there was never a more courtly tribute paid to a woman. True, Reynolds had a lovely subject, but his task was so much the more difficult to represent adequately the queen of the stage. Remembering even the lovely pictures of her that Gainsborouth, that other great English artist, has given us, still must we choose this one by Reynolds.

Of his children, how can we select a favorite when there are so many? Sweet "Little Strawberry Girl," looking at us so slyly with her turned up apron and cute conical basket, or dear "Penelope Boothby," with her dainty cap and quaint mits!—we may not stop at these, beautiful though they are. There is "Age of Innocence," another beautiful child whose pink toes just creep from beneath her skirt, while upon the fluttering little breast are crossed the dear child hands.

In "Little Samuel," with the very light of heaven streaming in upon him, Reynolds gave us a child for which even a commonplace mother might well pour forth a splendid hymn of praise, as did Hannah of old. Beautiful little boy! None of his perfect sisters of Reynolds' creation can exceed, or, to my mind, equal his superlative and yet perfectly childish beauty.

As I said before, it is difficult to stop in this almost inexhaustible list of Reynolds' children. "The Angel Choir" or "Angel Heads," that it seems we have known always, rise up and plead with five of the sweetest faces for their proper place in this list. Five lovely heads with wings, as if they were pictures, sure enough, of the angels, and yet it is only Reynolds' fanciful way of presenting five views of the little daughter of Lord Gordon. The picture was presented to the National Gallery, London, by Lady Gordon, in 1841. In their perfect beauty and sweet ideality they have long ago ceased to stand to the public as a portrait and are, instead, just a fragment of that celestial throng brought to us by the pure and lofty imagination of a man who was poet as well as painter.

Reynolds was fond of children and often played with his youthful sitters until they liked him and could consequently "look their best." The precious privilege of having children of his own never came to this man and yet no other painter has so strikingly presented to us the divine gospel of childhood innocence. His painted children are but types, true to life, of those we, more fortunate than he, hold in our arms, living, breathing oracles, in whose hands are the future of the church, the state, and the home.

Reynolds enjoyed decking out his women and children sitters after his own notions. For the former, he was fond of the beautiful flowing draperies of the Greeks and so we find him frequently painting them as mythological characters. He carried this into his pictures of children, also. We recall one in which a child is represented as Mercury in the dishonest capacity of pickpocket. Another, with ears slightly elongated, laughs and kicks in the exuberance of his spirits from a toad-stool throne, and we call the picture "Puck."

In looking over the almost endless list of Sir Joshua's pictures, we naturally select his children and beautiful women, but he has been quite as successful in portraying men. Though gentleness seemed to rule his brush in his painting of women and children, that same brush gave us the rough and massive strength of Dr. Johnson's face, the facile mobility of Garrick's, the power of Burke's, the weakness and pathos of Goldsmith's as well as the refinement and conceit of Horace Walpole's. The striking thing that we deduce from the immense body of his work is that he was first and last and all the time an all round portrait painter, doing to the very life the lovely children, the fascinating women and the powerful men of his time.

After perhaps the first decade of his residence in London, he pruned down the list of his sitters to sixty or seventy a year. These, with the pupils he instructed, the subjects painted between times and the delivery of his lectures in the Academy, quite filled his working hours. As for recreation, there were endless dinners and lunches, the theater, of which he was passionately fond, and the clubs. Reynolds was, as his friend Johnson expressed it, "a very clubbable man." At least three evenings of each week were spent at various literary and social clubs.

In his own house the dinner was a most informal matter. The hour was five o'clock and the table was set for about half who came—there were so many unexpected guests—and the service inadequate for the over-crowded table. Perhaps the good host's deafness saved him from much embarrassment at these times. There was, however, a charm about the company one met there, and so the same ones came over and over again and drew new celebrities to their ranks.

Of that merry company the simple Goldsmith was the first to pass to that unknown country from which no traveler returns. He had often been the butt of their good natured ridicule, but now, that there was only a mound in the Temple green yonder and his vacant chair here, they felt that there had befallen them an irreparable loss. The little story, "Vicar of Wakefield," that he had reluctantly brought forth when Johnson found him under arrest for his rent, had become a part of the world's literature. The "Deserted Village" he had dedicated affectionately to Reynolds and that, too, was afloat in the world, making for "Goldy," as they now tenderly called him, a host of friends, only a beginning of that mighty throng that has since loved the softly flowing numbers descriptive of "Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain."

As in the sad yet good was of the world, the diminished circle was increased by new celebrities. The great historian Gibbon came among them a welcome guest, though he could in no way be said to have taken the beloved Goldsmith's place. He and Reynolds were ever firm friends.