guineas to Gainsborough, who asked sixty, for his “Girl and Pigs,” thus—­“Reynolds was commonly humane and tolerant; he could indeed afford, both in fame and purse, to commend and aid the timid and needy.”—­P. 304.  This is qualifying vilely a generous action, while it contradicts his assertion of being sparing of “a kindly word and a guinea.”  Nor are the occasional criticisms on passages in the “Discourses” in a better spirit, nor are they exempt from a vulgar taste as to views of art; their sole object is, apparently, to depreciate Reynolds; and though a selection of individual sentences might be picked out, as in defence, of an entirely laudatory character, they are contradicted by others, and especially by the sarcastic tone of the Life, taken as a whole.  But it is not only in the Life of Reynolds that this attempt is made to depreciate him.  In his “Lives” of Wilson and Gainsborough, he steps out of his way to throw his abominable sarcasm upon Reynolds.  One of many passages in Wilson’s Life says, “It is reported that Reynolds relaxed his hostility at last, and, becoming generous when it was too late, obtained an order from a nobleman for two landscapes at a proper price.”  So he insinuates an unworthy hypocrisy, while lauding the bluntness of Wilson.  “Such was the blunt honesty of his (Wilson’s) nature, that, when drawings were shown him which he disliked, he disdained, or was unable to give a courtly answer, and made many of the students his enemies.  Reynolds had the sagacity to escape from such difficulties, by looking at the drawings and saying ’Pretty, pretty,’ which vanity invariably explained into a compliment.”—­P. 207.  After having thus spoken shamefully of Sir Joshua Reynolds in the body of his work, he reiterates all in a note, confirming all as his not hasty but deliberate opinion, having “now again gone over the narrative very carefully, and found it impossible, without violating the truth, to make any alteration of importance as to its facts;” and though he has omitted so much which might have been given to the honour of Reynolds, he is “unconscious of having omitted any enquiry likely to lead him aright.”—­P. 320.  He may have made the enquiry without using the information—­a practice not inconsistent in such a biographer.  For instance, when he assumes, that in the portrait of Beattie, the figures of Scepticism, Sophistry, and Infidelity, represent Hume, Voltaire, and Gibbon; remarking, that they have survived the “insult of Reynolds.”  An enquiry from Northcote ought to have led him to conclude otherwise, for Northcote, who had the best means of knowing, says, “Because one of those figures was a lean figure, (alluding to the subordinate ones introduced,) and the other a fat one, people of lively imaginations pleased themselves with finding in them the portraits of Voltaire and Hume.  But Sir Joshua, I have reason to believe, had no such thought when he painted those figures.”  We have done with this disgusting Life.  We would preserve to art and the virtue-loving