or my own interest as by preserving you; in whom, if I should lose you, I should lose almost the only man whom I can call a friend." He to whom Johnson could thus write, must have possessed many noble qualities, for no one could estimate human nature more truly than that illustrious man.
JOHNSON'S APOLOGY FOR PORTRAIT PAINTING.
Johnson showed his kindly feelings for Sir Joshua
Reynolds, by writing the following apology for portrait
painting. Had the same friendship induced
him to compliment West, he doubtless would have
written in a very different strain:
"Genius," said he, "is chiefly exerted in historical pictures, and the art of the painter of portraits is often lost in the obscurity of the subject. But it is in painting as in life; what is greatest is not always best. I should grieve to see Reynolds transfer to heroes and goddesses, to empty splendor and to airy fiction, that art which is now employed in diffusing friendship, in renewing tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing the presence of the dead. Every man is always present to himself, and has, therefore, little need of his own resemblance; nor can desire it, but for the sake of those whom he loves, and by whom he hopes to be remembered. This use of the art is a natural and reasonable consequence of affection: and though, like all other human actions, it is often complicated with pride, yet even such pride is more
