JOSHUA REYNOLDS
ON
JOHNSON'S CHARACTER* with a sight of the following paper by Sir Joshua on the character of Johnson, addressed to some mutual friend 3 , perhaps Malone (or Boswell) 4 . Everything Reynolds wrote, like every thing he painted, was destined to many alterations and cor rections before its appearance in public 5 . I have transcribed the paper exactly, except in the matter of punctuation, and in the introduction, now and then, of a word, between brackets, to complete the sense.]
FROM thirty years' intimacy with Dr. Johnson 6 I certainly have had the means, if I had equally the ability, of giving you a true and perfect idea of the character and peculiarities of this extra ordinary man. The Jhabits of my profession unluckily extend to the consideration of so much only of character as lies on
1 From Life and Times of Sir Lockhart's Scott, ed. 1839, ii. 63. Joshua Reynolds by C. R. Leslie and 4 Boswell says that Reynolds Tom Taylor, 1865, ii. 454. ' contributed to improve the second
2 The daughter of R. L. Gwatkin edition' of the Life, i. 10. He quotes and his wife Theophila Palmer, who a paper with which he had been was the daughter of Sir Joshua's favoured by him. Ib. i. 144.
sister Mary. Ib. i. 4, 31 ; ii. 317. 5 Hence the inferiority of his letters
3 Burke and Goldsmith fell into the to his other writings. LESLIE. vulgarism of ' mutual friend.' Life, 6 Reynolds returned from Italy in iii. 103, n. i ; also Sir Walter Scott. 1752. Life, i. 245.
the
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