Cooke, in addition to his awkward action, his harsh, cynical tone, and his little affinity to "the glass of fashion and the mould of form," spoke a text which, for its imperfect jargon, challenged the weakest memories among the audience. I had among my papers once a list of his choice readings, which this Danish prince pronounced as authentic Shakespeare, some of them were not his fault, but his unhappiness; for, in his youth, a clergyman lent him a complete set of Shakespeare's plays, which had been edited, I found, by Warburton; and as that commentator never doubted himself, he placed all his conjectures in the text, where Cooke found and adopted them. They were often perverse, but looked subtle, and therefore suited Cooke's cast of thinking, whenever he did think.

His most "beatified" Ophelia, on this occasion, was a Miss Reeve, the daughter of the composer, and in order to show his own skill in composition, he reset, most scientifically, all the reliques of old ballads, which Ophelia's distraction so pathetically chaunts that her nothings are much more than matter. The absurdity did not escape the audience, but they would not visit it upon the young lady, whose talents as a musician might have been

employed without sacrilege. Art should only be the modest handmaid to nature, on such occasions as the present.

If ever I put my hand again upon the choice readings of Hamlet the Dane, I will have them printed, because it is far from an impossibility that we may yet see other Hamlets "o'ertaken in their rouse;" and when an actor "puts an enemy into his mouth to steal away his brains," the more nonsense he utters the better. Videlicet-for "most excellent fancy," read or speak, if you can articulate, "most extensive faculty."

I am here called aside from the stage and its heroes to record the death of the great painter to whom we are indebted for the likeness of Mrs. Jordan. That Mrs. Jordan should sit to Romney was a choice of entire harmony. "He was," says Cumberland, "a rapturous advocate for Nature, and a close copyist, abhorring from his heart every distortion or unseemly violation of her pure and legitimate forms and proportions. An inflamed and meretricious style of colouring he could never endure, and the contemplation of bad painting sensibly affected his spirits and shook his nerves." These were, indeed, of aspen delicacy, and his sensibility was even distressing, a noble sentiment

at any time, read from a book or springing from the living volume in conversation, never failed to draw tears into his eyes, and his applause was uttered with a tremor upon his voice.

Romney did not visit the great, though he painted them; he was shy and retiring, and loved to possess himself in the privacy of an almost silent occupation, at which he laboured as long as light sufficient could be obtained. The only noble whose table he visited much was Lord Thurlow, the greatness of whose mind indulged itself in the plainest and most unaffected manners; and the lion and the lamb now sat down together with a preference for the society of each other. It might have been imagined that he would at least visit Sir Joshua Reynolds, his only rival, and whom he admired sincerely, though he did not imitate him. But Romney would have died under the great resort of visitors at Sir Joshua's table; where Burke and his followers kept conversation for ever on the stretch, and where Romney, however proudly or accurately he might think, would have been too conscious of defective education to give utterance to his thoughts.

Among the few associates who loved him, he would indulge himself in occasional reveries, and

then, like one inspired, in very expressive language, and much earnestness of voice and manner, pour out a series of remarks on subjects either relative to his art or its rival poetry, that were always original and often sublime. His manner, on these occasions, was hurried and impassioned; he appeared to be too much excited for his own comfort, and his friends managed him by a thermometer, which their affection quietly applied to his temperature. He did not exhibit with the Academy, and thus escaped the miserable factions in that assembly, and the persecution with which they often smother, rather than foster, the rising merit around them. Two dirty hangmen have it in their power, and seldom want the inclination, to inflict in this way a wound from which a timid nature never may recover.

Mr. Romney was born at Dalton, in Furness, in the county of Lancaster, on the 15th of December, 1734, O. S. He was the second son of a numerous family, and his father was a cabinet-maker, and brought up a son to the same profession after he had received such an education as could be given at a school about four miles from his house, for which the charge of the Rev. Mr. Fell was five shillings per quarter. The body was rather more

expensive than the mind. Mr. Gardner, of the same place, boarded him at £ 10s. per annum, within a trifle of three pence per diem.

But the innate genius that was in Romney bore him through all difficulties. As soon as he could handle the tools of his trade, he began to carve fiddles for the rustics, and therefore soon made a noise in the world. The next step to framing the instrument was acquiring the use of it. He fashioned one superior violin for himself, and kept it through life. The quality of tone was not bad by any means; and he used to indulge his friends by a voluntary of his own fancy, executed on the fiddle he had made, in an apartment of his own house, hung around with pictures, historical, fanciful, and portrait, all excellent and painted by his own hand.

In 1764 he visited Paris with his friend Mr. Greene for six weeks, and was greatly delighted with the galleries of art there. In 1767 he concerted a longer flight with Ozias Humphrey, and advanced his studies in Rome itself. He was always frugal, and let no temptations in the world. divert him from the proper business of his life. On his return to town, he took the house that had been Mr. Coates's, with its excellent painting