William Woollett.

BORN A. D. 1735.-DIED A. D. 1785.

He

THIS excellent engraver was a native of Maidstone in Kent. gave early indications of that talent, by which he was afterwards to acquire so high a reputation in the spirited likenesses he used to sketch upon his slate of his school-fellows and acquaintances. He was apprenticed, at an early age, to a London engraver. Alderman Boydell was one of the first to discover and patronise the talents of the young artist. Mr Smith, in his life of Nollekins, thus relates the story of Woollett's introduction to the worthy alderman, in the words of the latter: "At this time, the principal conversation among artists was upon Mr Wilson's grand picture of Niobe, which had just arrived from Rome. I, therefore, immediately applied to his royal highness, the duke of Gloucester, its owner, and procured permission for Woollett to engrave it. But before he ventured upon the task, I requested to know what idea he had as to the expense; and, after some consideration, he said he thought he could engrave it for one hundred guineas. This sum was to me an unheard-of-price, being considerably more than I had given for any copperplate. However, serious as the sum was, I bade him get to work, and he proceeded with all possible cheerfulness, for, as he went on, I advanced him money; and though he lost no time, I found that he had received nearly the whole amount before he had half finished his task. I frequently called upon him, and found him struggling with serious difficulties, with his wife and family, in an upper lodging in Green's court, Castle-street, Leicester-fields, for there he lived before he went into Green-street. However, I encouraged him, by allowing him to draw upon me to the extent of £25 more; and, at length, that sum was paid, and I was unavoidably under the necessity of saying, Mr Woollett. I find we have made too close a bargain with each other; you have exerted yourself, and I fear I have gone beyond my strength, or, indeed, what I ought to have risked, as we neither of us can be aware of the success of the speculation. However, I am determined, whatever the event may be, to enable you to finish it to your wish, at least to allow you to work upon it as long as another £25 can extend, but there we positively must stop.' The plate was finished; and, after taking a very few proofs, I published the print at five shillings, and it succeeded so much beyond my expectation, that I immediately employed Mr Woollett upon another engraving, from another picture by Wilson; and I am now thoroughly convinced, that had I continued in publishing subjects of their description, my fortune would have been increased ten-fold."

Woollett is chiefly famous as an engraver of landscapes. His foregrounds are admirable for depth and vigour, and the distances for softness and delicacy. He died on the 23d of May, 1785.

His character has been thus drawn by one of his friends: "To say that he was the first artist in his profession, would be giving him his least praise, for he was a good man. Naturally modest and amiable in his disposition, he never censured the works of others, or omitted point

ing out their merits. His patience, under the continual torments of a most dreadful disorder, upwards of nine months, was truly exemplary; and he died, as he had lived, in peace with all the world, in which he never had an enemy." His most esteemed works are as follow :—A view of the Hermitage of Warkworth, after Hearne,-The Merry Villagers, after Jones,-A Landscape, with Æneas and Dido, after Jones and Mortimer,-A Landscape, with buildings, after John Smith,— Another Landscape, after George Smith, the first premium print,—The Hay-makers, the Apple-gatherers, and the Rural Cot, after the same, -The Spanish Pointer, after Stubbs,-A View of Snowdon, Celadon and Amelia, Ceyx and Alcyone, Cicero at his Villa, Solitude, Niobe, Phäeton, and Meleager, and Atalanta, all after Wilson, The Jocund Peasants, and Merry Cottagers, a pair, after Dusart,-The Fishery, after Wright,―The Boar Hunt, after Pillement,-Diana and Actæon, after Fil. Lauri,-Morning and Evening, a pair, after Swanevelt,-A Landscape, with Figures and a Waterfall, after An. Caracci,-Macbeth and the Witches, after Zuccherelli,-The Enchanted Castle, The Tem ple of Apollo, Roman Edifices in Ruins, Landscape, with the meeting of Jacob and Laban, all after Claude, and the Death of General Wolfe, and the Battle of La Hogue, after West. His principal engravings of portraits were George III., after Ramsay, and Peter Paul Rubens, after Vandyke.

Alexander Runciman.

BORN A. D. 1736.-DIED A. D. 1785,

THIS early artist in the annals of British painting was a native of Scotland, having been born in Edinburgh in the year 1736. His father was an architect,- -a profession which in those days brought the artist into contact with painters more frequently, perhaps, than it does now: the pencil being often employed in the embellishments of the ceilings and walls of edifices. Probably the genius of young Runciman was prompted by some of his father's painter-associates; it is certain that he early evinced a decided attachment to the art.

His first crude attempts were made at landscape sketches from nature. At the age of fourteen he was placed in the studio of John and Robert Norris, where, says Allan Cunningham, "he seemed to live and breathe for painting alone. Other artists,' said one who had been his companion, 'talked meat and drink,-Runciman talked landscape.' In 1755 he began to practise on his own account; his success was for a long time dubious, but he consoled himself with the assurance that his hour of fame was coming. "With finer powers," says Mr Cunningham,—“with powers at least bestowed on infinitely finer works, Wilson was starving amid the opulence and the patronage of London; no wonder his fellowadventurer of the North toiled in vain during five long years at Edinburgh. The great Englishman had, in leaving portraiture, forsaken fortune for fame; and the Scotsman, when he had discovered the barrenness of landscape, only turned to starve in a more conspicuous manner on historical composition. 'The versatility of his talents,' says one of his biographers, did not permit him to be great only in one depart

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ment. In 1760 his genius launched into the extensive regions of history painting, where, in delineating human passions, his energetic mind had greater scope than in portraying peaceful fields, the humble cottage, and the unambitious shepherd.' These are, as Fluellen says of the language of Ancient Pistol, as brave words as a man would wish to hear on a summer's day; but they must not disguise the fact of the artist's total failure in landscape, the first-born of his fancy."

In 1766, Runciman visited Italy. He remained about five years in Rome, where he gained acquaintance with Fuseli, a younger but much better-informed man; the two friends were inseparable, and insensibly perhaps for each would have disdained to be thought the imitator even of the other-fell into the same extravagant style of composition. On his return to his native country, he found an academy of art established in the university of his native city, with a salaried professor. The chair was at the moment vacant, and was offered to Runciman, who accepted it. Sir James Clerk of Pennicuik, in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, was at this time one of the chief patrons of art in the North. To him Runciman, now an enthusiast in historical painting, submitted the design of a great national work, namely, to embellish his hall at Pennicuik with a series of paintings from Ossian. Sir J. Clerk, says Mr Cunningham, "readily entered into the feelings and wishes of the painter; sketches were made and approved, scaffolds raised; and to work he accordingly went, with all the enthusiasm of one who believes he is earning an immortal name. But there is no work, however much it may be the offspring of one's own heart, that can be accomplished perhaps in the same spirit in which it was commenced. Men of taste, connoisseurs, patrons of the fine arts, were ready, with their dissonance of opinion, to excite pain in the mind of a sensitive artist: pain of mind was aggravated by pain of body; he had to lie so much on his back, while occupied with the ceiling of the hall, that his health failed; while, to add to other vexations, the searching spirit of inquiry and criticism began to sap more and more the lines of circum. vallation within which Macpherson had intrenched himself; and that Fingal lived, and that Ossian sung, began to be doubted even among the Scotch. He painted on, nevertheless, and finished his very romantic undertaking."

Besides the subjects from Ossian-twelve in number-Runciman painted several classical historical pieces-amongst which were Andromeda,'The Princess Nausicaa and her Nymphs surprised by Ulysses,' and Agrippina landing with the ashes of Germanicus.' He also etched a few of his own paintings. He died in the 49th year of his age, of a disease brought on by his exertions at Pennicuik. "My father," says a correspondent of Allan Cunningham's, was acquainted with Runciman, whose sketches, I think, are infinitely better than his pictures. Look at his etchings, and remember his gallery at Pennicuik, and then judge if I am severe-such long legs, such distorted attitudes, and such a total want of knowledge or contempt of drapery! 1

1 The gifted writer whose words we now quote, and to whom we have been indebted for so many interesting extracts in our notices of British artists, has volunteered an excellent defence and apology for Runciman's patriotic choice of subjects from Ossian,bis country's real or pretended bard,-in preference to others which might have gained him more favour at least from the critics of the south.

always thought I saw Runciman revived in Fuseli. My father said he was a dissolute, blasphemous fellow, and repeated some of his sayings, which are better forgotten than remembered." One of his biographers, on the other hand, gives him credit for much real worth and goodness of heart, and a candour and simplicity of manners which caused his company to be courted by some of the most eminent literary characters of his time. With respect to his merits as an artist, his friend and scholar, Brown, celebrated for design, says: "His fancy was fertile, his discernment of character keen, his taste truly elegant, and his conceptions truly great. Though his genius seems to be best suited to the grave and serious; yet many of his works amply prove that he could move, with equal success, in the less elevated line of the gay and the pleasing. His chief excellence lay in composition-the noblest part of the art-in which, it is doubtful whether he had any living superior. With regard to the truth, the harmony, the richness, and the gravity of colouring,-in that style, in short, which is the peculiar characteristic of the ancient Venetian, and the direct contrast of the English modern school, he was unrivalled. His works, it must be granted, like all those of the present times, were far from being perfect; but it was Runciman's peculiar misfortune, that his defects were of such a nature, as to be obvious to the most unskilful eyes, whilst his beauties were of a kind, which few have sufficient taste or knowledge in the art to discern, far less to appreciate."

Sir John Hawkins

BORN A. D. 1719.-DIED A. D. 1789.

THE father of Sir John Hawkins was originally a house-carpenter, though descended from the preceding Sir John Hawkins. The title of the family was revived in the subject of the present article, who was born in the city of London, in 1719. He was apprenticed at a proper age to a relative of his father's, a respectable attorney and solicitor, under whom he gained a thorough knowledge of common law, whilst, by a systematic employment of his time, he managed to cultivate letters and gain the acquaintance of several of the leading literary characters of the day.

The first production of his pen was an Essay on Swearing,' which he contributed to one of the periodical publications; his next was an 'Essay on Honesty,' which appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine' for March, 1739. In 1741 he became a member of the Madrigal club, founded by a brother-attorney of the name of Immyns. He was also admitted a member of the 'Academy of Ancient Music,' which used to meet at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand. To these associations, and his original love of music, we owe Sir John's voluminous work, the History of the Science and Practice of Music.' When Johnson instituted his celebrated club, in 1749, Hawkins had the honour of being selected one of its first members. He was at this time in good professional practice, but retired from business a few years afterwards, having received a handsome fortune with his wife, which enabled him to devote himself to literary pursuits and the society of the learned

during the remainder of his life. In 1760 he published an excellent edition of Walton's Angler,' of which a fifth and revised impression was published by his eldest son in 1792. The History of Music,' after sixteen years' labour and indefatigable research, was published in 1776. It contains a large body of curious and original information, but is a mere storehouse of facts; to the title of a scientific history of music it has no just claim.

In 1761 he was appointed one of the magistrates of Middlesex. In this station he conducted himself with great prudence, and rendered valuable services to the county. His spirited exertions to repress the Brentford and Spitalfield riots, in 1768 and 1769, and his conduct as chairman of the quarter-sessions, procured for him the honour of knighthood, in October, 1772. On the death of his intimate friend Dr Johnson, Sir John undertook to prepare a complete edition of his works with a memoir. His labour was interrupted by the accidental destruction of his library by fire; but he at last completed his intention in 1787. With the discharge of this pious task his literary life terminated. He died in May, 1789, leaving behind him a respectable reputation for abilities, integrity, and patriotism.

William Cullen.

BORN A. D. 1710.-DIED A. D. 1790.

THIS distinguished medical philosopher was a native of Hamilton in Scotland. His father was a member of the legal profession, and factor to the duke of Hamilton. From the grammar-school of his native town, young Cullen proceeded to the university of Glasgow, and thereafter was apprenticed to a surgeon of extensive practice in that city. In his twentieth year he went to London, and soon after obtained an appointment as surgeon to a merchant-vessel trading to the Spanish West Indies. On his return, he spent four years in the further study of his profession, and attended two sessions of the medical classes in Edinburgh.

At the age of twenty-six, Cullen commenced practice in his native town. After residing seven years at Hamilton, he removed to Glasgow, and was soon after permitted to deliver, in the university, courses of the theory and practice of Physic, Materia-medica, and Chemistry. "In entering upon the duties of a teacher of medicine," says his biographer, Dr John Thomson, "Dr Cullen ventured to make another change in the established mode of instruction, by laying aside the use of the Latin language in the composition and delivery of his lectures. This was considered by many as a rash innovation; and some, desirous to detract from his reputation, or not sufficiently aware of the advantages attending this deviation from established practice, have insinuated that it was owing to Dr Cullen's imperfect knowledge of the Latin that he was induced to employ the English language. But how entirely groundless such an insinuation is, must be apparent to every one at all acquainted with his early education, course of studies, and habits of persevering industry. When we reflect, too, that it was through the medium of the Latin tongue that he must have acquired his extensive