catches the most pleasing hints from subjects of turbulence or deformity. Even bad pictures themselves supply him with useful documents, and, as Leonardo da Vinci has observed, he improves upon the fanciful images that are sometimes seen in the fire, or are accidentally sketched upon a coloured wall.' From these multiplied sources he enriched his mind with ideas which no imagination could have supplied. Such habits of intercourse,' he said, 'with nature will create that variety which will prevent any one from prognosticating what manner of work the painter is likely to produce, which is the most disagreeable character an artist can have.' He eschewed academic postures, and was careful to copy nature unadulterated and unconstrained. He let his models place themselves in the requisite attitudes, which were often, he said, superior to set arrangements by the hands of the painter. When with a free cast he had flung the drapery upon his lay-figure, he was cautious of altering a single fold, ‘for fear of giving it inadvertently a forced form,' and thought it better to take the chance of another casual throw.' He considered it a great matter to be watchful to take advantage of accident,' and he had a quick eye to detect and a quick hand to fix occasional felicities. A fine picture hung in his studio, which attracted the notice of a nobleman who was sitting for his portrait. 'He could not,' says Reynolds, keep from turning his eyes from me and fixing them on this picture in raptures, with such an expression in his countenance as may be imagined from a man of his tender feelings. I snatched the moment, and drew him as he then appeared to me in profile, with as much of that expression of a pleasing melancholy as my capacity enabled me to hit off. When the picture was finished he liked it, and particularly for that expression, though I believe without reflecting on the occasion of it.' A beggar child, who was his model, fell asleep with fatigue. Charmed with the look of innocence and repose, Reynolds caught up a fresh canvas and rapidly painted the head. The child turned in its slumbers, and he immediately sketched a second view of the head and converted the double portrait into the Babes in the Wood.* With his usual modesty he repudiated the praise bestowed

When,' says Mr. Leslie, speaking of the great picture of the Marlborough family, Lady Anne, a child of four, was brought into the room to sit, she drew back, and, without turning round, clung to the dress of her nurse, crying out, "I won't be painted." Sir Joshua sketched the attitude, and to account for the alarm of the child, introduced the elder sister in front of her holding a mask before her face. The incident is borrowed from an antique gem, but to Sir Joshua belongs the merit of the happy application of it.' The combination of coincidences throws a doubt on the truth of the anecdote. The Duke was a collector of antique gems,

and

bestowed upon his transcripts of the realities presented to his To the commendations he received for the happy truthfulness in his portrait of Sharpe, the lawyer, he answered that there was no more merit in making an exact copy of the attitude in which the old man sat than in copying from a ham, or any object of still life.' Northcote justly adds that the merit was in perceiving the value of the attitude, and in representing it with such living force and ease.* His discrimination was incessantly displayed in adopting attractive incidents, which were at once every-day occurrences and perfect novelties in art. His constant endeavour to strike out fresh conceptions and attain to fresh excellence, rendered the majority of his portraits in some degree experimental, and all could not be equally successful; but no one can have looked at many of them and not sympathise with the enthusiastic language of Romney, who, when some of his friends thought to please him by running down Reynolds, exclaimed, No, no, he is the greatest painter that ever lived, for I see an exquisite beauty in his pictures which I see in nature, but not in the works of any other painter.'

In our next Number we shall follow Reynolds to the end of his career, and show how completely unfounded are the charges which have been brought against him by Mr. Cunningham.

ART. II.—1. The Judges of England; with Miscellaneous Notices connected with the Courts at Westminster, from the time of the Conquest to the Present Time. By Edward Foss, F.S.A., of the Inner Temple. 9 vols. 8vo. London, 1864. 2. Tabula Curiales; or, Tables of the Superior Courts of Westminster Hall. Showing the Judges who sat in them from 1066 to 1864; with the Attorney and Solicitor Generals of each reign from the Institution of those Offices. To which is prefixed an Alphabetical List of all the Judges during the same period,

and holds a gem in his hand. To connect the groups, and give unity to the composition, Reynolds supposes the girl with the mask to be acting over the little story she had seen upon a gem, and it is not probable that the circumstance had a twofold origin. The lovely mother and daughters in this fine picture are models of high-bred grace.

The portrait of Sharpe was painted in 1785. He is seated,' says Mr. Taylor, in his square chair, with one hand resting on the thigh, the other supported by the table, as if listening to the statement of a case in consultation.' Mr. Taylor gives a good description of the expression in the masterly portrait of John Hunter, which belongs to the same year: The anatomist sits with the head raised and abstracted eyes, as if following out some train of thought, closely linked and reaching far, till it can be fixed by the pen held in the relaxed hand."

distinguishing

distinguishing the Reigns in which they flourished, and the Courts in which they sat. By Edward Foss, F.S.A., Author of 'The Judges of England.' London, 1864.

WE

VE congratulate Mr. Foss on the completion of his long and arduous task, which he has performed with the accuracy of an historian and the conscientious industry of an antiquary. He has produced a work which is a biographical dictionary in itself, containing not less than 1589 lives. We confess that when we first saw the announcement of his intention to write the lives of all the Judges, we had some misgivings as to the success of his plan. Lord Chancellors and Chief Justices are men who occupy so prominent a position that their career is often interwoven with the history of their country; and some of them, like Glanville, Bacon, Coke, Clarendon, Hale, Somers, Holt, Hardwicke, Mansfield, Erskine, Eldon, have left behind them 'an imperishable name. But of the puisnes the great mass were mere lawyers, whose lives, even if there were materials for writing them, must be as dull and uneventful as those of town-clerks or aldermen. What could be said that would be worth the telling? Immersed in the routine of their daily duties-oracles of the common law, but untinctured by scholarship and unilluminated by genius-they impressed no mark on their day and generation, and passed noiselessly away; with nothing to commemorate their existence except perhaps a pompous epitaph in some village church, which attests how learned a lawyer and how forgotten an individual sleeps below. Still, however, there is a natural curiosity to know all that can be told of our fellow men. It has been said that no man's life is so insignificant as not to be interesting in some degree to others; and we agree with Mr. Foss, when, speaking of the description given by Fortescue, in the reign of Henry VI., of the mode of appointing the Judges, he says:

'When we recollect that this is not the description of a new institution, but of one which at the time it was written had already existed more than two centuries; and when we see, after the lapse of an additional four hundred years, that the old practice prevails at the present hour without any essential alteration; it is impossible not to be interested in the account thus given by an eye-witness; and the reader can scarcely be chargeable with romantic feelings if he acknowledges a degree of veneration towards a body with so ancient a pedigree, and the learning, integrity, and firmness of which have been rendered even brighter and more apparent by contrast with the failings of a few of its members, who at intervals during the course of ages have disgraced their position."

But the difficulty was how to get the materials for an account

of

of these ordinary men, when the records even of the greatest events that happened during the earlier reigns of the Norman and Plantagenet Kings are so scanty. And a great number of the old Judges no doubt must be and are dismissed with the briefest and driest mention of their names and the offices they held, with the dates of their appointment. But even with regard to these, it is interesting to see the mode in which Mr. Foss has been able to fix and verify dates. Nearly one hundred and fifty charters are collected in the Monasticon, to which the names of chancellors are attached. Some of these,' says Mr. Foss, 'are dated; and the dates of the others may be discovered with sufficient nearness from the witnesses who attest them; so that a diligent inquirer, even without other aid, may make a considerable advance in ascertaining the order of their succession, and, in connection with other known facts, almost the date of their appointments.'

It must indeed have been a task of no ordinary difficulty to obtain correct information as to the career of men so many of whom are now utterly unknown. But we are bound to say that Mr. Foss seems to have left no stone unturned in his patient and exhaustive search. Every possible source of information has been laid under contribution. Charters and deeds, and rolls and fines, family archives and monuments and tombstones, have all been ransacked by him with as much diligence as if he were investigating great problems of history; and sometimes we are disposed to regret that such industry and acuteness have been lavished upon subjects where the value of the result bears so little proportion to the zeal of the inquiry. But whatever is worth doing is worth doing well; and accuracy in small matters is a guarantee for accuracy in things of greater moment. The man who hunts out a date in the nooks and corners of obscure records and mouldering parchments with as much eagerness as a Dutch burgomaster, according to Sydney Smith, hunts out a rat in a dyke lest it should flood a province, is not likely to take facts on trust, and make scissors and paste supply the place of a critical examination of original authorities.

The plan adopted is, we think, judicious and convenient. Each reign is kept separate and distinct, and the lives of the Judges who flourished under each monarch are arranged alphabetically; but where Judges sat on the bench during more than one reign, their lives are given in the last; while the office they severally held, and the year of their appointment, appear in due order in each reign of their career. To the commencement of each reign there is prefixed a 'survey of the reign,' containing a description of the nature and progress of each court, and of the

officers

officers of the various departments, with short accounts of the Inns of Court and Chancery, and their origin; of the serjeants and other advocates; and of the reporters and legal writers; 'adding whatever appeared interesting in the history of the time as connected with the judicature of the country, and collecting such illustrative anecdotes of Westminster Hall as seemed to demand a place.' Mr. Foss modestly disclaims any attempt to record the history of the law itself, and pleads his incapacity for such a task; but we think he has underrated his powers. His work contains a great deal of valuable matter, which elucidates the history of the law; and he pursues the inquiries in such an intelligent and searching spirit, with such a resolute determination to spare no trouble in arriving at the truth, and with such a competent knowledge of the subject, that we believe few writers are better qualified to trace the progress of English law through all its mazy channels from the Norman Conquest to the present day.

Before we deal with the Lives, properly so called, we will say a few words, in no very definite order, upon some of what may be called the antiquarian questions of the law, which Mr. Foss has discussed with great learning and acuteness.

He shows, with every appearance of probability, that there were originally only three Law Terms-those of Hilary, Easter, and Trinity; and that which we now call Michaelmas Term was altogether excluded as a distinct and separate division, the whole of it being comprehended in the third or Trinity term. Amongst other proofs we have this: That the Curia Regis, as we know, followed the King's movements, and was held when he happened to hold his Court, or, as it was called, wore his Crown. Now, there were three special periods of the year in which William the Conqueror and his immediate successors 'wore their Crown,' namely, at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, and never at or about the time of Michaelmas. No means now exist for determining the precise period when the change took place; but Mr. Foss thinks that it was dictated by the nature of the agricultural employments of the people:

'At some period between May 31 and November 28, it would be necessary to relieve the people from their attendance for the purpose of their collecting the hay and corn harvests; and there can be little doubt that there was a regular adjournment of the Court while they were thus employed in getting in the fruits of the earth. Such an adjournment would be attended with little inconvenience to the suitors, and it is not likely that there was in those times sufficient business to occupy so long a period as that which had been appropriated to legal affairs.'

Vol. 119.-No. 238.

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