[496] The Post Angel, of which the British Museum has a copy, was one of the enterprises of John Dunton. His rigmarole preface sets forth that “by Post-Angels I mean all the invisible Host of the Middle Region, that are employed about us either as Friends or Enemies”; his design is “to shew how we should enquire after News, not as Athenians but as Christians, or (in other words) a Divine Employment of every Remarkable Occurrence.” Features of this periodical were “The Lives and Deaths of the most Eminent Persons that Died in that Month,” and recurrent pious reflections under the head of “The Spiritual Observator.” [497] John Taylor, who was Smith’s life-long friend and the most genial and patriarchal of artists, died at his house in Cirencester Place, November 21, 1838, in his ninety-ninth year. Smith mentions under the year 1779, that he had been the pupil of Frank Hayman, after which he took up the drawing of portraits in pencil, for which he received seven-and-sixpence to a guinea each. It is said that, in Oxford alone, in six or eight years, Taylor drew, or painted, more than three thousand heads. Finding this employment poorly paid, he took the advice of his fellow-artist “Jack” Gresse and set up as drawing-master, investing his savings in annuities which were to expire in 1840. He died just in time to escape want. See the early reference to Taylor, p. 80. [498] This caricature was brought out on September 7, 1762, and was entitled “The Bruiser, C. Churchill (once the Reverend!) in the Character of a Russian Hercules, regaling himself after having kill’d the Monster CARICATURA that so sorely galled his virtuous friend, the Heaven-born Wilkes.” Mr. Austin Dobson says: “Churchill, who had been ordained a priest and abandoned that calling, appears as a bear, grasping a club, which is inscribed ‘Lye 1, Lye 2,’ etc., and regaling himself with a quart pot of ‘British Burgundy.’” [499] Hayman died in 1776, so that this statement has a bearing on the vexed question of the date of the “Blue Boy,” which some writers put as late as 1779. Sir Walter Armstrong is convinced that 1770 is the correct date. If so, Gainsborough could not have painted the picture, as he is said to have done, to confute a passage in Sir Joshua Reynolds’s eighth Discourse, which was not delivered until December 1778. The Blue Boy was Master Jonathan Buttall, the ironmonger’s son. The subject, history, and ownership of this famous picture have been the subjects of a controversy second only, in lengthy inconclusiveness, to that on the Letters of Junius. In all probability the original picture is the one in the possession of the Duke of Westminster.