First, by his snuff-box subjects, and afterwards by his portraits--on ivory or in red and black chalk--after the manner Bartolozzi had introduced--Cosway earned large sums. For many years he was reputed to have been in possession of a handsomer income than could be secured by the efforts of all his artist-brethren put together. But it must be said for him that he worked very hard. At the height of his fame he would sometimes boast as he sat down to dinner, that he had during the day despatched some twelve or fourteen sitters. He would often complete portraits at three sittings of half an hour each. But then his finish was of the slightest kind, and many of his miniatures can only be regarded, from a modern point of view, as tinted sketches, after allowance has been made for the perishable nature of the pigments he employed. He seems to have possessed a trick of enriching the colours of the eyes, lips, and cheeks of his sitters, by reducing every other hue in the picture to a cold blue-grey tone. By this system of violent contrast any hint of positive colour gained in warmth and brilliance to a remarkable degree. The miniature painter can hardly help improving and refining the subjects he deals with; for one reason, because the delicate nature of the material upon which he works, its exquisite surface and delicate texture, imparts a marked purity to all his tints. The coarsest complexion gains in lustre and smoothness when attempt is made to render it upon ivory; the dainty groundwork gleams through and gives beauty and clearness to the swarthiest hues. And then, in addition to this, Cosway had in full the portrait-painter's faculty of flattering his sitters. He could hardly fail to please them. He understood thoroughly how, while preserving a real resemblance, to catch the happiest expression; to subdue unattractive lines; to modify plain features; to conceal weaknesses; bringing out the really good points of a face; to light up dull eyes, and flush pale lips and cheeks. The faults of his portraits consist in their over-conscious graciousness; they smile and sparkle and are arch and winning to an excess that sometimes approaches inanity. And he was disposed, perhaps, to record the fashions of his time with too intense insistence. There was a rage then, as we know, for a piling up on the head of all sorts of finery: feathers, lace, ribbons, velvet hats, mob-caps, and strings of pearls. Cosway will hold back from us none of these adornments, rather he will force upon us a redundancy of them, and contemplating the aspects of the grandmothers and great-grandmothers of the present generation as they appear to us according to Cosway's art, we are led to the conclusion that the dear old ladies were in truth most killing coquettes, with quite an extravagant regard for the dictates of their fashion-books, and occupied by a passion for ogling their fellow-creatures to an extent that was decidedly reprehensible.