The pupil, it must be said for him, never lost faith in his master. Vandyke, Reynolds, Titian--he deemed these the great triumvirate of portraiture. Comparing them, he would say, that Vandyke's portraits were like pictures, Sir Joshua's like the reflections in a looking-glass, and Titian's like the real people. And he was useful to the great painter in another way, for he sat for one of the children in the Count Ugolino picture (the one in profile with the hand to the face). While posed for this, he was introduced as a pupil of Sir Joshua's to Mr. Edmund Burke, and turned to look at that statesman. 'He is not only an artist, but has a head that would do for Titian to paint,' said Mr. Burke. He served, too, another celebrated man. With Ralph, Sir Joshua's servant, he went to the gallery of Covent Garden Theatre, to support Dr. Goldsmith's new comedy, _She Stoops to Conquer_, on the first night of its performance. While his friends are trooping to the theatre, the poor author is found sick and shivering with nervousness, wandering up and down the Mall in St. James's Park. He can hardly be induced to witness the production of his own play. Johnson's lusty laugh from the front row of a side box gives the signal to the worthy _claque_, who applaud to an almost dangerous extent, in their zeal for their friend, because there runs a rumour that Cumberland and Ossian Macpherson and Hugh Kelly are getting up a hiss in the pit. 'How did you like the play?' asked Goldsmith of the young painter, who had been clapping his hands until they ached, in the gallery by the side of good Mr. Ralph. 'I wouldn't presume to be a judge in such a matter,' the art-student answered. 'But did it make you laugh?' 'Oh, exceedingly.' 'That's all I require,' said Goldsmith, and sent him box tickets for the author's benefit night, that he might go and laugh again. Sir Joshua's pupil was James Northcote, a long-lived man, born at Devonport in 1746, and dying at his London house, in Argyll Place, Regent Street, in 1831. If he had a Titianesque look in his youth, he possessed it still more in his age. Brilliant eyes, deeply set; grand projecting nose; thin, compressed lips; a shrewd, cat-like, penetrating look; fine, high, bald forehead, yellow and polished, though he often hid this with a fantastic green velvet painting cap, and straggling bunches of quite white hair behind his ears. A little, meagre man, not more than five feet high, in a shabby, patched dressing-gown, almost as old as himself, leading a quiet, cold, penurious life. He never married. He had never even been in love. He had never had the time, or he had never had the passion necessary for such pursuits, or he was too deeply devoted to his profession. He was always, brush in hand, perched up on a temporary stage, painting earnestly, fiercely, 'with the inveterate diligence of a little devil stuccoing a mud wall!' cried flaming Mr. Fuseli.