By-and-by these two critics forgot Ramsay, however, they were so busy with each other, bandying abuse and interchanging mud. The court painter heeded little their comments. He was putting money in his purse. There were always sitters in his studio: he had as much work as he could do; while yet he found time for self-cultivation. He must have possessed an active restless mind. He was not content with being merely a clever, hard-working, money-making painter. Even at Rome he had studied other things beside art. As Mr. Fuseli states magniloquently, after his manner, 'he was smit with the love of classic lore, and desired to trace, on dubious vestiges, the haunts of ancient genius and learning.' He made himself a good Latin, French, and Italian scholar; indeed, he is said to have mastered most of the modern European languages, with the exception of Russian. His German he found of no slight service to him in the court of the Guelphs. Later in life he studied Greek, and acquitted himself as a commendable scholar. Artists, less accomplished, were inclined to charge him with being above his business, and more anxious to be accounted a person of taste and learning than to be valued as a painter. Just as Congreve disclaimed the character of a poet, declaring he had written plays but for pastime, and begged he might be considered merely as a gentleman. There was no one to say to Ramsay, however, as Voltaire--nothing, if not literary--said to Congreve, 'If you had been merely a gentleman, I should not have come to see you.' On the contrary, the world in general applauded Ramsay for qualities quite apart from professional merits. 'I love Ramsay,' said Samuel Johnson to his biographer. 'You will not find a man in whose conversation there is more instruction, more information, and more elegance than in Ramsay's.' Perhaps it may be noted that this remark of the Doctor's upon his friend follows curiously close upon his satisfactory comment upon an entertainment at the house of the painter. 'Well, sir, Ramsay gave us a splendid dinner!' 'What I admire in Ramsay,' says Mr. Boswell, 'is his continuing to be so young!' Johnson concedes: 'Why, yes, sir, it is to be admired. I value myself upon this, that there is nothing of the old man in my conversation. I am now sixty-eight, and I have no more of it than at twenty-eight.' And the good Doctor runs on rather garrulously, it must be owned, ending with--'I think myself a very polite man!' It was to Mr. Ramsay's house--No. 67 Harley Street--that Mr. Boswell sent a letter for his friend: 'My dear sir,--I am in great pain with an inflamed foot' (why not have said plainly 'the gout,' Mr. Boswell?) 'and obliged to keep my bed, so I am prevented from having the pleasure to dine at Mr. Ramsay's to-day, which is very hard, and my spirits are sadly sunk. Will you be so friendly as to come and sit an hour with me in the evening?'