A handsome, acute, accomplished gentleman, outstripping all the painters of his age in the extent of his learning and the variety of his knowledge--an artist of delicacy and taste, rather than of energy and vigour--pale in colour and placid in expression, yet always graceful and refined--there was a charm about Ramsay's works that his contemporaries thoroughly understood, though they could not always themselves achieve it. Northcote gave a close and clever criticism on the king's painter in this wise:--'Sir Joshua used to say that he was the most sensible among all the painters of his time; but he has left little to show it. His manner was dry and timid. He stopped short in the middle of his work because he knew exactly how much it wanted. Now and then we find hints and sketches, which show what he might have done if his hand had been equal to his conceptions. I have seen a picture of his of the queen soon after she was married--a profile, and slightly done: but it was a paragon of elegance. She had a fan in her hand. Lord, how she held that fan! It was weak in execution and ordinary in features--all I can say of it is, that it was the farthest possible removed from everything like vulgarity. A professor might despise it, but in the mental part I have never seen anything of Vandyke's equal to it. I could have looked at it for ever. I don't know where it is now: but I saw enough in it to convince me that Sir Joshua was right in what he said of Ramsay's great superiority. I should find it difficult to produce anything of Sir Joshua's that conveys an idea of more grace and delicacy. Reynolds would have finished it better; the other was afraid of spoiling what he had done, and so left it a mere outline. He was frightened before he was hurt.' This was high praise of the king's painter, coming as it did from his rival's pupil. GEORGE ROMNEY. 'A curious book might be written on the reputation of painters,' says Mr. Croker in a note to his edition of Boswell; 'Horace Walpole talked at one time of Ramsay as of equal fame with Reynolds; and Hayley dedicated his lyre (such as it was) to Romney. What is a picture of Ramsay or Romney now worth?'[14] [14] The remark has reference to certain odes by Cumberland in honour of Romney, and to Johnson's comment thereupon:--'Why, sir, they would have been thought as good as odes commonly are if Cumberland had not put his name to them; but a name immediately draws censure, unless it be a name that bears down everything before it. Nay, Cumberland has made his odes subsidiary to the fame of another man. They might have run well enough by themselves; but he has not only loaded them with a name--he has made them carry double.'