His tastes were simple, and his ambition (except as to his art) was moderate. To save 'a certain sum,' Mrs. Opie tells us, in order that he might keep a horse, and collect a good library which he could study at his leisure, was the limit of his desires. A few words may be expected as to Opie's personal appearance and manners. As to the former, his bold, homely, melancholy features, noble forehead and penetrating eye--the 'index' to his mind--are tolerably familiar to us from the fact of his having several times painted his own portrait--Mr. Rogers catalogues more than twenty. One of the best with which I am acquainted is, I think, that engraved in mezzotint by S. W. Reynolds, and selected by Mrs. Opie to prefix to her edition of her husband's 'Lectures;'[128] but that presented by his widow to the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society, Falmouth, is also a very fine one. There is another portrait, painted by himself when a youth, at the National Portrait Gallery; and there is one at Dulwich. And Opie was caricatured, with six other R.A.'s, in Gillray's 'Titianus Redivivus, or the Seven Wise Men consulting the Venetian Oracle.' He was always somewhat careless of his personal appearance, and frugal in his mode of life. For drawing-room society he had no liking or capacity; but, as we have seen, he enjoyed a good dinner-party, where sterling conversation went on, and to which he was able and ready to contribute his quota--sometimes brusquely enough. But on this point his friend Boaden should be heard: 'I know that, to some, his frank open conduct appeared uncalled for; nay, I have even heard it termed coarse; but the coarse man is he who says a thing in bad language, and not he who, with a noble simplicity, comes immediately to the point, and, when he has obtained conviction, in the plainest words delivers his judgment. If I were to attempt to characterize him in one word (I should most certainly use that word to the honour of our species) it would be that he was a genuine ENGLISHMAN--for affectation he despised, and flattery he abhorred.' It may be added that he regarded with utter indifference any attacks which might be made on his private or professional character. His sledge-hammer style of expression had doubtless something to do with the cessation of intimate relations which took place between old Wolcot and himself. Opie was not the sort of man to be _patronized_, even by a 'Peter Pindar.'