"His laurels--such as they were--were still green. The town was ringing with the success of the 'Sentimental Journey,' just published.... Sterne's funeral was as friendless as his death-bed. Becket, his publisher, was the only one who followed the body to its undistinguished grave, in the parish burial-ground of Marylebone, near Tyburn gallows-stand.... His grave was marked down by the body-snatchers, the corpse dug up, and sold to the professor of anatomy at Cambridge. A student present at the dissection recognized under the scalpel the face of the brilliant wit and London lion of a few seasons before." In 1761, the year of the marriage and coronation of George III., Reynolds painted three of the most beautiful of the ten bridesmaids,--Lady Elizabeth Keppel; Lady Caroline Russell, "in half-length, sitting on a garden-seat, in a blue ermine-embroidered robe over a close white-satin vest. She is lovely, with a frank, joyous, innocent expression, and has a pet Blenheim spaniel in her lap--a love-gift, I presume, from the Duke of Marlborough, whom she married next year;" and Lady Sarah Lenox, whom George III. had loved, and would have married had not his council prevented. She married, six years later, Sir Joshua's friend, Sir Charles Bunbury, was divorced, married General Napier, and became the mother of two illustrious sons, Sir William and Sir Charles. Four years later, Reynolds painted another exquisite picture of her "kneeling at a footstool before a flaming tripod, over which the triad of the Graces look down upon her as she makes a libation in their honor.... Lady Sarah was still in the full glow of that singular loveliness which, it was whispered, had four years ago won the heart of the king, and all but placed an English queen upon the throne. Though the coloring has lost much of its richness, the lakes having faded from Lady Sarah's robes, and left what was once warm rose-color a cold, faint purple, the picture takes a high place among the works of its class--the full-length allegorical." Five years after this, Lord Tavistock, a young man of rare promise, who had married Lady Keppel, was killed by falling from his horse. His beautiful wife never recovered from this bereavement, and died in a few months at Lisbon, of a broken heart. All these years were extremely busy ones for the distinguished artist. He disliked idle visitors, saying: "These persons do not consider that my time is worth, to me, five guineas an hour." He belonged to several literary and social clubs, and was a lifelong and devoted friend to such men as Edmund Burke, Johnson, and Goldsmith. When he was ill, Johnson wrote him: "If the amusement of my company can exhilarate the languor of a slow recovery, I will not delay a day to come to you, for I know not how I can so effectually promote my own pleasure as by pleasing you, in whom, if I should lose you, I should lose almost the only man whom I call a friend."