I have seen one good picture about here: a portrait of O. Cromwell by Lely--so said--unlike other Lelys, but very carefully painted: and, I should think, an original portrait. . . I also read Hayley's Life of Romney the other day. Romney wanted but education and reading to make him a very fine painter: but his ideal was not high nor fixed. How touching is the close of his life! He married at nineteen, and, because Sir Joshua and others had said that marriage spoilt an artist, almost immediately left his wife in the North, and scarce saw her till the end of his life: when, old, nearly mad, and quite desolate, he went back to her, and she received him, and nursed him till he died. This quiet act of hers is worth all Romney's pictures; even as a matter of Art, I am sure. Whether this letter will ever reach you, I don't know. I am going in two days to Naseby for a little while, and shall then find my way home to Suffolk for the greater part of the Winter and Spring, I suppose. O beate Sesti, Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam. I think of hiring a house in some country town like this, but nearer Suffolk, and there have my books, etc. I want a house much: and a very small one will content me, with a few old women close by to play cards with at night. What a life, you will say! His virtues walked then humble round, Nor knew a pause, nor felt a void: And sure the Eternal Master found His single talent well employ'd. That was not in playing picquet, I doubt. What fine lines of Johnson's {125} these! * * * * *