It was at the Doctor’s suggestion that his name was changed from Hoppy to Opie, a name worn by a good family in Cornwall, and more likely to attract favourable notice in London, whither they both went together in 1780, their joint expenses being supplied from one purse. Out of this last circumstance grew a dispute and estrangement, never fully settled. The communistic arrangement lasted for a short time only. One morning, when Sir Joshua Reynolds was breakfasting with Wolcot and Opie, Sir Joshua remarked of Opie, “Why, this boy begins his art where other people leave off!” Very numerous are the portraits of his patron which Opie has left behind, representing Pindar in different stages of his career, most of them having been engraved and published in various editions of his works, or in miscellanies containing contributions from his pen. If a watchful editor did not restrict us for space, we should have liked to show how that facile pen of Peter’s could run on “from grave to gay, and from lively to severe.” Perhaps there may be room for a sample of each. We wish he had given us a little more of such quiet and pathetic writing as THE OLD SHEPHERD’S DOG. The old shepherd’s dog like his master was gray, His teeth all departed and feeble his tongue, Yet where’er Corin went, he was followed by Tray; Thus happy through life did they hobble along. When fatigued on the grass the shepherd would lie For a nap in the sun—’midst his labours so sweet, His faithful companion crawled constantly nigh, Plac’d his head on his lap or lay down at his feet. When winter was heard on the hill and the plain, And torrents descended and cold was the wind, If Corin went forth ’midst the tempests and rain, Tray scorned to be left in the chimney behind. At length in the straw Tray made his last bed; For vain against death is the stoutest endeavour— To lick Corin’s hand, he rear’d up his weak head, Then fell back, closed his eyes, and, ah! clos’d them for ever. Not long after Tray did the shepherd remain, Who oft o’er his grave in true sorrow would bend; And when dying, thus feebly was heard the poor swain, “Oh! bury me, neighbour, beside my old friend.” Is not that a genuine piece of pure pastoral writing—grave and truthful? Of his gay writing there is more than enough, and much of it is as unfit for modern quotation as some of the classics in whom he delighted. As Thomas Bewick could not be persuaded that anything he actually saw was unsuited for pictorial representation, however vulgar, if the drawing were true to nature, so Pindar shocks our sense of propriety continually and without apology. He could, however, play on the whole gamut of the soul’s passions, as witness his touching threnody on “Julia, or the Victim of Love,” in his _Smiles and Tears_, a piece no man without a tender heart could ever have written.