To realise the full extent of England’s debt to Reynolds one must read his “Discourses” as well as look at his pictures. It is in passages such as the concluding paragraph of his farewell address to the Academy students that we find the real secrets of his success. Speaking of Michel Angelo, he says: “It will not, I hope, be thought presumptuous in me to appear in the train, I cannot say of his imitators, but of his admirers. I have taken another course, one more suited to my abilities and to the taste of the times in which I live. Yet however unequal I feel myself to that attempt, were I now to begin the world [Illustration: MRS. NESBIT WITH A DOVE Wallace Collection, London] again I would tread in the steps of that great master; to kiss the hem of his garment, to catch the slightest of his perfections would be glory and distinction enough for an ambitious man. “I feel a self-congratulation in knowing myself capable of such sensations as he intended to excite. I reflect, not without vanity, that these discourses bear testimony of my admiration of that truly divine man, and I should desire that the last words which I should pronounce in this Academy and from this place might be the name of--Michel Angelo.” INDEX “An Argument in behalf of the Science of a Connoisseur,” 8 Armstrong, Sir Walter, 39 Bleackley’s, Horace, “Ladies Fair and Frail,” 39 British Painting in the Eighteenth Century, 2 Burke, Edmund, 16 Burney Family, 41 Catts’, Jacob, Book of Emblems, 6 Chudleigh, Miss, commissioned to paint, 9 Dilettanti Society, 35 Dulwich Gallery, 44 Elizabeth, Queen, 36 “English Society of the Eighteenth Century in Contemporary Art,” 10 Farington, Joseph, R.A., 20 Fisher, Kitty, 39 Gainsborough, Thomas, 14, 37, 51 Hogarth, William, 2, 11, 39 _Portrait of Bishop of Winchester_, 29 Holbein’s _Duchess of Milan_, 35 Hoppner, 14 Hudson, Thomas, 8, 20 Johnson, Samuel, 17, 41 Keppel, Captain, invites Reynolds to accompany him to the Mediterranean, 12 Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 14 Lucan, Lord, 39 Malone, Edmund, 16, 21, 47 Marlborough Group, 11 Mason’s “Observations on Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Method of Colouring,” 22 Metastasio, 25 Michel Angelo, 14, 15, 52 Morland, George, 16 Mudge, Rev. Zachariah, 17 Northcote, James, R.A., 9, 31, 45, 49