Dignity, it may be observed, is a dangerous quality when not accompanied, or alloyed, by others more human. If not nicely balanced it is only too liable to swerve to pomposity on the one hand, or empty affability or condescension on the other. That Reynolds never swayed perceptibly in either direction it would hardly be true to assert. His pedantic observations on his great contemporaries, Hogarth, Gainsborough and Wilson, and the patronising tone of some of his conversations with the younger men, would be less forgivable were it not that one realises how great a man he was. There are many passages in his Discourses that, taken by themselves, are apt to exasperate; but when we consider the work he actually accomplished, the example he afforded, and the knowledge of his art which by his application he added to his natural gifts, we cannot fail to see how paramount his influence has been on the whole course of English Art in his own and succeeding times. That he was an Englishman is a fact which nowadays it may seem unnecessary to emphasise. But how easy it is to forget that a very considerable number of the painters whose works are included in those of “the British School” were not born in England. That the very greatest of all were natives--namely, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hogarth, Romney, Lawrence, Constable and Turner--is certainly gratifying to the national pride; and it may be added that with the exception of Romney all of these were born south of the Trent. Scotland has given us Raeburn, and Wales Richard Wilson. But with the exception of the miniaturists, Isaac and Peter Oliver, Nicholas Hilyard and Samuel Cooper, there was no English artist of note before the eighteenth century; the influence of Holbein, Vandyke, Lely, Kneller, and the rest who worked in England, was never strong enough to awaken a response in the country of their adoption. In later and modern times the British School has been enriched from various quarters: by West, Copley, Whistler, Abbey, and Sargent from across the Atlantic; by Alma Tadema from Holland and Hubert von Herkomer from Germany, to mention only a few of the more notable names. But the [Illustration: THE STRAWBERRY GIRL 1773. Wallace Collection, London] number of British artists is now so great, to say nothing of their strength, that these accessions count for little in the great stream whose fountainhead, to return to the point from which we start, was Joshua Reynolds. It was at Plympton in Devonshire that Reynolds was born, on July 16, 1723. His father, the Rev. Samuel Reynolds, was headmaster of a school in the parish. His mother’s maiden name was Theophila Potter. He was the tenth of eleven children--no uncommon number for a country parson in England. He is said to have been called Joshua in expectation of possible benevolence from an uncle of that name who lived in the neighbourhood. Perhaps this was an afterthought, for his name is entered in the register of baptisms at Plympton as Joseph.