Like many, if not most, of his fellow-geniuses he developed a taste for the arts at a very early age. His father, with that lack of foresight which may almost be called a characteristic of parents, is known to have endorsed one of his sons earliest efforts, executed during school-hours, “Done by Joshua out of pure idleness.” “His first essays,” Malone tells us, “were copying some slight drawings made by two of his sisters, who had a turn for art; he afterwards eagerly copied such prints as he met with among his father’s books, particularly those which were given in the translation of Plutarch’s lives published by Dryden. But his principal fund of imitation was Jacob Catts’s Book of Emblems, which his great-grandmother by the father’s side, a Dutchwoman, had brought with her from Holland.” Trivial as these anecdotes of early efforts may in very many cases be held, it is here of the very greatest interest to compare the beginnings of Reynolds’s genius with those of his only formidable rival, Gainsborough. For in both we so plainly see “the child the father of the man” that, were it not that we have both of the accounts on sufficiently trustworthy authority, we might well suppose them to have been supplied merely to feed the popular imagination of what ought to have been. “A beautiful wood of four miles in extent,” Allan Cunningham tells us, “was Gainsborough’s first inspiration when but a child, in Suffolk. Scenes are pointed out where he used to sit and fill his copy-books with pencillings of flowers, and trees, and whatever pleased his fancy; and it is said that these early attempts of the child bore a distinct [Illustration: LADY COCKBURN AND HER CHILDREN 1773. National Gallery, London] resemblance to the mature works of the man. At ten years old he had made some progress in sketching, and at twelve he was a confirmed painter.” Reynolds’s father was not long, however, in awaking to Joshua’s talents, for the boy was not more than about eight years old when, after perusing a book entitled “The Jesuit’s Perspective,” he made a drawing of Plympton School which effected a complete revolution in the state of the parental mind. “This is what the author of the ‘Perspective’ asserts in his preface,” cried the worthy father, “that by observing the rules laid down in this book a man may do wonders--for this is wonderful!” After this portentous revelation Joshua was allowed to devote himself more seriously to his favourite pursuit, and his classical studies were sacrificed to the more congenial occupation of drawing likenesses of his relations and friends, and to the perusal of Richardson’s treatise on painting, which gave him his first acquaintance with the beauties of the great Italian Masters.