The distinction it seems to me is this. That whereas Reynolds was aiming at the grand style, and spared no occasion for employing it in practice and expatiating on it in precept, it is impossible to say that he did not consciously apply its principles--I say consciously--to every portrait he ever undertook. In Gainsborough’s portraits again we recognise the hand and the heart of the landscape painter consciously employing the terms of his favourite craft, when we find in them the same charm, the same natural and easy grace which is the great characteristic of his landscape drawings and sketches. While Reynolds was painting men and women in terms of art, Gainsborough was painting them in terms of nature. Both were applying all the principles which they had imbibed from their earliest youth to the particular object on which they were engaged. With Romney, on the other hand, this was clearly not the case. He detested having to paint portraits. His mind was wholly attracted to allegorical and poetical subjects. Allan Cunningham, writing in 1832, almost apologises for mentioning his portraits at all. “A list of all the works which Romney executed in those busy days,” he writes, “would occupy several pages; it would, however, be absurd to specify many of them, since they can possess little interest except for particular families.” He then gives a list of eighteen portraits which are “remarkable for containing more than one figure, or for their superior merit, or on account of the character and station of the individual represented,” adding that “in one of these lucky and prosperous years he earned by portraiture alone some three thousand six hundred pounds.” Now if Romney had called upon his Muse to assist him in his portraiture, as did Reynolds and Gainsborough, there can be little doubt that his popularity would have extended enormously, and that his reputation would have been increased in hardly a less degree. But whether it was the influence of Hayley, or whether, as is more probable, it was the effect of his character and his deep feeling for his art, Romney rarely, if ever, permitted his Muse to descend into his painting-room when he was executing a commission for a portrait. An honest presentment of his sitters was apparently his only concern; he took their money, and he conscientiously painted their portraits, in their habits as they lived, without any conscious attempt at achieving more. But in keeping his Muse thus apart, it must not be supposed that he succeeded in banishing her from his inmost self. Her influence is to be seen and felt in almost every portrait he painted. Rarely as she was allowed on the stage--as in the famous group of _Lady Gower and her Children_--she was ever present, though behind the scenes; how else can one account for the almost classical severity of tone that keeps every portrait of Romney’s, however simple, from being merely trivial, pretty, or banal? [Illustration: MISS RAMUS Viscount Hambleden]