A couple of years later, again, he painted the actress Mrs. Yates in the character of the Tragic Muse, at whole length. This was twelve years or more before Sir Joshua painted his famous picture of Mrs. Siddons, so that it is hardly possible to compare the two. But Romney’s picture cannot have proved more than a _succès d’estime_. “I have often wished,” says Hayley, “that it had been the lot of Romney to paint this great actress, one of the most gracefully majestic of our tragic queens, at a maturer season of her life, and in the full meridian of his power; for in that case I am persuaded the Tragic Muse of Romney would not have appeared what at present I must allow her to be, very far inferior, as a work of the pencil, to the Tragic Muse of Sir Joshua.” For once we may take Hayley’s opinion as more or less correct, for although I am unable to pronounce on the merits of the picture, not having seen it, its history records what was the popular estimate of it. It was purchased by Alderman Boydell, and put up to auction at Christie’s after his death in 1810, when it was bought in for nine and a half guineas. In 1812 it was put up again and there was no bid, and the same in 1817 and 1822. In 1824 it at last found a purchaser at £10. As this was, according to John Romney, his first whole length portrait of a lady, it would seem probable that he did not receive sufficient encouragement to pursue the allegorical treatment of portrait subjects. But whether we incline to the one view or the other, or perhaps accept a commixture of the two in [Illustration: WILLIAM PITT, THE YOUNGER National Gallery] such proportions as may seem to each of us most suitable to the facts, we find it to be true that from henceforth Romney’s sitters were treated as ordinary everyday human beings, and not as gods, goddesses, heroes, nymphs, muses, or what not. What he gave them was of his best, so far as it went, and, as I have suggested, his best went farther than he was conscious of in giving it. Let us now see how his portraiture responds to the three tests I ventured to suggest, namely, simplicity, conscientiousness, and classicism. First, then, as to simplicity, by which I mean in this connection simplicity of presentment--the plain prosaic record on canvas of the likeness of the sitter. When we come to consider the third point, classicism, we shall see that this simplicity extends to every particular; but for the moment I am only considering the first question that arises when a commission for a portrait is given--“How would you like to be painted?” In Romney’s studio there seems to have been but one answer, namely, “Exactly as I am.” Of accessories there were practically none. The portrait was painted and that was all. A portrait by Romney is first and foremost a portrait.