Secondly, his conscientiousness. Who would believe, on a view of any of Romney’s portraits, that he looked upon portraiture as a cursed occupation by which he was shackled? Is there any trace of unwillingness, of haste, of slovenliness? Is there any hint that he was out of temper with his sitters, or careless in the way he posed them, or indifferent to the perfection of his painting? We may miss the animation of Gainsborough, or the triumphant glitter of Reynolds in many of his sober contemplative faces, but of the perfunctory conventionalisms of his contemporaries or the slipshod hurry and make-believe of the modern exhibitors we find no suggestion. Whatever he did was done with all his strength, if not with all his heart, and no one could complain that his portrait suffered from want of painstaking devotion to the subject. His care and conscientiousness are as easily seen, too, in his most busy and prosperous days as they are in his earliest [Illustration: PORTRAITS OF MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM LINDOW (1770) National Gallery] portraits, like that of Mr. and Mrs. Lindow, which was painted in 1760 before he left Lancaster. John Romney records an amusing instance of his father’s efforts in this respect. “I remember his telling me once,” he writes, “what difficulty he had with a sitter in order to accomplish a little expression. The gentleman was from the country, and an attorney; and though his profession required intelligence, yet his countenance gave no indication of it. To remove a settled dulness that pervaded his features, Mr. Romney made many attempts, starting every popular topic of conversation, but all in vain; at length by some uncommon chance, he happened to mention hunting; at the sound of which word a ray of animation immediately sparkled in the eyes of the sitter, and imparted a certain degree of vivacity to his countenance. Mr. Romney took his measure accordingly, and led him into the subject; after which he was relieved from any further attempts at conversation as the worthy gentleman expatiated upon it with spirit until the picture was finished.” “Even upon persons to whom nature was less parsimonious of her favours,” he adds, “he knew that dulness would sometimes intrude, and, therefore, always wished that some friends should accompany his sitters, both for the purpose already mentioned, and also to relieve himself of the double task of painting and of keeping up a forced conversation at the same time.”