So much for the parallel as concerned the private life of either. But what about his art? Where in Shakespeare’s literary career are we to find anything comparable with the influence of Emma Lyon on Romney’s painting during the crowning decade of his accomplishment? I suggest as the answer, that during a similar period, of about the same duration, namely from about 1593 to 1603, we may trace a similar influence on the poet, which is embodied in a series of masterpieces numbering over a hundred, namely, most if not all, of the first hundred and twenty-five of “Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” They were all written to one person, and in such terms of art as have led others besides Alexander Dyce to suppose that they were really addressed to the poet’s muse rather than to any corporeal being. As in the case of Romney, the author has been maligned by the undiscerning vulgar for supposed deviations from the strict path of virtue in his relations with his friend. But for any one who has an understanding of the spirit of art there is nothing in either case to support the allegation. Had Shakespeare and Romney looked no farther than their own hearths for artistic inspiration, the world would have been the poorer: that is all. * * * * * Of Romney’s classical or historical pictures the world knows almost as little as it cares about them. “I have made many grand designs,” he himself wrote in 1794, “I have formed a system of original subjects, moral and my own, and I think one of the grandest that has been thought of--but nobody knows it.” Cunningham, after disposing shortly of his portraits, proceeds to state that the historical and domestic pictures, finished and unfinished, deserve a more minute examination; that they embrace a wide range of reading and observation and are numerous beyond all modern example. But with the exception of _Titania and her Indian Votaries_ and _Milton Dictating to his Daughters_, which were mentioned by Flaxman, and various fancy portraits of Lady Hamilton, he does not specify a single finished example. His explanation is that “for one finely finished there are five half done, and for five half done there are at least a dozen merely commenced on the canvas.” [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF ROMNEY BY HIMSELF (UNFINISHED) (1782) National Portrait Gallery]