Earl of Egremont gave, at the publisher’s sale, 530_l._ 8_s._; Boydell paid Reynolds 500 guineas for it, June 22, 1789. The well-known painting of “The Witches meeting Macbeth” is noted in Reynolds’s ledger as “not yet begun,” although, June 1786, the President received 500 guineas for it. These were the three pictures produced by Reynolds for Boydell’s “Shakespeare;” their painting is closely connected with our story. In publishing large and boldly-illustrated works Boydell’s rival was Macklin, who, as he contemplated a “Bible” of even greater pretensions than those of his antagonist’s “Shakespeare,” needed the countenance of the President of the Royal Academy as much as his aldermanic antagonist.[4] Of Reynolds Macklin bought “Tuccia, the Vestal Virgin,” an illustration of Gregory’s “Ode to Meditation,” for which he paid, says Northcote, 300 guineas, though Reynolds’s ledger refers to the receipt of 200 guineas only; Macklin bought for 500 guineas “The Holy Family,” which is now in the National Gallery; and, for a still larger sum,--which it would be difficult to ascertain, as the entry in Reynolds’s ledger confuses it with the prices of various works, in all more than two thousand pounds--a painting which is sometimes called “Macklin’s Family Picture,” or “The Cottagers,” otherwise “The Gleaners,” and represents an Arcadian scene, such as Macklin would have rejoiced to realize as it might appear before the door of a cottage, with the publisher, his wife, and their daughter seated in domestic happiness, with Miss Potts,[5] a dear and beautiful friend of theirs, [Illustration: _Low Life._] standing with a sheaf of corn on her head; the last-named figure claims the greatest interest from all who admire the works of the Landseers; because, in a short time after the damsel sat to Sir Joshua in this charming guise, she was married to John, the young engraver, and thus became the mother of Thomas, Charles, Edwin Henry, and four daughters of his name.[6] It is understood that John Landseer and Miss Potts were first acquainted in the house of Macklin, and it is believed that the marriage was, in more than a single sense, an artistic one. Bartolozzi engraved, in 1794, the portrait of a Miss Emily Pott, after Reynolds, as “Thais.” This was _not_ the lady now in question.