It was no part of Sir Joshua's prescribed duty as President to deliver an address on the presentation of medals; but, "if prizes were to be given," he himself remarked in the last Discourse, "it appeared not only proper, but indispensably necessary, that something should be said by the President on the delivery of those prizes; and the President, for his own credit, would wish to say something more than mere words of compliment; which, by being frequently repeated, would soon become flat and uninteresting, and, by being uttered to many, would at last become a distinction to none. I thought, therefore, if I were to preface this compliment with some instructive observations on the art, when we crowned merit in the artists whom we rewarded, I might do something to animate and guide them in their future attempts." It was, perhaps, the fact that Reynolds intended this Discourse to be his last, his farewell to the Academy he had served so long and well, that attracted such a crowd. In it he takes a review of all his past Discourses, and ends with commending to the students the works of his idol, Michael Angelo. It was a source of joy to him that the last word he spoke in that hall was the name of this adored master. "I felt a self-congratulation in knowing myself capable of such sensations as he intended to excite. I reflect, not without vanity, that these Discourses bear testimony of my admiration of that truly divine man; and I should desire that the last words which I should pronounce in this Academy, and from this place, might be the name of _Michael Angelo_!" Before the next occasion for a Discourse occurred Reynolds was quietly sleeping his eternal sleep in St. Paul's Cathedral, having died February 23, 1792, after two years' suffering, borne with cheerful fortitude. There are those who think that English art has rather retrograded than progressed since the days of Reynolds. To those who speak thus it is only needful to tell that Pliny already spoke of painting as a "dying art." After this we need reason with such blind admirers of antiquity _quâ_ antiquity no farther. That Reynolds was a great artist is universally admitted beyond dispute; but to speak of him as the greatest, as unapproachable henceforward, is as absurd as to claim, as did his contemporaries, that anything so able as his art discourses had never been penned. These were above all impressed by the undoubted influence Johnson had upon Reynolds' style, giving it that pedantic ring, that monotony of cadence, that want of colour, which is precisely what we moderns least admire. We should hardly assent to the contemporary lines lauding Dr. Johnson and saying-- "To fame's proud cliff behold our Raphael rise, Hence Reynolds' pen with Reynolds' pencil vies."