During the next four years, being paid for time, Ryland, like a true British workman, continues to pick out slowly the salmon-lips and Gillray stare of his royal master. A large number of the red-chalk engravings from pictures of the great painters in the possession of noble patrons belong to this period; and when George is finished, he goes on to copy Cotes’ picture of the Queen with the infant Princess Royal in her arms. While he is basking in smiles from the throne, he is employed in other ways, visiting Paris in the middle of his work to collect engravings for the royal connoisseur, which prints, we are told by the festive Wille, are “magnifiques épreuves ... fourniés comme pour un roi.” [Illustration: _HIS MAJESTY KING GEORGE III. ENGRAVED BY RYLAND._] These are the halcyon times of the artist’s life--these are the days when we catch a glimpse of him swaggering along Bow Street, with silver-hilted sword and ample ruffles, by the side of a heavy-jowled brawler of handsome person and agile, spiteful tongue, listening with black, eager eyes and flashing teeth to the jibes and sallies of his friend. Or, beneath the arm of this same aggressive Charles Churchill, he turns into Will’s coffee-house, and sits in easy deference on the fringe of a little ring, while he hears a torrent of charming, vicious diatribe, at the expense of poor patron Bute, pouring from the wine-stained lips of the cross-eyed apostle of liberty. Or perhaps poet Charles, who wields the Twickenham rapier in the fashion of a butcher with his cleaver, may take up this Dunciad of peers, roaring out a gruesome fable--how poor John Ayliffe was strung up at Tyburn to shut his lips concerning the crimes of peculator Fox. Then, while they talk of the forged deed that brought the luckless agent to the gallows, a shudder may pass through the graceful limbs of artist William as he thinks what a small matter may take a man to the triple tree.