his fame rests upon more enduring foundations. We look in vain to the spoken and written word or to the written word alone to sum up eighteenth century men of thought and action as clearly and definitely as Sir Joshua has done; his is a sincerity devoid of prejudice. We see men as they were even if the most of his women are seen as they would have wished to be. Here then is a part at least of the charm of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the man was very human and very discreet. He was by no means free from jealousy notably where Gainsborough and Romney were concerned; he knew well enough that they were great competitors and formidable. He lived a bachelor, and despite all the Paul Prys among his contemporaries the story of his amours (if any) remains untold. Here at least is a fine and ample discretion. It is with Angelica Kauffmann that his name has been associated. We know he was her friend and admirer, and that she was one of the two lady members of the Royal Academy as first constituted, but there is little more than this at the disposal of the conscientious biographer. Sir Joshua was not the only man to succumb to her charms; in years to come Goethe himself was to acknowledge them. It is pleasant to think that whatever the great painter's private affairs may have been, they have remained private for all time. What a wealth of moralising this condition has enabled us to escape! We are left to concern ourselves solely with his progress as artist and as man, and there is quite enough in this as may be gathered from study of the artist's leading biographers. Sir Walter Armstrong, Sir Claude Phillips among the moderns, and Northcote and Leslie and Taylor among those nearer to the artist, are men who have left little for those who endeavour to glean in the field of biography. They have done more than write the story of one man's life--they have given us a valuable glimpse of contemporary history. It is a grateful task to write at considerable length of Sir Joshua, because of his association with so many leaders of contemporary thought and action. Detail is out of the question in this brief note, but the outlines of the strenuous and honourable life may be set out here. II. HIS LIFE AND TIMES