For many men the rapid success would not have been good, they would have ceased to strive and would have been content to repeat themselves, but Joshua Reynolds, with his high ideals and genuine enthusiasm for work, was only stimulated by prosperity; it was powerless to spoil him. While his work was increasing in power he was selecting friends from the ranks of the most distinguished scholars and thinkers in town, and while his labours were making him a bigger artist, the association with great intellects was making him a bigger man. The friendship of Edmund Burke and Dr Samuel Johnson alone would have been enough to have lent distinction to the painter's life. He was a great admirer of the lexicographer, and has left an appreciation of his character, while the old man's last words to him were an exhortation to read the Bible regularly and not to paint on Sundays. To many people Reynolds is known best as the first President of the Royal Academy, and it is necessary in dealing, however briefly, with the story of his life to point out how the Academy came into being. Down to the middle of the eighteenth century exhibitions of modern work would appear to have been unknown. London's interest in fine arts was strictly limited. People with plenty of money hired an artist to paint their portrait much as we should hire a painter and decorator to put a house in good order. Artists had comparatively little standing and no representative institution; art was patronised by a small section of the wealthy classes, and the masses knew little and cared less about the existence of even leading men. The Society of Arts was founded about 1754, and a Society of Artists was founded soon afterwards. Hogarth had given some pictures to the gallery of the Foundling Hospital, established by his great friend Captain Coram. Reynolds' former master, Thomas Hudson, Reynolds himself, and several others sent pictures; the gallery was open to the public and people visited it with interest and pleasure. The possibilities of regular exhibitions of modern work became suddenly apparent then, and members began to form associations for the development of common interests. The Society of Artists received in 1765 a certificate of Incorporation from King George III., and became the Incorporated Society of Artists of Great Britain with a membership of more than two hundred. Now in this country it is only necessary to establish one society in order that several other societies may establish themselves in opposition, emulation, imitation or something of the kind, and it was quite in the order of things for the Free Society of Artists to enter into competition with the Incorporated Society. There were many intrigues, and some of the men who had the ear of the King, chief among them, it is said, William Chambers the Architect and Benjamin West, brought about the establishment of the Royal Academy. King George signed the Constitution of the new body, which