When he returned to England in 1752, at the age of thirty, his talent was fully developed, and the connoisseurs were unanimous in hailing him as a new Van Dyck. With the portrait of Miss Gunning, afterwards the Duchess of Hamilton, he appeared in 1753 as a power in English art. As early as 1755, when Hogarth was compelled to give up portrait painting for lack of patrons, one hundred and twenty-five persons sat for Reynolds, and after that about one hundred and fifty people were painted by him annually; and this brought him in a yearly income of about £16,000. [Illustration: REYNOLDS. GARRICK AS ABEL DRUGGER.] At first he took up his quarters in St. Martin's Lane, which was then the most fashionable place of residence for artists; but in 1760 he bought a house, No. 47 Leicester Square, the most select quarter of London, and furnished it with the most palatial splendour. The studio, which he built for himself, was as large as a ballroom, and furnished with a quite modern luxury. The large corridor that led to it had a gallery of pictures by old masters. It was the age of the great literary and dramatic revival in England. Garrick stood at the zenith of his popularity, Burke had already made himself a name, Johnson had produced his _Dictionary_, Richardson had reached the summit of his fame, Smollett had written _Peregrine Pickle_, Gray had attracted notice by his verse. All these and others who set the vogue in literature and the drama, the principal figures in politics, the leaders of fashion, lounged in that luxurious studio and gossiped with Reynolds of the theatre, both before and behind the scenes, of the doings in Parliament and the scandal of the Court, of literature and of art. At the time when Goldsmith was putting the finishing touches to his _Travels_ he was a guest of the house. Gibbon, the historian, and Sterne, whose _Sentimental Journey_ was just then the talk of the town, spent their vacant hours with him; and Burke as well, while he discussed with him his treatise on the _Sublime and the Beautiful_. All these claimed a niche in Reynolds' portrait gallery, where all the talents were met together. The whole English nobility also flocked to him. For forty years onwards from 1752 it was considered the proper thing to be painted by him. His pictures were multiplied immediately at the hands of the engravers. In the complete catalogue of Reynolds' works, Hamilton counts, so far back as 1820, no fewer than 675 plates, engraved after Reynolds by more than a hundred artists, and amongst these the mezzotints of Samuel Cousins are by far the finest. Only an incredible industry, enabling him for a long succession of years to paint almost without intermission with a facility and regularity like that of Rubens, rendered it possible for Reynolds to complete, exclusive of portraits, quite a number of religious and mythological pictures, of which he himself was especially proud. He painted with great speed and dexterity,