With regard to the pose also, and similar conceptions, one can never quite get away from the thought of Van Dyck and other old masters. Reynolds' chief endeavour, not only as regards colouring, but also in other respects, was to resemble the ancients, and this has brought into his pictures something imitative and laboured. He dearly loved the Romans and Venetians; we believe to-day that he loved almost too dearly the Bolognese. And just that fine, artistic education which he received in Italy and Holland, and the scientific method in which he practised his art, did harm to Reynolds, and brought into his pictures too much reminiscence, too many alien touches. He has in most cases understood it--how to bring into uniformity the numerous borrowings of his palette, all that he had taken from Leonardo, Correggio, Velasquez, and Rembrandt. Yet he has never quite forgotten the old masters and looked only at his model, for the sake of the very daintiest lady or the freshest English boy. For his children he thought of Correggio's "Cherubim," for his schoolboys of Murillo, for the portrait of Mrs. Hartley of Leonardo da Vinci, for that of Mrs. Sheridan of Raphael. There lacked in him that spontaneity which denotes the great master. By his erudition in art, Sir Joshua elevated himself on the shoulders of all who had preceded him. He obtained thereby the piquant effects in his portraits, but it was at the price of the penalty that from many of his works it is rather a rancid odour of oil and varnish which exhales than the breath of life. [Illustration: REYNOLDS. THE GIRL WITH THE MOUSETRAP.]