To what extent did he mean to pursue the subject of the Christian revelation? Did he intend painting the characteristic and chief traits in the life of our Saviour; to introduce the Ordination of the Sacraments; to exemplify and contrast that proud, but unsound principle of the Stoic school, to bear and forbear, with the natural, graceful, unassuming, and chief feature of the Christian, made up of meekness of heart and a forgiving disposition? It is impossible to say he has left no memorial of his ultimate intentions; but from the detached and broken parts, it is probable that this was his intention, with such intermediate links, that the subject would have flowed before the spectator's eye in one continued, instructive, and pleas-, ing stream, and such as the consolatory history of universal redemption might be supposed to represent.

In this ample and sublime manner his wish and attention was to convey the progressive culture of the human mind under the two great divisions of philosophy and theology; and it may be said, without any extravagant admiration of the man, that the school of Athens and Dispute of the Sacrament, convey but a scanty delineation of the two subjects, in comparison with the learned, poetical, and systematic mode intended by Barry.

Raffael's range of subject is more confined, as he chooses the moment of consummation of human culture, the acme of philosophy and theology. Barry's range is so ample, that it appears almost without limits, as he takes in the progression of these subjects, such as they appear in different periods of time or stages of society. The one oversteps all bounds of proba

sophy,

Finding no end, in wandering mazes lost."

Whatever may be the grandeur, variety, and spirit of the figures, the dignity of the heads, the grand style of drapery, or the beauty of colouring, for in these things the inimitable Raffael is visible, and Barry halts behind him; still the same objections apply in the picture of the Dispute of the Sacrament; the spectator remains to be informed who the actors are, what they are about, and how they came together at one place and time; and when he has had this information, he is not much wiser or more satisfied. In no part of Mr. Barry's work are violations of the unities observable. Fiction no where soars above probability; because where the scenes are on earth, his personages, almost all, are imaginary; or if real personages, he has made choice of such as existed at or nearly the same period of time. There is but one instance to the contrary, which is in his picture of the Thames, where, to honour the memory of Captain Cooke, and to compliment his friend Dr. Burney, he has associated them with Sir Walter Raleigh, Drake, and others, of an earlier period. To profit therefore by the

free

free scope of general representation of real personages, he places his scene in Elysium, where probability is not overstepped; where the action is uniform, which is the acquisition and discussion of reserved knowledge, though the individuals are variously and dividedly grouped. And the eye is carried over the different parts of this immense picture without fatigue or confusion by the natural pauses and breaks every where interspersed, and at last conducts the imagination to that supposed centre, the throne of Deity, from whence life and immortality are brought to light.

as

If in the room of the Society of Arts, Mr. Barry has told his story clearly, strongly, and with many requisites of the epic as painting will admit, though not so amply as his expanded mind intended; since it is certain, if the place and opportunities had allowed, his intention was to have introduced episodical parts, which had reference to other branches of 'culture in the human mind, such as jurisprudence and legislation, natural philosophy, poetry, &c.so is it certain, that in the most important of all, as connecting man with his Creator, and as the source of his eternal felicity hereafter, or theology, he would have conducted his subject with due effect. He required only that countenance and encouragement of the public, which genius so laudably pants after and deserves.

But if he lived not to complete his great subject, the delay of which lay not with him so much as with the adverse circumstances under which he laboured, let it not be supposed that he spent his time idly or unprofitably; few men ever calculated the value of their

so rigidly as Mr. Barry: if he

was a miser in any thing, it was in the careful economy of this treasure. It has been noticed how much he was dissatisfied, if the loose moments which mankind are willing to throw into the lap of social intercourse, and to abandon for any chance pleasures they can bring, were not spent profitably; that is, each moment bringing its charge of grave and useful instruction and delivering it up into the common stock for the benefit of the company. H such was his attention to the proper use of his social hours, we may well suppose that those appropriated to himself were not suffered to slip away unemployed; and indeed, after turning one's eye from his larger works of the pencil, to his lesser labours of the graver, from his canvas to his plates, we may be astonished that so much should have been accomplished by one man, solitary, unassisted, unpatronized, and unprotected; who, whether all his ap prehensions were imaginary or real, had certainly enemies enough to qualify an expression he frequently used; that it was extraor dinary he could ever accomplish what he had done, when he had so. often to defend himself with one hand, while he painted with the other. Yet his spirit and industry carried him through a larger series of etchings or engravings than perhaps ever fell to the share of any man who had not made that branch of art his professed occupation. He has etched or engraved almost all his paintings, and also many of his other designs, which he intended, but had not place or opportunity to throw upon canvas. It is to be wished that he had engraved them all; for such is the strong and masterly style of hi

art,

art, that it will not be easy to find an artist who can catch his manner and force of expression. This manner of etching or engraving is peculiar to Mr. Barry; it is coarse, but nervous, strong, and energetic. Here, as in every thing else, he disdained to please only; there fore all softness and delicacy of line, all fineness and finish, every thing to flatter the eye without reaching the mind, he flings aside, to fasten with more effect and depth on the main points of his design, and knows that his instruinent conveys the tale usefully, if it conveys it strongly; and that adventitious ornament and finish may be a necessary appendage to weakness of subject, but can add nothing to that which is sufficiently strong to support itself. With various degrees of merit and excellence, which it is not the business here to enter minutely into, has he conducted a long series of etchings or engravings; the principal and most important of which are those which refer to his work at the Adelphi. All of these paintings he engraved, undertaking the work under the encouragement of a subscription of ten guineas the set. This series comprized what he called the smallest set; but he engraved the principal groups in the Elysium, and that of the Dia gorides in the Olympic Games, in a larger and finer style some years afterwards, introducing certain characters into his Elysium whom he had unjustly, as he thought, omitted in the painting; such as the person of Isabella of Spain, the great princess, by whose magnanimity and patronage, Columbus accomplished his discovery of America; the person of Calvert Baron of Baltimore, the founder of the colony of Maryland, and wise le

gislator of that code which Penn afterwards adopted for the colony which he established; and perhaps others, which we do not recollect.

The principal subject of his other engravings are-his Pandora, which he has left unfinished.

Job reproved by his friends, dedicated to Mr. Burke.

The conversion of Polemon, dedicated to Mr. Fox. Polemon, an Athenian beau, reeling home from a night's debauch, enters at early dawn the lecture-room of Xenocrates the philosopher, at the mo ment he is discoursing on the wretchedness of intemperance, and folly of vanity; expecting when he entered a subject for ridicule, the young man's attention becomes suddenly fixed by the seriousness and poignancy of the philosopher's remarks, and the artist seizes him at the moment that he is stealing from his head his garlands, and is in the posture and attitude of a man who felt the shame of his conduct and the workings of a rouzed reflection. The heads and figures of the group composing the audience, are finely conceived. This design was undertaken in consequence of some sarcastic remarks made on the levities of the late Mr. Fox, by either Price or Priestly, in a club to which Barry belonged; these men looking on Mr. Fox without hope, while Barry defended him, and produced at the next meeting the above design, 1778.

Jonah, from the painting by Michael Angelo, 1801, dedicated to the late Duke of Bridgewater.

King Lear, from a painting done by Barry, for the Shakspeare Gallery, 1776.

His present majesty delivering the patent to the judges of their

office for life; and her Majesty and the princesses patronizing education at Windsor, both intended for additional paintings in the great room of the Society at the Adelphi. Philoctetes in the isle of Lemnos, from a painting he executed at Bologna, in 1770, and presented to the Clementine Academy there, for the honour they had done him of electing him a member: this painting was engraved in 1785, by Rosaspina; but the two prints bear no comparison for energy of expression.

Birth of Venus, 1776.

Head of the late Earl of Chatham, 1778.

Jupiter and Juno, from a painting by him.

Rise of America, with the decline of Europe. An allegorical design he etched at the heat of the American war; when those who espoused the cause of the colonists, suffered their imaginations to run riot on the sunshine that was to bless America, and to lament the eternal gloom that was spreading on this side of the Atlantic; the worst of all Barry's productions, 1776.

In the Miltonic Series, the Archangel Michael triumphing over Satan, the subject he had chosen for a painting in St. Paul's.

Satan risen from the fiery gulph, and hurling defiance at the vault of Heaven.

Battle of Satan and Death, with Sin interfering.

Temptation of Adam.

Adam and Eve after their fall. Milton dictating to Elwood the quaker.

Having spoken of him for his genius and learning, it may be necessary to trace some lines of him, for his virtues and foibles as a member of society. The basis of his temper was of a cheerful and

good-humoured cast: if he had been bred a mechanic, with employments succeeding to his wishes, there is scarcely a man who would have passed through life more cheerly or unconcernedly; but fate threw him on a profession which, built up itself of ideal charms, generally charms away its votaries by a thousand phantoms of ambitious hope, which are scarcely ever to be realized during life, or if realized, never worth the sacrifice of repose which accompanies the pursuit of them. For one fortunate Rubens, ennobled and enriched by sovereigns, or for one even-tempered Reynolds, who, as Dr. Johnson observed, was the most invulnerable of men, we meet with numbers in the class of painters, whose happiness in pursuit of fame has been broken up, and whose fame even came too late to be enjoyed. The more eminent their genius, the less happy their condition; as if Providence, in whose hands are genius and happiness, proffered the one to withhold the other.

Barry inherited the gift with the hard conditions. His life had been, with respect to natural and common enjoyments, a life of privation; and with regard to the expectations he had formed, a life of disappointment. These circumstances soured a naturally good temper, in spite of religion and philosophy, of which he possessed no mean share. Add to this (as he thought) a host of men, who discovered an enmity to him, who were glad to obstruct his views, and depreciate his merits, who felt elevated in proportion as he was depressed. It must not be denied but much of this enmity Barry drew on himself. A man can never have a contemptuous opinion

of

of others, with whom he is often obliged to act in life, that is not ultimately pernicious to him; and it is to be feared that Mr. Barry's opinion of contemporary artists was not so liberal, or conciliating, or becoming his own eminent place among them, as was to be wished. As he was never a hypocrite to conceal his sentiments, their resentment became a matter of course; and except two or three friends, whom he retained among them, the general class of these gentlemen was certainly hostile to him. The opposition he met with in the Royal Academy, to several useful schemes which he proposed for the advantages of the Academy, as a seminary for young painters, tended to foster and aug ment the ill-will on both sides. This is not a place for the history of their disputes, which are detailed in several parts of his writings; but as they tended to inflame an irritable temper, (for of all men Barry belonged to the genus irritabile vatum) and ultimately by his expulsion from that body, to make him drink the cup of bitterness in his last years, it may be frankly asserted, that one of his greatest of his greatest misfortunes was his having been an Academician. It would have been better for him to have pursued his great designs without this (to him doubtful) honour: and though it would have deprived the world of the lectures, which form the principal object of this volume, yet it would have saved him from drinking of that noxious сар, which was voted, seemingly in defiance, if not in consequence, of many of the same virtues which have endeared the memory of So

crates.

Let him not be traduced, however, by giving the reader the 1809.

smallest reason to suppose that the asperity of his temper was constant and habitual: no, it was only occasional, when his mind brooded over the difficulties, the opposition, neglect, and disappointments he had inet with through life. And even here it was curious to observe, how ready he was at times to correct his failing, and even to glory in the trials he had suffered, quoting often, if not always profiting by, the best examples of endurance in the Stoics, of meekness under sufferings in our Saviour, of patience in Socrates, of austerity and self-denial in the early fathers, and of that love of poverty and independence, which distinguished the brightest characters in the Roman republic. His mind was treasured with these examples, from which he sought much of his consolation. He adopted a short maxim which he was often wont to repeat, and which consoled him also under the disappointments he had suffered; it was that of Penn, no cross, no crown; believing that buffetings, trials, and hardships alone make the man, and the good man; and that every thing was accomplished, when this latter was obtained; the reward being in the satisfaction of an unblemished conscience, and in the expected retribution of a happy immortality: that ease and sensual enjoyments of every kind sapped the probabilities of obtaining this, by wedding the individual to the world, and enticing him to rely on the varnished arts of society, and on pleasures futile, fleeting, and unsubstantial: that pure morality was at such variance with the arts of life, or with the world, that no treaty could exist between them: there was no steering between both without D sacrificing