MONTHLY MIRROR, FOR APRIL, 1804. ·Embellished with ▲ PORTRAIT OF SIR FRANCIS BOURGEOIS, ENGRAVED BY RIDLEY, FROM A FINE PAINTING. PRINTED, FOR THE PROPRIETORS, By J. Wright, No. 38, St. John's Square, Clerkenwelt. And published by Vernor and Hood, in the Poultry; Sold, also, by all the Booksellers in the United Kingdom. 1804. CORRESPONDENCE. A Portrait of Mr. Dowton, of Drury-Lane Theatre, in our next. The length of the very elegant and truly interesting Memoir of SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH, for which we are indebted to a literary Friend, has necessarily occasioned, this month, a curtailment in the departments appropriated to POETRY and the DRAMA. We have to acknowledge the receipt of the following communications; Portrait of Stella; and Observations on Grace, by Z. Elegy on the Death of Miss Sophia Anne Goddard, late of the Norwich Theatre; by CANTABRIGIENSIS. The Letter from JUSTUS, on the subject of the Battle of Bannockburn, in our next; and also Further Remarks respecting the Visibility of the Ghost of Banquo. Norwich and Irish Theatricals, &c. We expect to be able shortly to present to our readers another number of the MELANCHOLY HOURS, The Midnight Visitation is not adapted to the purposes of this work. The Doctor and his Dose is in the same predicament. ERRATUM IN OUR LAST. Page 153, 1. 2 of the motto, for Tonely read Tol XNOEIV. MONTHLY MIRROR, FOR APRIL, 1804. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF SIR FRANCIS BOURGEOIS, R. A. (With a Portrait.) THE personal worth, as well as professional skill, of the gentleman who now engages our attention, ought to have excited an earlier notice in a work that professes to be the MIRROR of contemporary merit. Sir FRANCIS BOURGEOIS is descended from an ancient and respectable family, of the Canton of Berne, in Switzerland. The family name, in former times, we understand, made no inconsiderable figure in that country: several of this gentleman's ancestors possessed offices of high trust and importance in the government. Sir FRANCIS BOURGEOIS himself was born in the capital of the British empire. His father intended him for a military life, and he was presented, when a child, to the late Lord HEATHFIELD, whose name will ever maintain an honourable place in the records of British heroism. The gallant veteran promised our embryo artist a commission in the Light Dragoons, when he should have arrived at a proper age. Colonel BOURGEOIS, a near relation, in Switzerland, expressed a desire that the child should be sent to him, intending to place him in a military school. Parental fondness, however, kept him in this country, where he was indulged with a view of every military spectacle that occurred, with a reference to his intended profession. Such objects fired his imagination, and contributed to bring forth his latent genius, which appeared in attempts to delineate what he saw; and many early sketches of his pencil, consisting chiefly of the operations of the cavalry, were submitted to the judgment of Sir JOSHUA REYNOLDS, WILSON, and GAINSBOROUGH, all of whom gave the most flattering encouragement to his dawning powers, and confirmed him in the pursuit of an art to which he has since devoted his life, and in which he has deservedly acquired a very high reputation. LOUTHERBOURG was the professor from whom our young artist derived his first regular instructions, and whose manner he copied with extraordinary success. With this celebrated professor our artist remained a few months, which he em E E-VOL. XVII. |