This would probably have obtained great applause, had not Barry's disdain of anything ordinary induced him to represent the combatants on both sides in a state of nudity. About a year afterwards he was acutely mortified at the refusal of the bishop of London to allow the introduc tion of paintings into St Paul's,-a matter which, he says, "he had long set his heart upon," and in which he was to have had a considerable share. The sentiments which he entertained upon this occasion gave rise to his Inquiry into the Real and Imaginary Obstruction to the Progress of Art in England,' published in 1775, in which he successfully refutes the theory of Winkleman, that the climate of this country unfitted its inhabitants for attaining to high eminence in the arts, but denounces our antiquarians and connoisseurs with great virulence, and bitterly inveighs against the success of portrait-painters as inimical to the progress of historic art.

Barry now offered to adorn the great room of the Society of Arts with a series of historical paintings at his own expense. This magnificent offer being accepted by the society, he commenced his task in 1777, and finished it in 1783. The performance consisted of six pictures:The Story of Orpheus;' 'Harvest Home;' The Victors at Olympia ;' Navigation, or the Triumph of the Thames; The Distribution of Premiums by the Society of Arts;' and 'Elysium, or the State of Finai Retribution.' These were, upon the whole, splendid compositions, and raised the artist's reputation to a very high pitch.

Two years after his return from Italy, he was elected Royal academician; and, in the year 1786, Professor of Painting to the Royal academy. This appointment, highly honourable in itself, and which might have been deemed the summit of his wishes, was, on the contrary, productive of nothing but unhappiness to him. Original, and in many respects extremely singular, in his opinions, he proposed changes and innovations which could not consistently be complied with, and by these means he often subjected himself to the pain of a refusal. His great object was to appropriate a fund accumulated from the receipts of exhibitions, to form a gallery of the old masters for the use of the pupils. In this, and in many other efforts which he made with the same view, he entirely failed; so that, by continual opposition, he at length rendered himself so obnoxious to his brethren, that early in March, 1799, a body of charges was received by the council at the Royal academy, against the Professor of Painting; upon which the following resolution was passed: "That the charges and information were sufficiently important to be laid before the whole body of academicians to be examined, and if they coincide in opinion, the heads of those charges to be then communicated to the Professor of Painting." This was intimated to Mr Barry by order of the council. On the 19th of March the academy received the minutes of the council respecting the charges, and referred them to a committee elected for the purpose. The academy met again on the 15th of April, to receive the report of the committee; when Mr Barry rose, and demanded to be furnished with a copy of the report. This being denied, he protested against the injustice of the whole proceeding, and withdrew, declaring in plain terms, that "if they acted in conjunction with his enemies, without giving him the opportunity of answering for himself, and refuting the charges alleged against him, he should be ashamed to belong to the academy." Having withdrawn,

he was removed by a vote from the professor's chair, and, by a subsequent vote, expelled the academy. The whole proceedings were then laid before his majesty, who was pleased to approve them, and Barry's name was accordingly struck off the roll of academicians. Upon the circumstances of this transaction we forbear to dilate: it was decisive as to his future prospects.

From the period of his expulsion from the academy, the life of Barry presents little variety of incident. He appears to have been absorbed in the proud independence of a mind yet unbroken and unsubdued. During his later years he resided alone; with his own hands supplying all his wants, and performing all domestic offices. Abstemious in his diet, frugal in his habits, and negligent in his person, there was little in his appearance to attract the observation of congenial minds; nevertheless he still numbered among his friends, some who, through all its disguises, could recognise the flame of that genius which was not yet extinguished. By the exertions of the earl of Radnor, and others, the sum of nearly £1000 was collected for him; and, in consideration of this sum, Sir Robert Peele, at a meeting of the subscribers, liberally offered to secure him an annuity of £120. But the artist was not permitted to enjoy the benefit designed for him by his friends; for, in the month of February, 1806, he was attacked by a paralytic stroke, at an eating-house, from whence he was removed almost in an insensible state to the house of Joseph Bonomi, artist, Great Titchfield street, where he died on the 22d of the same month. Sir Robert Peele, on being apprised of Barry's death, and of the indigence in which he died, immediately offered £200 out of the £1000 now become his own, to defray the expense of a public interment in St Paul's; and, in order to give greater effect to the solemnity, he proposed the following motion in the Society of arts, on the 5th of March:-"That permission be given to place the body of Mr Barry in the great room of the society, the night previous to the interment, as the last tribute in the power of the society to offer to the remains of the illustrious artist to whose labours it is indebted for the series of classical paintings which adorn its walls;" which motion, so honourable to his memory as an artist, was unanimously carried. The funeral having been fixed for Friday, the 14th of March, the body lay in state the preceding evening. At one o'clock on the Friday, the funeral procession took place to St Paul's; the service was performed in the chapel near the west door of the cathedral; and from thence the body was taken to the south-east corner of the crypt, under the cathedral, where it was finally deposited between the remains of Sir Christopher Wren and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Previous to his last illness, Barry was engaged in painting the Origin of Evil, Grief, Pain,' &c., which he is said to have completed. He also left an unfinished portrait of Lord Nelson.

In person, Barry, who used to describe himself as a "pock-pitted, hard-featured, little fellow," was below the middle size. His sour temper, and impatience of contradiction, alienated from him the sympathies of those who were most disposed to befriend him; even the ardent friendship of Burke was at last chilled into reserve, though never to indifference. Yet with all his fierceness, he had some generous qualities. Notwithstanding the mutual dislike between himself and Rey. nolds, who once said to Bacon, the sculptor, "If there be a man on

earth I seriously dislike, it is that Barry,"—after the death of Sir Joshua he went to the academy, and pronounced a glowing eulogium upon him as an artist and a man. His many faults, too, were accompanied by an independent and honest spirit. When some one 'advised him, for the sake of appearance, to take a better house, and set up a neat establishment, he replied, "The pride of honesty protests against such a rash speculation." His abode and costume are thus described by Southey, who visited him at his apartments in Castle-street. wore at that time an old coat of green baize, but from which time had taken all the green that incrustations of paint and dirt had not covered. His wig was one which you might suppose he had borrowed from a scare-crow; all round it there projected a fringe of his own grey hair. He lived alone in a house which was never cleaned; and he slept on a bedstead with no other furniture than a blanket nailed on one side."

Elizabeth Carter.

BORN A. D. 1717.-DIED A. D. 1806.

"He

ELIZABETH CARTER was born on the 16th of December, 1717, at Deal, in Kent. She was the eldest daughter of the Rev. Nicholas Carter, D.D. perpetual curate of the chapel in that town, and afterwards rector of Woodchurch and Ham. It does not appear that the infancy and early youth of Mrs Carter offered any promise of those attainments for which she was so celebrated in after life. Yet her eager desire to become a scholar, and her steady perseverance in the pursuit of learning, conquered those impediments which are opposed to the entrance on the study of the dead languages. "This ardent thirst after knowledge was," says Mr Pennington, her biographer, "at length crowned with complete success, and her acquirements became, even very early in life, such as are rarely met with. What she had once gained she never afterwards lost, an effect, indeed, to be expected from the intense application by which she acquired her learning, and which is often by no means the case with respect to those, the quickness of whose faculties renders labour almost useless." Very early, it seems, she cultivated a taste for poetry; for in the year 1738 she published a small collection of poems, written before she was twenty years of age. The year 1739 first introduced Mrs Carter to the world as a writer in prose as well as in verse. Her first work was a translation from the French of the critique of Crousaz on Pope's Essay on Man.' Before she had finished this translation, she began another, from the Italian of Algarotti's Newtonionismo par le Dame.' The English title of this work was, 'Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy explained for the Use of Ladies, in Six Dialogues on Light and Colours.' This was printed by Cave in the same year, 1739, in two volumes, 12mo, and was thought to be very well done. This book is-like the former-very scarce. These translations, though Mrs Carter never spoke of them when further advanced in life and learning, had, at the time they were published, a considerable influence upon her fame; and one of them was the means of introducing her to the celebrated countess of Hertford, afterwards dutchess of Somerset. An event which had probably a great in

fluence upon Mrs Carter's success in the world, as well as upon her literary fame, was her acquaintance with Miss Talbot, which commenced in February, 1741. Indeed, this was an era in her life of no small importance; for this acquaintance soon ripened into intimacy, which continued uninterrupted to the end of that excellent and accomplished lady's life; she was the means of introducing her to many of her friends, of great eminence both in rank and learning. In the same year, they commenced a most unreserved and confidential epistolary correspondence, which, as long as Miss Talbot survived, met with no interruption, nor was ever checked by the most transient coldness or estrangement. To this friend Mrs Carter was indebted for her introduction to Dr Secker, then bishop of Oxford, who, when he became archbishop of Canterbury, preferred her brother-in-law, Dr Pennington, to the living of Tunstall, in that diocese. Among Mrs Carter's other correspondents, we find the name of the Rev. John Duncombe, the translator of Horace. He married Miss Highmore, a young lady of whom Richardson, in his letters, speaks in the highest terms.

Mrs Carter was several years engaged in the arduous task of educating her brother Henry, who, Mr Pennington remarks, "is perhaps the only instance of a student, at Cambridge, who was indebted for his previous education to one of the other sex: and this circumstance excited no small surprise there, when it was inquired, after his examination, at what school he had been brought up?" Her leisure hours, we learn, were well employed, since to them the world owes her greatest work, and that which principally contributed to make her known, the translation of Epictetus. "This was undertaken at the desire of Miss Talbot, enforced by the bishop of Oxford. It was begun in the summer of 1749; and was sent up in sheets, as fast as it was written, for the entertainment of Miss Talbot, and to receive the bishop's corrections. It was not originally designed for publication; and therefore, at first, some chapters were omitted, as not being likely to give her friend any pleasure, which were afterwards translated, and added in their proper places."

In December, 1752, Mrs Carter says, in one of her letters to Miss Talbot, "I have now just ended the translation, and will soon begin with the fair copy, or wait till my lord has been so good as to correct the fourth book, as you think best." As the 'Enchiridion,' or 'Manual of Epictetus,' had been translated by Dr Stanhope, as well as by other writers of less note, it was not Mrs Carter's first intention to translate either that or the fragments. The bishop, however, requested her to undertake these also, which would make it a complete work. These were finished in May, 1756, and, like the rest, sent to the bishop for revisal.'

1 "The printing of this work was begun in June, 1757, and was not finished till April, 1758 it was in one volume, large quarto, 505 pages, besides the introduction of 34: there were 1,018 copies struck off at first; but as they were found insufficient for the subscribers, in the following July 250 more were printed. There have been two subsequent editions, in two volumes duodecimo, besides one in two volumes octavo, published since Mrs Carter's decease, with some additional notes. It was printed by subscription, and the price was a guinea; one half to be paid at the time of subscribing, and the remainder on the delivery of the book. The number of subscribers was very great, no less (as entered on her own copy, some of the names being in MS.) than 1031; and the list of names was most respectable, comprehending a large pro

After the pubk.cation of her Epictetus, Mrs Carter's circumstances became so easy, that she was no longer wholly dependent upon her father; though she still resided with him whenever she was at Deal. But she was now enabled to live for several months in that part of London which she never afterwards quitted. She thought herself more independent in lodgings, as well as more at her ease, than she could be in visiting at any friend's house, many of whom would gladly have received her. She therefore engaged apartments in Clarges-street, Piccadilly, in which she lived many years. This was next door to the house in which she died; and except the interval of a year or two after the death of her old landlady, No. 20, when she had lodgings in Chapel-street, Mayfair, she resided constantly in the winter in Clarges-street.

Lord Bath and Mrs Montague having formed a plan of visiting the continent together, this plan was carried into effect soon after the signing of the treaty of peace the beginning of the year 1763. In this party the ideas of pleasure and health were connected. The Spa waters had been prescribed to Lord Bath. At Mrs Montague's earnest request, Mrs Carter was prevailed on to join the party, which was, of course, attended with no expense to her. Dr Douglas also, the late bishop of Salisbury, the learned and well-known detector of literary forgeries, who was then chaplain to Lord Bath, as well as his intimate friend, travelled with them. This excursion produced a series of letters from Mrs Carter to Miss Talbot, many of which are extremely entertaining, and the whole indeed curious and interesting. The tour, as may well be supposed, considering who and what her companions were, was, to Mrs Carter, a most delightful one. Indeed it may be considered as an epoch in a life varied with so few events. She always dwelt upon it with peculiar pleasure, even to the last, and had the most perfect recollection of every circumstance attending it.

After Mrs Carter's return from Spa, she passed the winter, as usual, at her lodgings in Clarges-street. During the first part of it, Miss Talbot was on a visit to Canterbury. In one of Mrs Carter's letters to her while there, she shows her opinion of two characters at that time of great note, in language more pointed, warm, and expressive, than she generally used. "I lately heard," she says, "that Churchill, within two years, has got £3,500 by his ribald scribbling. Happy age of virtue and of genius, in which Wilkes is a patriot, and Churchill a poet !"

About three years before Mrs Carter's death, Lady Bath represented to her father, that every thing was then so increased in price, the £100 was much less valuable than when the annuity was granted, and Sir William generously added £50 to it. This, added to what her uncle

portion of those who were most eminent in station as well as literature. The first delivery to the booksellers for the respective subscribers was 650 copies. The whole expense of printing the work, including the proposals and receipts, as appears by Mr Richardson's bill, who printed it, was only £67 7s. (that is, not including the 250 copies added afterwards); and as many more copies were subscribed for, by way of compliment, than were claimed, Mrs Carter was a gainer by the work nearly, if not quite, a thousand pounds. It sold so well, and the price kept up so remarkably, that some years after Dr Secker, then archbishop of Canterbury, brought a bookseller's catalogue to her, saying, "Here, Madam Carter, see how ill I am used by the world; here are my sermons selling at half-price, while your Epictetus truly is not to be had under eighteen shillings, only three shillings less than the original subscription."