OLIVER GOLDSMITHS LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK m.
1763. life, standing of Hs own free choice apart and alone. Study
Mt. 35. the great works of the great masters for ever, said Reynolds:
There is only one school, cried Hogarth, and that is kept by
Nature. "What was uttered on the one side of Leicester-
square, was pretty sure to be contradicted on the other; and
neither would make the advance which might have reconciled
the views of both. Be it remembered, at the same time, that
Hogarth, in the daring confidence of his more astonishing
genius, kept himself at the farthest extreme. "Talk of
" sense, and study, and all that," he said to Walpole, " why,
" it is owing to the good sense of the English that they have
" not painted better. The people who have studied painting
" least are the best judges of it. There's Reynolds, who
" certainly has genius; why but t'other day he offered a
" hundred pounds for a picture that I would not hang in
"my cellar."* Reynolds might have some excuse if he
turned from this with a smile, and a supposed confirmation
of his error that the critic was himself no painter. Thus
these great men lived separate to the last. The only feeling
they shared in common may have been that kindness to
Oliver Goldsmith, which, after their respective fashion, each
manifested well. The one, with his ready help and robust
example, would have strengthened him for life, as for a
solitary warfare which awaited every man of genius; the
other, more gently, would have drawn him from contests
and solitude, from discontents and low esteem, to the sense
that worldly consideration and social respect might gladden
even literary toil. While Hogarth was propitiating and
painting Mrs. Fleming, Reynolds was founding the Literary
Club.
* The whole dialogue from which these expressions are taken will he found in the
Cott. Lett. iv. 141.