[SPACE ABOVE]The author of the following admirable
works having, for near half a century, been
well known to almost every person in this
country who had any pretensions to taste or
literature, to the present age an account of
him, however brief, may seem wholly un-
necessary ; nor should the reader be detained,
even for a few minutes, from the pleasure
which awaits him, but that posterity, while
they contemplate with delight and admiration
those productions of his pencil which place
him on a level with Titian and Vandyck,
will naturally wish to know something of the
man, as well as of the
painter.
