Some Account xi
prised to find it so well done; and comparing
it with his later works, with that modesty
which always accompanies genius, lamented
that in such a series of years he should not
have made a greater progress in his art.9
On Christmas-day, 1746, his father, a
man highly respected in his native county,
died ; and left our young painter to raise, as
he could, the fabrick of his own fortune.
After spending a few more years in the prac-
tice of painting, partly in London10 and
partly in Devonshire, where many of his early
essays yet remain, he became acquainted with
by young Reynolds about the same time, in the Collec-
tion of Lord Eliot, at Port Eliot in Cornwall.
9 He made the same observation on viewing the pic-
ture of a Boy reading, which he also painted in 1746; an
admirable piece, which was sold by auction among other
of his works in 1796, to Sir Henry Englefield, Bart, for
thirty- five guineas.
10 At this period he lived in St. Martin’s Lane, which
was then a favourite residence of Artists ; nearly opposite
to May’s Buildings,