Some Account of The Life and Writings of Sir Joshua Reynolds
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 unnecessary ; 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.
Joshua Reynolds was born at Plympton, in Devonshire, 16th July 1723, the son of Samuel Reynolds and Theophila Potter. He was on every side connected with the Church, for both his father and grandfather were in holy orders, his mother was the daughter of a clergyman, and his maternal grandmother the daughter of the Rev. Mr Baker, an eminent mathematician of the last century, of whom we have an account in the Biographia Britannica. His father's elder brother, John, was also a clergyman, a Fellow of Eton College, and Canon of St. Peter's, Exeter.
Mr. Samuel Reynolds taught the grammar school of Plympton, which could have afforded him but a moderate subsistence; nor was he enabled, by any ecclesiastical preferment, to provide for his numerous family, amounting to eleven children in all, of whom Joshua was the tenth. Five, however, of these children died in their infancy. His father had a notion, that it might at some future period of life be an advantage to a child to bear an uncommon christian name, which might recommend him to the attention and kindness of some person bearing the same name, who, if he should happen to have no natural object of his care, might be led, even by so slight a circumstance, to become a benefactor. Hence our author derived the scriptural name of Joshua, which, though not very uncommon, occurs less frequently than many others; of this baptismal name, however, the Register of Plympton, by some negligence or inaccuracy, has deprived him.