Gainsborough constructed a working model of a steam-engine, which he unsuspiciously showed to a stranger said to have been connected with Watt as an engineer.*

At ten years old, Thomas Gainsborough made sketches of trees, rocks, shepherds, ploughmen, and pastoral scenes, while at the Grammar School in Sudbury, then kept by his uncle ; and he usually passed his holidays in rambling through the rich hanging woods, and sketching their majestic oaks and elms, winding glades, and sunny nooks. He is also said to have cut a caricature of his master upon the school-wall; and sketched a peasant who came to rob an orchard, which effort was preserved for many years, and ultimately made into a finished painting, as "Tom Pear-tree's Portrait." To obtain a holiday, he once forged the written request of his father, who muttered, "Tom will come to be hanged"; but, on learning that Tom employed the holiday in sketching, his parent. with very opposite feelings, exclaimed, "The boy will be a genius." He had little technical instruction, or graphical education. It has been truly said of him that "Nature was his teacher, and the woods of Suffolk were his Academy."

GAINSBOROUGH COMES TO LONDON.

At the age of fifteen, Gainsborough left Sudbury for the metropolis: here he resided with a silversmith, who introduced him to Gravelot, the engraver, from whom he learned etching and aqua-tint. He then obtained admission to the Academy in St. Martin's-lane; and next associated with Hayman, from whom, however, he learned little of painting, and less of morality. Within three years, he hired rooms in Hatton Garden, and began to paint landscapes, which he sold to picture-dealers; and portraits at from three to five guineas. He also modelled excellently, cows, dogs, and horses: a cast in the plaster-shops, of an old horse modelled by Gainsborough, obtained conventional reputation. This employment, however, proved so unprofitable, that Gainsborough packed up his canvas and colours, and returned to Sudbury, after four years' absence.

* There is in the British Museum a curious sun-dial with "Humphry Gainsborough" deeply cut in it; he anticipated the contrivance of fire proof boxes, and received the Society of Arts premium of 50l. for a tide-mill of his invention. These pursuits occupied the leisure hours of Humphry, who was a dissenting minister at Henley-upon-Thames.

GAINSBOROUGH'S MARRIAGE.

The young painter now began to study landscape in the woods and fields of Suffolk. About this time he became acquainted with Margaret Burr, the memory of whose extraordinary beauty, (says Mr. Fulcher,*) is still preserved in Sudbury. She sat to the young artist for her portrait: she alike admired the picture and the artist, and after a short courtship they were married, the lady bringing with her hand an annuity of 2007. She is said to have been the natural daughter of one of our exiled princes, which she did not forget; for, many years after, when her husband was in high fame, she vindicated some little costliness in her dress, by whispering to her niece: "I have some right to this, for you know, my love, I am a prince's daughter." Mr. T. Green, of Ipswich, states her to have been a "natural daughter of the Duke of Bedford." About six months after his marriage, Gainsborough hired a house at Ipswich, at the rent of six pounds a-year.

DETECTIVE PORTRAITS.

When Gainsborough was living at Ipswich, one day seeing a country fellow with a slouched hat, looking wistfully over his garden-wall at some wind-fall pears, he caught up a piece of board, and painted him so faithfully, that, the figure being shaped out, and set upon a wall, in a gentleman's garden at Ipswich, induced many persons to speak to that melancholylooking man.

One of Gainsborough's neighbours was a clergyman named Coyte, whose garden had been robbed of a great quantity of wall-fruit, without the thief being detected. Young Gainsborough having, one summer morning, risen at an early hour, and walked into the garden to sketch an old elm, seated himself in an obscure corner, when he observed a man peeping over the garden-wall next the road, to see if the coast was clear. He made a sketch of the head of the man, and so accurate was the resemblance, that he was identified as coming from a neighbouring village, and proved to be the fellow who had robbed the parson's garden.

*Life of Thomas Gainsborough, R.A. By the late George William Fulcher, edited by his Son, 1856: a charming work, to which we are indebted for corrective details.

Gainsborough painted one of Mr. Coyte's sons, so true to nature that the portrait was known as "Coyte alive."

GAINSBOROUGH AND GARRICK.

After his removal from Ipswich to Bath, Gainsborough's success as a portrait-painter was very great. Here he painted Garrick, as Mrs. Garrick said, "the best portrait ever painted. of her Davy," which he presented to the corporation of Stratford-on-Avon, where it hangs in the Town-hall. He is leaning against a pedestal, surmounted by a bust of Shakspeare, which he encircles with one arm: the background is a favourite haunt in Garrick's retreat at Hampton.

Hazlitt wrote in the Morning Chronicle, of another portrait of Garrick (in the possession of General Wallis), this picture "is as interesting as a piece of biography. He looks much more like a gentleman than in Reynolds's tragi-comic representation of him. There is a considerable lightness and intelligence in the expression of the face, and a piercing vivacity about the eyes, to which the attention is immediately directed."

Gainsborough told the writer of Garrick's memoir, in the obituary of the Gentleman's Magazine, that he never found any portrait so difficult to hit as that of Mr. Garrick; for, when he was sketching the eyebrows, and thought he had hit upon the precise situation, and looked a second time at his sitter, he found the eyebrows lifted up to the middle of his forehead; and when he looked a third time, they were dropped, like a curtain, close over the eye,—so flexible was the countenance of the great actor.

GAINSBOROUGH A MUSICIAN.

Our painter gave all the hours of intermission in his profession to fiddles and rebecs. His musical taste was very great; and he himself thought he was not intended by Nature for a painter, but for a musician. Happening to see a theorbo in a picture of Vandyke's, he concluded it must be a fine instrument. He recollected to have heard of a German professor; and, ascending to his garret, found him dining on roasted apples, and smoking his pipe, with his theorbo beside him.

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"I am come to buy your lute-name your price, and here's your money." "I cannot sell my lute." "No, not for a guinea or two;-but you must sell it, I tell you.' My lute is worth much money-it is worth ten guineas." that it is!—see, here's the money." So saying, he took up

Aye,

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"What

the instrument, laid down the price, went half-way down. stairs, and returned. "I have done but half my errand; what is your lute worth, if I have not your book?" book, Master Gainsborough?" Why, the book of airs you have composed for the lute." "Ah, sir, I can never part with my book!" "Poh! you can make another at any time -this is the book I mean-t n-there's ten guineas for it-so, once more, good day." He went down a few steps, and returned again. "What use is your book to me if I don't understand it?—and your lute, you may take it again, if you won't teach me to play on it. Come home with me, and give me the first lesson." "I will come to-morrow." "You must come now." "I must dress myself." "For what? You are the best figure I have seen to-day." "I must shave, sir." "I honour your beard." "I must, however, put on my wig." "D-n your wig! your cap and beard become you! Do you think if Vandyke was to paint you, he'd let you be shaved?" In this manner Gainsborough frittered away his musical talents; and though possessed of ear, taste, and genius, he never had application enough to learn his notes. He scorned to take the first step-the second was of course out of his reach the summit became unattainable.

"THE PAINTER'S EYE."

Gainsborough was very successful in repartee. He was once examined as a witness on a trial respecting the originality of a picture, when a counsel endeavoured to puzzle him by saying, "I observe you lay great stress on a painter's eye-what do you mean by that expression?" "A painter's eye," answered Gainsborough, "is to him what a lawyer's tongue is to you."

GAINSBOROUGH AND HIS FRIEND THICKNESSE.

Although the painter's Bath friend was governor of Landguard Fort, and a man of proud pretension, Gainsborough found that money would not be unwelcome in his friend's household, and he appears to have taken a singular and delicate mode of lending his assistance. Thicknesse relates that among the instruments of music which Gainsborough loved was the viol-di-gamba, and Mrs. Thicknesse had one, made in the year 1612, on which she played with much skill and effect. He appeared one evening to be exceedingly charmed with the instrument, and said: "I love it so much, that I

would willingly give an hundred guineas for it." She desired him to stay to supper: she placed the viol-di-gamba beside him; he took it up, and played in a manner so masterly, that Mrs. Thicknesse said: "You deserve an instrument on which you play so well; and I beg your acceptance of it, on the condition that you will give me my husband's picture to hang beside the one which you painted of me." The artist acquiesced the viol-di-gamba was sent to him next morning; he stretched a canvas, took one sitting of some fifteen minutes' duration, and then laid it aside for other works. The lady was incensed, and the husband remonstrated; Gainsborough returned the viol-di-gamba, and never touched the picture more.

:

Such is the story of Thicknesse: the family version communicated to Allan Cunningham* by a lady, who had it from Mrs. Gainsborough herself, is somewhat different. The painter (according to this account,) put one hundred guineas privately into the hands of Mrs. Thicknesse for the viol-digamba; her husband, who might not be aware of what passed, expressed his wish for the portrait, and obtained what he conceived to be a promise that it should be painted. This double benefaction, however, was more than Gainsborough had contemplated: he commenced the portrait, but there it stopped; and, after a time, resenting some injurious expressions from the lips of the Governor, the artist sent him the picture, rough and unfinished, and returned also the viol-di-gamba.

Thicknesse sent back the portrait, with a note, requesting Gainsborough to take his brush, and first rub out the countenance of the truest and warmest friend he ever had; and having so done, then blot him for ever from his memory.

However, when Gainsborough removed from Bath to London, Thicknesse followed him, and affected to fear his chance in the great world. It was the old story of the spangle on the lion's tail. Thicknesse urged Lord Bateman to patronise the painter, to which the Governor had the vanity to ascribe much of Gainsborough's success-although he had already painted many noble pictures, and had exhibited them for thirteen years in succession in the Royal Academy.

GAINSBOROUGH AND HOUBRAKEN'S HEADS.

When Gainsborough became a pupil of Mr. Gravelot, under his instructions, he drew most of the ornaments which decorate the illustrious Heads admirably engraved by Houbraken. * Lives of British Painters, vol. i. p. 343.

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