The Parentage and Kinsfolk of Sir Joshua Reynolds. By Sir
Robert Edgcumbe. (Chiswick Press.)—The author sets him- self to account for the fact that Sir Joshua sought his associates, not among his fellow-artists, but among literary men. He finds the cause in the intellectuality of his kindred. Literary tastes were a matter of heredity with him. " Of his nearest relations no less than five were Fellows and Scholars of Oxford and Cambridge Colleges." His father was a Fellow of Balliol; one uncle a Fellow of King's, Cambridge ; another a Fellow of Christ's College, Oxford, " and bursar," adds Sir Robert Edgcumbe with triumph. But this does not necessarily mean that they were " cultured literary men." We allow that nowadays the fact that three brothers held Fellowships at Balliol, King's, and Corpus would mean something. But how about the eighteenth century ? What does Mark Pattison say (" Memoirs, 1885 ") " The co-opta- tion of Fellows into the society, or corporation, of a College was, in the last century, done under conditions which left no place for any qualification of learning, even if learning had existed at all in the University." However this may be, there is interesting matter in this book. Some of Sir Walter Armstrong's censures are noticed not without asperity, and much of the blame of Sir Joshua's fugitive colouring is laid on the cleaners.
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