' We cordially welcome a most interesting edition of Reynolds's
Discourses, with Introduction and Notes by Mr. Roger Fry (Seeley and Co., Is. 6d.) A special feature of this book is the inclusion
• of reproductions of pictures by the late Italian painters to which Reynolds so frequently refers. Ruskin said somewhere that the teaching of the "Discourses" was fortunately always contradicted by their author's practice. Mr. Fry points out that Reynolds's critical faculty told him that his powers were not suited to the production of works in the "grand style," and he wisely only made occasional excursions into this region. But notwithstanding the "Discourses" contain the most valuable teaching. We have, no doubt, with our present taste, to pass over a good many of the illustrations of the teaching. The world is no longer interested in the arid school of Bologna, and greatly prefers the earlier to the later Renaissance painters. The value of the writings of Sir Joshua is, as Mr. Fry says, to be found in the fact that they are a contribution to practical aesthetics, the first and perhaps the best.
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