The picture by Sir Joshua,
on the contrary, is almost wholly subjective. Draped judiciously in a
popular studio costume, which is not that of the sitter's day, it
reveals to us the author of 'The Deserted Village' as Reynolds conceived
him to be at his best, serious, dignified, introspective, with his
physical defects partly extenuated by art, partly over-mastered by his
intellectual power. To quote the 'Jessamy Bride' once more -- it is 'a
fine poetical head for the admiration of posterity, but as it is
divested of his wig and with the shirt collar open, it was not the man
as seen in daily life' ('Ib'. ii. 380). Had Goldsmith lived in our era
of photography, photography would doubtless have given us something
which would have been neither the one nor the other, but more like
Bunbury than Reynolds. Yet we may be grateful for both. For Bunbury's
sketch and Reynolds's portrait are alike indispensable to the true
comprehension of Goldsmith's curiously dual personality.**
[footnote]* This was the print to which Goldsmith referred in a
well-known anecdote.
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