Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/873

R M R M 839 course of the Revolution there; and in 1790 he published his Thoughts on the Probable Influence of the Late Revolu- tion in France upon Great Britain, a work of great power. His practice at the Chancery bar continued largely to in- crease, and in 1800 he was made a K.C. In 1798 he married the daughter of Francis Garbett of Knill Court, Herefordshire; and in 1805 he was appointed chancellor of the county palatine of Durham. His great abilities were thoroughly recognized by the Whig party, to which he attached himself ; and in 1806, on the accession of the ministry of "All the Talents" to office, he was offered the post of solicitor-general, although he had never sat in the House of Commons. He accepted the office, and was knighted and brought into parliament for Queenborough. He went out of office with the Government, but remained in the House of Commons, sitting successively for Horsham, Wareham, and Arundel. It was now that Sir Samuel Romilly commenced the greatest labour of his life, his attempt to reform the criminal law of England, which was at once cruel and illogical. By statute law innumerable offences were punished by death, but, as such wholesale executions would be impossible, the larger number of those convicted and sentenced to death at every assizes were respited, after having heard the sen- tence of death solemnly passed upon them. This led to many acts of injustice, as the lives of the convicts depended on the caprice of the judges, while at the same time it made the whole system of punishments and of the criminal law ridiculous. Romilly saw this, and in 1808 he managed to repeal the statute 8 Eliz. c. 4, which made it a capital offence to steal from the person. This success, however, raised opposition, and in the following year three bills repealing equally sanguinary statutes were thrown out by the House of Lords under the influence of Lord Ellenborough. Year after year the same influence prevailed, and Romilly saw his bills rejected ; but his patient efforts and his eloquence ensured victory eventually for his cause by opening the eyes of Englishmen to the barbarity of their criminal law. The only success he had was in securing the repeal, in 1812, of the statute 39 Eliz. c. 17, making it a capital offence for a soldier or a mariner to beg without a pass from a magistrate or his command- ing officer. Sir Samuel Romilly's efforts made his name famous not only in England but all over Europe, and on 4th July 1818 he had the honour of being returned at the head of the poll for the city of Westminster. He did not long survive his triumph. On the 29th of October 1818 Lady Romilly died in the Isle of Wight. Her husband's grief was intense, and he committed suicide in a fit of temporary insanity on the 2d November. No man of his time was more loved than Sir Samuel Romilly ; his singularly sweet nature, his upright manliness, his elo- quence, and his great efforts on behalf of humanity secured him permanent fame. His second son John rivalled his reputation as a lawyer, and after being appointed master of the rolls in 1851, an office which he held for twenty-two years, was raised to the peerage as Lord Romilly in 1866. See the Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romilly written by himself, with a selection from his Correspondence, edited by his Sons, 3 vols., 1840; and The Speeches of Sir Samuel Romilly in the House of Commons, 2 vols., 1820. ROMNEY, GEORGE (1734-1802), historical and portrait painter, was born at Dalton-le-Furness, Lancashire, on December 26, 1734. His father was a builder and cabinet- maker of the place, and the son, having manifested a turn for mechanics, was instructed in the latter craft, showing considerable dexterity with his fingers, executing carvings of figures in wood, and constructing a violin, which he spent much time in playing. He was also busy with his pencil; and, some of his sketches of the neighbouring rustics having attracted the attention of his father, he was at length induced to apprentice the boy, at the age of nineteen, to an itinerant painter of portraits and domestic subjects named Steele, an artist who had studied in Paris under Vanloo; but the erratic habits of his instructor prevented Romney from making great progress in his art. In 1756 he impulsively married a young woman who had nursed him through a fever, and started as a portrait painter on his own account, travelling through the northern counties, executing likenesses at a couple of guineas, and producing a series of some twenty figure compositions, which were exhibited in Kendal, and afterwards disposed of by means of a lottery. Having, at the age of twenty-seven, saved about 100, he left a portion of the sum with his wife and family, and started to seek his fortune in London, never returning, except for two brief visits, till he came, a broken-down and aged man, to die. In London he rapidly rose into popular favour. His Death of General Wolfe was judged worthy of the second prize at the Society of Arts, but a word from Reynolds in praise of Mortimer's Edward the Confessor led to the premium being awarded to that painter, while Romney had to content himself with a donation of 50, an incident which led to the subsequent coldness between him and the president which prevented him from exhibit- ing at the Academy or presenting himself for its honours. In 1764 he paid a brief visit to Paris, where he was befriended by Joseph Vernet; and his portrait of Sir Joseph Yates, painted on his return, bears distinct traces of his study of the works of Rubens then in the Luxembourg Gallery. In 1766 he became a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, and three years later he seems to have studied in their schools. Soon he was in the full tide of prosperity. He removed to Great Newport Street, near the residence of Sir Joshua, whose fame in portraiture he began to rival in such works as Sir George and Lady Warren, and Mrs Yates as the Tragic Muse; and his professional income rose to 1200 a year. But he was seized with a longing to study in Italy ; and in the beginning of 1773 he started for Rome in company with Ozias Humphrey the miniature painter. On his arrival he separated himself from his fellow traveller and his countrymen, and devoted himself to solitary study, raising a scaffold to examine the paintings in the Vatican, and giving much time to work from the undraped model, of which his painting of a Wood Nymph was a fine and grace- ful result. At Parma he concentrated himself upon the productions of Correggio, which powerfully fascinated him, and greatly influenced his practice. In 1775 Romney returned to London, establishing himself in Cavendish Square, and resuming his extensive and lucrative employment as a portrait- painter, which in 1785, according to the estimate of his pupil Robinson, yielded him an income of over 3600. The admiration of the town was divided between him and Reynolds. "There are two factions in art," said Lord Thurlow, "and I am of the Romney faction," and the remark, and the rivalry which it implied, caused much annoyance to Sir Joshua, who was accustomed to refer contemptuously to the younger painter as "the man in Cavendish Square." After his return from Italy Romney formed two friendships which powerfully influenced his life. He became acquainted with Hayley, his future biographer, then in the zenith of his little-merited popularity as a poet. His influence on the painter seems to have been far from salutary. Weak himself, he flattered the weaknesses of Romney, encouraged his excessive and morbid sensibility, disturbed him with amateurish fancies and suggestions, and tempted him to expend on slight rapid sketches, and ill-considered, seldom-completed paintings of ideal and poetical subjects, talents which would have found fitter exer- cise in the steady pursuit of portraiture. About 1783 Romney was introduced to Emma Hart, afterwards celebrated as Lady Hamilton, and she became the model from whom he worked incessantly. Her bewitching face smiles from innumerable can- vases ; he painted her as a Magdalene and as a Joan of Arc, as a Circe, a Bacchante, a Cassandra, and he has himself confessed that she was the inspirer of what was most beautiful in his art. But