text:  Even amid that rich variety of subjects in the treatment of which his instinctive refinement and delicacy of taste enabled him to combine with all the higher powers of the man the courtly graces of the gentleman and scholar--still his happiest effort the masterpiece of his genius in which his own mind is displayed in the most agreeable light and his inspiration breathes forth with the greatest brilliancy and beauty will be found to be dictated by the associations of his early rustic days