GEORGE, an eminent English artist, was the son of a cabinetmaker, and was born near Dalton in Lancashire in 1734. Although placed at the age of eleven in his father's shop, he soon began most vigorously to develop his genius for painting. His fellow-workmen were his models; the deals which he planed were his canvas; the living world around him was his school. In course of time his progress became so marked that his father was induced to apprentice him to a portrait-painter of the name of Steele at Kendal. There he applied himself sedulously to discover the secrets of colouring. A marriage which he contracted at the age of twenty-one only gave a stimulus to his ardour. He laboured for six years in painting the likenesses of the country squires of Westmoreland. Then, villainously deserting his wife and two children, he set out in 1762 to seek his fortune in London, and took up his abode in Dove Court, near the Mansion-House. It was not long before the manliness and poetic dignity of Romney's style began to ensure success. The Society of Arts awarded him a prize for his "Death of King Edmund." Other historical pictures followed, which were said by his admirers to rival the old Italian masters. He was also in the meantime receiving numerous commissions for portraits. His emoluments from that branch of his vocation became so considerable that he was enabled to spend about two years at Rome in studying Raphael and Michael Angelo. Nor did he fail, on his return to London in 1775, to take a higher place in his profession. He set up his studio in a spacious house in Cavendish Square. Many of the noble and the distinguished became his sitters. It even began to be said that he was dividing the rich province of portraiture with Sir Joshua. Scarcely less than thirteen hours a day sufficed to meet all his engagements; scarcely less than L3000 or L4000 was realized in a year. Romney, as he grew older, became more and more engrossed with ideal painting. His active imagination found its subjects in many fields of literature,—in Shakespeare, in Milton, in classical mythology, and in the sacred Scriptures. The greater part of those designs he left unfinished on the canvas, to litter his studio and every spare corner of his house. Romney's nerves became unstrung, and his mind became unhinged. He imagined that the dwelling in Cavendish Square was too small for the execution of his great projected works. Nothing would satisfy him but to build a large whimsical pile on Hampstead Hill. The removal thither in 1797 only exasperated his disease. His nervous uneasiness had become so great in 1799 that he suddenly left London by the coach, and hastened northward to Kendal to seek the sympathy and kindness of his faithful and much-enduring wife. There he gradually pined away until death put an end to his suffering in 1802.

The celebrated Flaxman gives the following account of some of Romney's best ideal pictures—“Titania with her Indian Votares” was arch and sprightly; “Milton dictating to his Daughters,” solemn and interesting. Several pictures of wood-nymphs and bacchantes charmed by their rural beauty, innocence, and simplicity.” (See Cunningham’s Lives of British Painters, &c.)

New, a cinque port, market-town, and decayed borough of England, in the county of Kent, in the middle of Romney Marsh, a wide, level tract of pasture-land, defended from the sea by an embankment, 31 miles S.E. by S. of Maidstone. There is a magnificent Norman church of the twelfth century, with a lofty and handsome square tower; also Wesleyan and Baptist places of worship, a market-house, town-hall, hospital, and assembly-room. Though now a mile and a half from the sea, it was once a considerable seaport. The borough was disfranchised by the Reform Act of 1832. Pop. (1851) 1053.