"On 20 July 1804 W[ordsworth] wrote to Sir George Beaumont: "'A few days ago I received from Mr Southey your very acceptable present of Sir Joshua Reynolds works, which with the life I have nearly read through. Several of the discourses I had read before though never regularly together: they have very much added to the high opinion which I before entertained of Sir Joshua Reynolds.' "W[ordsworth]'s first comprehensive reading of Reynolds' works can be dated to four or five days in the middle of July 1804. He had, of course, referred to the Discourses in the 1798 Advertisement to Lyrical Ballads."