Expert at trifles, and a cunning fool,

Able to express the parts, but not the whole.

There is another set of gentry, more noxious to the art than these, and those are your picture jobbers from abroad, who are always ready to raise a great cry in the prints, whenever they think their craft is in danger; and indeed it is their interest to depreciate every English work as hurtful to their trade of continually importing ship-loads of dead Christs, Holy Families, Madonas, and other dismal dark subjects, neither entertaining nor ornamental, on which they scrawl the terrible cramp names of some Italian masters, and fix on us poor Englishmen the character of universal dupes. If a man, naturally a judge of painting, not bigotted to those empyrics, should cast his eye on one of their sham virtuoso pieces, he would be very apt to say, Mr. Bubbleman, that grand Venus, as you are pleased to call it, has not beauty enough for the character of an English cook-maid.'—Upon which the quack answers, with a confident air, Sir, I find that you are no connoisseur; the picture, I assure you, is in Alesso Baldminetto's second and best manner, boldly painted, and truly sublime: the contour gracious; the air of the head in the high Greek taste; and a most divine idea it is.'Then spitting in an obscure place, and rubbing it with a dirty handkerchief, takes a skip to t'other end of the room, and screams out in raptures, There's an amazing touch! A man should have this picture a twelvemonth in his collection before he can discover half its beauties!' The gentleman (though naturally a judge of what is beautiful, yet ashamed to be out of the fashion, by judging for himself) with this cant is struck dumb; gives a vast sum for the picture, very modestly confesses he is indeed quite ignorant of painting, and bestows a frame worth fifty pounds on a fright

ful thing, which, without the hard name, is not worth so many farthings. Such impudence as is now continually practised in the picture trade must meet with its proper treatment, would gentlemen but venture to see with their own eyes. Let but the comparison of pictures with nature be their only guide, and let them judge as freely of painting as they do of poetry, they would then take it for granted, that when a piece gives pleasure to none but these connoisseurs, or their adherents, if the purchase be a thousand pounds, 'tis nine hundred and ninety-nine too dear; and were all our grand collections stripped of such sort of trumpery, then, and not till then, it would be worth an Englishman's while to try the strength of his genius to supply their place; which now it were next to madness to attempt, since there is nothing that has not travelled a thousand miles, or has not been done a hundred years, but is looked upon as mean and ungenteel furniture. What Mr. Pope in his last work says of poems, may with much more propriety be applied to pictures:

'Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old;

It is the rust we value, not the gold.'

Sir James Thornhill, in a too modest compliance with the connoisseurs of his time, called in the assistance of Mr. André, a foreigner, famous for the fullness of his outline, to paint the royal family at the upper end of Greenwich Hallto the beauties or faults of which I have nothing to say; but with regard to the ceiling, which is entirely of his own hand, I am certain all unprejudiced persons, with (or without) much insight into the mechanic parts of painting, are at the first view struck with the most agreeable harmony and play of colours that ever delighted the eye of a spectator. The

composition is altogether extremely grand, the groups finely disposed, the light and shade so contrived as to throw the eye with pleasure on the principal figures, which are drawn with great fire and judgment; the colouring of the flesh delicious, the drapery great, and well folded, and upon examination, the allegory is found clear, well invented, and full of learning: in short, all that is necessary to constitute a complete ceiling-piece, is apparent in that magnificent work. Thus much is in justice to that great English artist. BRITOPHIL.

N. B. If the reputation of this work were destroyed, it would put a stop to the receipt of daily sums of money from spectators, which is applied to the use of sixty charity-children."

CHAPTER IV.

The motives by which Hogarth was induced to publish his Analysis of Beauty; the abuse it drew upon him, and his vindicaof himself and his work.

"What! a book, and by Hogarth! then twenty to ten,

All he's gained by the pencil he 'll lose by the pen."

Perhaps it may be so-howe'er, miss or hit,

He will publish-here goes-it 's double or quit."

Epigram by HOGARTH.

[HOGARTH finding his prints were become sufficiently numerous to form a handsome volume, in the year 1745,* engraved his own portrait as a frontispiece. In one corner of the plate he introduced a painter's palette, on which was a waving line inscribed The line of Beauty. This created much speculation, and as he himself expresses it,]

The bait soon took, and no Egyptian hieroglyphic ever amused more than it did for a time; painters and sculptors came to me to know the meaning of it, being as much puzzled with it as other people, till it came to have some explanation; then, indeed, but not till then, some found it out

* [Such is the date, both in his MS. and the preface to the Analysis; though under the print, he has engraven, Se ipse pinxit et sculpsit, 1749. It is probable that in the first instance, he spoke of the painting it was taken from, now in the National Gallery. J. IRELAND.]

to be an old acquaintance of theirs,* though the account they could give of its properties was very near as satisfactory as that which a day-labourer, who constantly uses the lever, could give of that machine as a mechanical power. They knew it, as Falstaff did Prince Henry-by instinct!

[This crooked line drew upon him a numerous band of opponents, and involved him in so many disputes, that he at length determined to write a book, explain his system, and silence his adversaries.]

My preface and introduction to the Analysis contain a general explanation of the circumstances which led me to commence author; but this has not deterred my opponents from loading me with much gross, and I think unmerited obloquy; it therefore becomes necessary that I should try to defend myself from their aspersions.

Among many other high crimes and misdemeanours, of which I am accused, it is asserted that I have abused the great masters. This is so far from being just, that when the truth is fairly stated, it may possibly appear, that the professional reputation of these luminaries of the arts, is more injured by the wild and enthusiastic admiration of those who denominate themselves their fast friends, than by men who are falsely classed their enemies.

Let us put a case: suppose a brilliant landscape had been so finely painted by a first-rate artist, that the trees, water, sky, &c. were boldly, though tenderly relieved from each other, and the eye of the spectator might, as it were, travel into the scenery; and suppose this landscape, by the heat

* [To this he evidently alludes, in giving the well-known story of Columbus breaking the egg, as a subscription receipt to his Analysis of Beauty. J. IRELAND.]