Besides several other works, she has done a picture of fowls, a water-dog and a heron, from Oudry, and an old woman spinning, whole length, from Velasco, that have greater force than the originals. As some of these masterly performances have appeared in our public exhibitions, I venture to appeal to that public, whether justice or partiality dictated this encomium.

art, which has been known from the earliest history of female ingenuity. In Homer, we have

—εν δε θρόνα ποικίλ ̓ ἔπασσε. II. XXII.

A growing work employed her secret hours;

Confus'dly gay, with intermingling flowers. Pope. The most celebrated proficient in this imitation of painting in the present day, is Miss Linwood, whose public exhibition has, for many years, maintained its popularity, by a continued admission of new subjects, and, at least, a surprising adaptation of the colours of the best paintings.]

CHAPTER IV.

Painters in the Reign of George II.

WILLIAM HOGARTH.*

HAVING dispatched the herd of our painters in oil, I reserved to a class by himself that great and original genius, Hogarth; considering him rather as a writer of comedy with a pencil, than as a painter. If catching the manners and follies of an age living as they rise, if general satire on vices and ridicules, familiarized by strokes of nature, and heightened by wit, and the whole animated by proper and just expressions of the passions, be comedy, Hogarth composed comedies as much as Moliere: in his marriage a la mode there is even an intrigue carried on throughout the piece. He is more true to character than Congreve; each personage is distinct from the

* Since the first edition of this work, a much ampler account of Hogarth and his works has been given by Mr. Nichols, which is not only more accurate, but much more satisfactory than mine; omitting nothing that a collector would wish to know, either with regard to the history of the painter himself, or to the circumstances, different editions and variations of his prints. I have compleated my list of Hogarth's works from that source of information. [The late G. Steevens contributed greatly to these anecdotes.]

INDON

Published by Job Major 50 Fleet Street

Oct 1827

rest, acts in his sphere, and cannot be confounded with any other of the Dramatis Personæ. The alderman's footboy, in the last print of the set I have mentioned, is an ignorant rustic; and if wit is struck out from the characters in which it is not expected, it is from their acting conformably to their situation and from the mode of their passions, not from their having the wit of fine gentlemen. Thus there is wit in the figure of the alderman, who when his daughter is expiring in the agonies of poison, wears a face of solicitude, but it is to save her gold ring, which he is drawing gently from her finger. The thought is parallel to Moliere's, where the miser puts out one of the candles as he is talking.* Moliere, inimitable as he has proved, brought a rude theatre to perfection. Hogarth had no model to follow and improve upon. He created his art; and used colours instead of language. His place is between the Italians, whom we may consider as epic poets and tragedians, and the Flemish painters, who are as writers of farce and editors of burlesque nature. They are the Tom Browns of the mob.

* [There is a well known anecdote of John Duke of Marlborough, that when a midnight conference was necessary with Prince Eugene, upon his arrival at the Prince's tent, finding four wax tapers burning, before he spoke,-he extinguished three of them.]

When they attempt humour, it is by making a drunkard vomit; they take evacuations for jokes, and when they make us sick, think they make us laugh. A boor hugging a frightful