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Emery, Fawcett, Munden, Lewis; but in my time I have seen but Garrick and Mrs. Siddons, who have left a gap behind them that I shall not live to see filled up. Emery is the first blackguard or stage-coach driver you see in a row in the street; but if you had not seen Mrs. Siddons you could have no idea of her, nor can you convey it to any one who has not. She was like a preternatural being descended to the earth. I cannot say Sir Joshua has done her justice. I regret Mrs. Abington too—she was the Grosvener Square of comedy, if you please. glad that Hogarth did not paint her; it would have been a thing to spit upon. If the correspondent of the newspaper wants to know where my Grosvener Square of art is, he'll find it in 'The Provoked Husband,' in Lord and Lady Townly'-not in the History of a Foundling,' or in the pompous swagbellied peer with his dangling pedigree, or his gawky son-in-law, or his dawdling malkin of a wife from the city, playing with the ring like an idiot, in the Marriage à la mode !' There may be vice and folly enough in Vanbrugh's scenes; but it is not the vice of St. Giles's, it does not savour of the kennel. Not that I would have my interrogator suppose that I think all is vice in St. Giles's. On the contrary,

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I could find at this moment instances of more virtue, refinement, sense, and beauty there than there are in his Sophy. No, nature is the same everywhere; there are as many handsome children born in St. Giles's as in Grosvenor Square; but the same care is not taken of them; and in general they grow up greater beauties in the one than the other. A child in St. Giles's is left to run wild—it thrusts its finger into its mouth or pulls its nose about; but if a child of people of fashion play any tricks of this kind, it is told immediately, "You must not do this, unless you would have your mouth reach from ear to ear; you must not say that; you must not sit in such a manner, or you'll grow double." This seems

like art; but it is only giving nature fair play. No one was allowed to touch the Princess Charlotte when a child. She was taken care of like something precious. The sister of the Duke of had her nose broke when

a child in a quarrel with her sister, who flung a tea-basin at her; but all the doctors were immediately called in and every remedy was applied, so that when she grew up there was no appearance of the accident left. If the same thing had happened to a poor child she would have carried the marks of it to her grave. So you see a number of crooked people and twisted legs among the lower classes. This was what made Lord Byron so mad-that he had misshapen feet. Don't you think so

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H. Yes; Tom Moore told a person I know that that was the cause of all his misanthropy-he wanted to be an Adonis, and could not.

N. Ay, and of his genius too; it made him write verses in revenge. There is no knowing the effect of such sort of things-of defects we wish to balance. Do you suppose we owe nothing to Pope's deformity? He said to himself, "If my person be crooked my verses shall be straight.” I myself have felt this in passing along the street, when I have heard rude remarks made on my personal appearance. I then go home and paint: but I should not do this if I thought all that there is in art was contained in Hogarth -I should then feel neither pride nor consolation in it. But if I thought, instead of his doll-like figures cut in two with their insipid dough-baked faces, I should do something like Sir Joshua's Iphigene,' with all that delights the sense in richness of colour and luxuriance of form; or instead of the women spouting the liquor in one another's faces, in 'The Rake's Progress,' I could give the purity, and grace, and real elegance (appearing under all the incumbrance of the fashionable dresses of the day) of Lady Sarah Bunbury, or of the Miss Hornecks, sacrificing to the Graces, or of Lady Essex, with her

long waist and ruffles, but looking a pattern of the female character in all its relations, and breathing dignity and virtue-then I should think this an object worth living for, or (as you have expressed it very properly) should even be proud of having failed. This is the opinion the world have always entertained of the matter. Sir Joshua's name is repeated with more respect than Hogarth's. It is not for his talents, but for his taste and the direction of them. In meeting Sir Joshua (merely from a knowledge of his works) you would expect to meet a gentleman—not so of Hogarth. And yet Sir Joshua's claims and possessions in art were not of the highest order.

H. But he was decent, and did not profess the arts and accomplishments of a merryandrew.

N. I assure you it was not for want of ability, either. When he was young he did a number of caricatures of different persons, and could have got any price for them. But he found it necessary to give up the practice. Leonardo da Vinci, a mighty man, and who had titles manifold, had a great turn for drawing laughable and grotesque likenesses of his acquaintances; but he threw them all in the fire. It was to him a kind of profanation of the art. Sir Joshua would almost as soon have forged as he would have set his name to a caricature. Gilray (whom you speak of) was eminent in this way; but he had other talents as well. In The Embassy to China,' he has drawn the Emperor of China a complete Eastern voluptuary, fat and supine, with all the effects of climate and situation evident upon his person; and Lord Macartney is an elegant youth, a real Apollo; then, indeed, come Punch and the puppet-show after him, to throw the whole into ridicule. In the Revolutionists' Jollyboat,' after the opposition were defeated, he has placed Fox and Sheridan, and the rest, escaping from the wreck: Dante could not have described them as

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looking more sullen and gloomy. He was a great man in his way. Why does not Mr. Lamb write an essay on the Twopenny Whist"? Yet it was against his conscience, for he had been on the other side, and was bought over. The minister sent to ask him to do them half a dozen at a certain price, which he agreed to, and took them to the Treasury; but there being some demur about the payment he took them back with some saucy reply. He had not been long at home before a messenger was sent after him with the money.

Conversation the Twenty-first.

N. GODWIN and I had a dispute lately about the capacity of animals. He appeared to consider them as little better than machines. He made it the distinguishing mark of superiority in man that he is the only animal that can transmit his thoughts to future generations. "Yes," I said, "for future generations to take no sort of notice of them." I allowed that there were a few extraordinary geniuses that every one must look up to-and I mentioned the names of Shakspeare and Dryden. But he would not hear of Dryden, and began to pull him in pieces immediately. "Why then," I answered, "if you cannot agree among yourselves even with respect to four or five of the most eminent, how can there be the vast and overwhelming superiority you pretend to?" I observed that instinct in animals answered very much to what we call genius. I spoke of the wonderful powers of smell, and the sagacity of dogs, and the memory shown by horses in finding a road that they have once travelled; but I made no way with Godwin-he still went back to Lear and Othello.

H. I think he was so far right; for as this is what he

understands best and has to imitate, it is fit he should admire and dwell upon it most. He cannot acquire the smell of the dog or the sagacity of the horse, and therefore it is of no use to think about them; but he may, by dint of study and emulation, become a better poet or philosopher. The question is not merely what is best in itself (of that we are hardly judges), but what sort of excellence we understand best and can make our own; for otherwise, in affecting to admire we know not what, we may admire a nonentity or a deformity. Abraham

Tucker has remarked very well on this subject that a swine wallowing in the mire may, for what he can tell, be as happy as a philosopher in writing an essay; but that is no reason why he (the philosopher) should exchange occupations or tastes with the brute, unless he could first exchange natures. We may suspend our judgments in such cases as a matter of speculation or conjecture, but that is different from the habitual practical feeling. So I remember Wordsworth being nettled at D(who affected a fashionable taste) for saying, on coming out of the Marquis of Stafford's gallery, "A very noble art, very superior to poetry!" If it were so, Wordsworth observed, he could know nothing about it, who had never seen any fine pictures before. It was like an European adventurer saying to an African chieftain, “A very fine boy, sir, your black son-very superior to my white one!" This is mere affectation; we might as well pretend to be thrown into rapture by a poem written in a language we are not acquainted with. We may notwithstanding believe that it is very fine, and have no wish to hang up the writer because he is not an Englishman. A spider may be a greater mechanic than Watt or Arkwright; but the effects are not brought home to us in the same manner, and we cannot help estimating the cause by the effect. A friend of mine teazes me with questions, "Which was the greatest man, Sir Isaac

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