the arts, at least those of painting and architec ture, are emerging from the wretched state in which they lay at the acceffion of George the first. To architecture, tafte and vigour were given by lord Burlington and KentThey have fucceffors worthy of the tone they gave; if, as refinement generally verges to extreme contrarieties, Kent's ponderofity does. not degenerate into filligraine-But the modern Pantheon, uniting grandeur and lightness, fimplicity and ornament, feems to have marked the medium, where taste must stop. The architect who fhall endeavour to refine on Mr.. Wyat, will perhaps give date to the age of embroidery. Virgil, Longinus,, and Vitruvius afford no rules, no examples, of fcattering finery..

This delicate redundance of ornament growing into our architecture might perhaps be checked, if our artists would study the fublimedreams of Piranefi, who feems to have conceived vifions of Rome beyond what it boafted even in the meridian of its fplendor. Savage as Salvator Rofa, fierce as Michael Angelo, and exuberant as Kubens, he has imagined fcenes that would ftartle geometry, and exhauft the Indies to realize. He piles palaces on bridges, and temples on palaces, and scales

Heaven

Heaven with mountains of edifices. Yet what tafte in his boldnefs! what grandeur in his wildness! what labour and thought both in his rashness and details! Architecture, indeed, has in a manner two fexes; its mafculine dignity can only exert its muscles in public works and at public expence its fofter beauties come better within the compass of private residence and enjoyment.

How painting has rekindled from its em→ bers, the works of many living artists demonflrate. The prints after the works of fir Jo shua Reynolds have spread his fame to Italy, where they have not at prefent a fingle painter that can pretend to rival an imagination fo fertile, that the attitudes of his portraits are * various as thofe of hiftory. In what age

as

were

Sir J. Reynolds has been accused of plagiarism for having borrowed attitudes from ancient mafters. Not only candour but criticifin muft deny the force of the charge. When a single pofture is imitated from an historic picture and applied to a portrait in a different drefs and with new attributes, This is not plagiarifin, but quotation and a quotation from a great author, with a novel application of the fenfe, has always been allowed to be an inftance of parts and tafte; and may have more merit than the original. When the fons of Jacob impofed on their father by a falfe coat of Jofeph, faying, "Know now whether This be thy fon's coat or "not," they only asked a deceitful question-but that interrogation became wit, when Richard

2 4

were paternal defpair and the horrors of death pronounced with more expreffive accents than in his picture of count Ugolino? When was infantine loveliness, or embrio-paffions, touched with fweeter truth than in his portraits.of mifs Price and the baby Jupiter? What franknefs of nature in Mr. Gainfborough's landscapes; which may entitle them to rank in the nobleft collections! What genuine humour in Zoffanii's comic scenes; which do not, like the works of Dutch and Flemish painters, invite laughter. to divert itself with the naftieft indelicacy of boors!

Such topics would please a pen that delights to do juftice to its country-but the author has forbidden. himself to treat of living profeffors. Pofterity appreciates impartially the works of the dead. To pofterity he leaves the continuation of these volumes; and recommends to the

Richard ift. on the pope reclaiming a bishop whom the king had taken prisoner in battle, fent him the prelate's coat of mail, and in the words of fcripture asked his holiness, whether THAT Iwas the coat of his fon or not? Is not there humour and fatire in fir Joshua's reducing Holbein's fwaggering and coloffal haughtiness of Henry 8th. to the boyish jollity of mafter Crewe? One prophecy I will venture to make; fir Joshua is not a plagiary, but will beget a thousand. The exuberance of his invention will be the grammar of future painters of portrait.

3

lovers

*

lovers of arts the industry of Mr. Vertue, who preferved notices of all his cotemporaries, as he had collected of past ages, and thence gave birth to this work. In that supplement will not be forgotten the wonderful progrefs in miniature of lady Lucan, who has arrived at copying the moft exquifite works of Ifaac and Peter Oliver, Hofkins and Cooper, with a genius that almost depreciates those masters, when we confider that they fpent their lives in attaining perfection; and who, foaring above their modest timidity, has transferred the vigour of Raphael to her copies in water-colours. There will be recorded the Hving etchings of Mr. H. Bunbury, the fecond Hogarth, and first imitator who ever fully equalled his original; and who, like Hogarth, has more humour when he invents, than when he illuftrates probably because genius can draw from the fources of nature with more spirit than from the ideas of another. Has any painter ever executed a scene, a character of Shakespeare, that approached to the prototype fo near as Shakespeare himself attained to na

* Margaret Smith, Wife of Sir Charles Bingham Baron Lu

can in Ireland.

For instance, in his prints to Triftram Shandy.

ture?

*

ture? Yet is there a pencil in a living hand as capable of pronouncing the paffions as our unequalled poet; a pencil not only inspired by his infight into nature, but by the graces and taste of Grecian artists-but it is not fair to excite the curiofity of the public, when both the rank and bashful merit of the poffeffor, and a too rare exertion of fuperior talents, confine the proofs to a narrow circle. Whoever has feen the drawings, and bafreliefs, designed and executed by lady Diana Beauclerc, is fenfible that these imperfect encomiums are far fhort of the excellence of her works. Her portrait of the duchess of Devonshire, in several hands, confirms the truth of part of these asfertions. The nymph-like fimplicity of the figure is equal to what a Grecian statuary would have formed for a dryad or goddess of a river. Bartolozzi's print of her two daughters after the drawing of the fame lady, is another specimen of her fingular genius and taste. The gay and sportive innocence of the younger daughter, and the demure application of the elder, are as characteristically contrasted

* Eldest Daughter of Charles Spencer fecond Duke of Marlborough, married first to Frederic St. John Viscount Bolingbroke, and afterwards to Topham Beauclerc, only son of Lord Sidney Beauclerc.