DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18825#0059
lect. ii.] history op art. 40
question by affording an instance to which we ap-
peal ; happy had it been for him, had all his pro-
ductions equally tended to the encouragement of
virtue, and the correction of vice ; but, while his
history of the " Industrious, and Idle Pren-
tice?," his w Harlot's and Rake's Progress,"
and his "Marriage a-la-mode," remain, we shall
certainly consider them as laudable examples of what
may be done by the power of the pencil, in the
cause of morality. Nor let the works of Mr. Pen-
ny be passed over without encomium, by whoever
recollects his pictures of "Vice neglected in sick-
ness ;" and " Virtue surrounded by sympathising
friends.'''
* The effects of Picture are sometimes wonder-
ful. It is said, that Alexander trembled and grew
pale, on seeing a picture of Palamedes betrayed to
death by his friends; it bringing to his mind a sting-
ing remembrance of his treatment of Aristonicus.
Portia could bear with an unshaken constancy her
last separation from Brutus: but when she saw, some
hours after, a picture of the parting of Hector and
Andromache, she burst into a flood of tears. Full
as seemed her sorrow, the painter suggested new
ideas of grief, or impressed more strongly her own.
I have somewhere met with a pretty story of an
Athenian courtezan, who, in the midst of a riotous
banquet with her lovers, accidentally cast her eye
on the portrait of a philosopher, that hung opposite
to her seat: the happy character of temperance and
virtue, struck her with so lively an image of her own
unworthiness, that she instantly quitted the room %
Edit. 7. H and,
question by affording an instance to which we ap-
peal ; happy had it been for him, had all his pro-
ductions equally tended to the encouragement of
virtue, and the correction of vice ; but, while his
history of the " Industrious, and Idle Pren-
tice?," his w Harlot's and Rake's Progress,"
and his "Marriage a-la-mode," remain, we shall
certainly consider them as laudable examples of what
may be done by the power of the pencil, in the
cause of morality. Nor let the works of Mr. Pen-
ny be passed over without encomium, by whoever
recollects his pictures of "Vice neglected in sick-
ness ;" and " Virtue surrounded by sympathising
friends.'''
* The effects of Picture are sometimes wonder-
ful. It is said, that Alexander trembled and grew
pale, on seeing a picture of Palamedes betrayed to
death by his friends; it bringing to his mind a sting-
ing remembrance of his treatment of Aristonicus.
Portia could bear with an unshaken constancy her
last separation from Brutus: but when she saw, some
hours after, a picture of the parting of Hector and
Andromache, she burst into a flood of tears. Full
as seemed her sorrow, the painter suggested new
ideas of grief, or impressed more strongly her own.
I have somewhere met with a pretty story of an
Athenian courtezan, who, in the midst of a riotous
banquet with her lovers, accidentally cast her eye
on the portrait of a philosopher, that hung opposite
to her seat: the happy character of temperance and
virtue, struck her with so lively an image of her own
unworthiness, that she instantly quitted the room %
Edit. 7. H and,