DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.75271#0302
dignity, he could not rise. In composition we see little in him to
admire. In many of his prints his deficiency is so great as plainly
to imply a want of all principle, as makes us believe when we do
meet with a beautiful group, it is the effeH of chance. In one of
his minor works, the Idle 'Prentice, we seldom see a crowd more
beautifully managed than in the last print; if the sheriss's officers
had not been placed in a line, and had been brought a little lower
in the pidure, so as to have formed a pyramid with the cart, the
composition would have been unexceptionable; and yet the first
print os this work is such a striking instance of disagreeable com-
position, that it is amazing bow an artist who had any idea of
beautiful forms could suffer so unmasterly a performance to leave
his hands. Of the proper distribution of light he had little know-
ledge: in some of his pieces we see a good effect, as in the execu-
tion I just mentioned. His figures on the whole are inspired with
so much life and meaning, that the eye is kept in good humour in
spite of its inclination to find fault. The author of the Analysis of
Beauty it might be supposed would have given us more instances of
grace than we find in the works of Hogarth; which shews that
theory and pradice are not always united. Many opportunities
his subjeds naturally afford of introducing graceful attitudes, and
yet we have few examples of them. With instances of piHu-
resque grace, his works abound. Of his expression, in which the
force of his genius lay, we cannot speak in terms too high, in every
mode of it he was truly excellent. The paffions he thoroughly
understood, and all the esse&s they produce in every part of the
human frame; he had the happy art of conveying his ideas with the
same exa&ness with which he conceived them. He was excellent in
expressing any humorous oddity, which we often see damped on the
human face. His heads are cast in the very mould or nature,
hence that endless variety that is displayed through his works, and
hence it is that the disserence arises between his heads and the affeBed
caricaturas
admire. In many of his prints his deficiency is so great as plainly
to imply a want of all principle, as makes us believe when we do
meet with a beautiful group, it is the effeH of chance. In one of
his minor works, the Idle 'Prentice, we seldom see a crowd more
beautifully managed than in the last print; if the sheriss's officers
had not been placed in a line, and had been brought a little lower
in the pidure, so as to have formed a pyramid with the cart, the
composition would have been unexceptionable; and yet the first
print os this work is such a striking instance of disagreeable com-
position, that it is amazing bow an artist who had any idea of
beautiful forms could suffer so unmasterly a performance to leave
his hands. Of the proper distribution of light he had little know-
ledge: in some of his pieces we see a good effect, as in the execu-
tion I just mentioned. His figures on the whole are inspired with
so much life and meaning, that the eye is kept in good humour in
spite of its inclination to find fault. The author of the Analysis of
Beauty it might be supposed would have given us more instances of
grace than we find in the works of Hogarth; which shews that
theory and pradice are not always united. Many opportunities
his subjeds naturally afford of introducing graceful attitudes, and
yet we have few examples of them. With instances of piHu-
resque grace, his works abound. Of his expression, in which the
force of his genius lay, we cannot speak in terms too high, in every
mode of it he was truly excellent. The paffions he thoroughly
understood, and all the esse&s they produce in every part of the
human frame; he had the happy art of conveying his ideas with the
same exa&ness with which he conceived them. He was excellent in
expressing any humorous oddity, which we often see damped on the
human face. His heads are cast in the very mould or nature,
hence that endless variety that is displayed through his works, and
hence it is that the disserence arises between his heads and the affeBed
caricaturas