To hunt full cry dejected merit down;
With sapient shrug assumes the critic's part,
And loud deplores the sad decline in art."
[20] "The dancing-room is also ornamented purposely with such statues and pictures as may serve to a further illustration. Henry VIII., Number 72, makes a perfect X with his legs and arms; and the position of Charles I., Number 51, is composed of less varied lines than the statue of Edward VI., Number 73, and the medal over his head is in the like kind of lines; but that over Queen Elizabeth, as well as her figure, is in the contrary; so are also the two other wooden figures at the end. Likewise the comical posture of astonishment (expressed by following the direction of one plain curve) as the dotted line in a French print of Sancho (where Don Quixote demolishes the puppet show); Number 75 is a good contrast to the effect of the serpentine lines, in the fine turn of the Samaritan woman; Number 74, taken from one of the best pictures Annibal Carrache ever painted."—Hogarth's Analysis, p. 137.
[21] A newspaper of 1781 has the following advertisement:—
"MINUET DE LA COUR, DEVONSHIRE, LE ROI, STATUTE, SURPRISE.
"A gentleman of merit, well educated and properly qualified by seven of the best masters that ever trod on English ground, teaches the above minuets to noblemen and real ladies only, for the sum of five guineas, paid down, with all the excelled graces of the head, body, arms, wrists, hands, fingers, toes, sinks, risings, bounds, rebounds, twirls, twists, fourfold mercuries, coupees, borees, flourishes, demi-corpus, curtseys à-la-mode, hat on, off, giving hands and feet, in an advanced octagon adorned style, and divided into one, two, three, or four steps exact to time or bars; introducing at the same moment the à-la-mode form, Chassa's springs, five and nine orders of the graces, and annexed with the rigadoon, Louvre, cotillion, and ancient and modern hornpipe steps and elegant country-dance positions.—The said gentleman is no common dancing-master, has some character to lose; therefore ladies of a common capacity may soon attain to dance equal to the best French or Italian dancer in this kingdom, only for five guineas, on applying to Number 79 in the Haymarket, between ten and eleven in the morning, and four and six in the afternoon, and they will be seen by the aforesaid gentleman himself."
In his Analysis, Mr. Hogarth thus writeth:—
"The minuet is allowed by dancing-masters themselves to be the perfection of all dancing. I once heard an eminent dancing-master say, that the minuet had been the study of his whole life, and that he had been indefatigable in the pursuit of its beauties, yet at last could only say with Socrates, he knew nothing; adding, that I was happy in my profession as a painter, in that some bounds might be set to the study of it."
[22] Mr. Wilkes informs us that this subject was not thought of until after the publication of Marriage à la Mode. In CHRONOLOGY, the Chamberlain is not so accurate as Doctor Trusler!