That Sterne had read the Analysis, appears by the following reference recommendatory, in the first volume of Tristram Shandy:—
" ... Such were the outlines of Doctor Slop's figure, which, if you have read Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty, and if you have not, I wish you would, you must know may be as certainly caricatured and conveyed to the mind by three strokes as three hundred." Hogarth's engraving of the air-balloon figure is said to be intended for Doctor Burton, the Jacobite physician of York; a microscopic miniature of the plate (so small that it requires the aid of a glass) is in the engraved frontispiece to these volumes.
[25] He bought the picture in for Lady Schaub, and she has since sold it to the present Henry Duke of Newcastle.
[26] The original letter is in the possession of the editor, and with all the circumstances relating to the transaction, copied from Hogarth's handwriting, published in the third volume of this work.
[27] The correspondence between Sir Richard Grosvenor and Mr. Hogarth relative to the picture of Sigismunda is in the 3d volume of this work.
[28] I mean to speak of alterations suggested by his friends: to the public at large, if we can confide in the following note, which I found in a volume of the late Doctor Lort's, he paid little attention:—
"Hogarth's Sigismunda.
"He placed that picture, which in spite of all the critics could say against it, had infinite merits in the view of the public, and at the same time placed a man in an adjoining room to write down all objections that each spectator made to it. Of these there were a thousand at least, but Hogarth told the writer of this[29] that he attended only to one, and that was made by a madman; and perceiving the objection was founded, he altered it. The madman, after looking stedfastly on the picture for some time, suddenly turned away, exclaiming,—Hang it, I hate these white roses. The artist then, and not till then, observed that the foldings of Sigismunda's chemise sleeves were too regular, and had more the appearance of roses than of linen. I know not in whose possession this picture now is, but I will venture to pronounce, that nowhere can distress be more forcibly exprest on canvas: it is a distress, not of the minute, but the day."
[29] The late Philip Thicknesse, Esq.
[30] The attack was commenced in No. 17 of the North Briton, which was published on the 17th of September 1762. On the 16th, Mr. Hogarth being at Salisbury, called upon the colonel of the Buckinghamshire militia (who was then quartered in the neighbourhood), with the good-natured intention of shaking hands: as his old friend was not at home, they neither met then, nor at any future period. In my account of the Times there are a few strictures on this political pasquinade, which was followed by much metrical lampoon from the reverend Mr. Churchill. Let us hear his coadjutor, Robert Lloyd, who in a fable entitled Genius, Envy, and Time, gives Time the following speech:—