"Devoid of imagination, and one would think of memory, he could render nothing but what he saw before his eyes. Freckles, marks of the small-pox, everything found its place; not so much from fidelity, as because he could not conceive the absence of anything that appeared to him."
This miserable personage may, however, be only intended to show the state of the arts at that time, when an English painter, if not excellent in portraits, had no other patronage than that of those gentlemen who put out signs of Blue Lions, Green Dragons, and Red Harts. Thanks to the talents of our immortal bard, it is not so now. Whether the artists of the present day drain copious draughts of humble porter, or fill their flagons with Falernian or French wines, let not the memory of their patron poet be forgotten. "He merits all their wonder, all their praise!"
[42] This wretched being was painted from nature. His cry was, "Buy my ballads, and I'll give you a glass of gin for nothing."
[43] This infernal broth is vulgarly called "Strip-me-naked," and has almost invariably that effect.
[44] This is an unnatural and violent exaggeration.
[45] The church in view is St. George's, Bloomsbury. Ralph, in his Critical Review of the Buildings in London, properly observes that "this structure is ridiculous and absurd even to a proverb. That the builder mistook whim for genius, and ornament for taste, and that the execrable conceit of displaying a statue of the king on the top of it excites laughter in the ignorant, and contempt in the judge of architecture."
[46] Two of these harpies have names highly descriptive of their professions—"Gripe" and "Killman."
[47] I hope I shall not be censured for inserting a quotation from Fingal as the motto to an imitation of Rembrandt. Both poet and painter delighted in darkness, and each of them sometimes introduced a sublime and majestic figure, which beamed through the gloom "like the new moon seen through a gathered mist, when the sky pours down its flaky snow, and the world is silent and dark."
[48] This little winged periwinkle is engraven in a very different style from the rest of the plate, much of which is a sort of aquæ tint. Many impressions were taken off without this figure.
[49] On the blade is engraven a dagger, the arms of our metropolis.