He further asks, "Would a carpenter allow fourteen inches to be the true representation of a foot-rule, since in no situation whatever can the eye possibly see it so?"
Again: "Did ever any history-painter widen or distort his figures as they are removed from the centre of his picture? Or would he draw a file of musqueteers in that manner, when the last man in the rank would be broader than high? Why would he then serve a poor column or pedestal thus, when, poor dumb things, they cannot help themselves? And are all objects exempt from the rules of perspective except buildings? Did Highmore ever so much as dream of an intervening plane when he had been drawing a family piece with four or five people in a row, so as to distort the bodies and forms of those who had the misfortune to be placed nearest to the side of the frame? And what satisfaction would it be to his customers to tell them they were only disposed by the true rules of perspective, and might be seen in their proper shape again if they would give themselves the trouble of looking through a pin hole at a certain distance, which, by learning perspective, they might be able to find in half an hour's time; or, to save themselves that trouble, they might get a painter to lug them about till their eye was brought to the proper point. He then observes, that he would not have the intervening plane wholly rejected, but that it should be laid aside when it begins to do mischief, or is of no use; for it is no doubt as necessary to painters of architecture as scaffolding is to builders; but, like the latter, is always to be taken away when the work comes to be finished; and every defect that either may have occasioned must be corrected by the eye, which is capable to judge of the most complicated objects, perspectively true, where the dry mathematics of the art are left far behind as incapable of lending the least assistance.
"These things our mathematicians are strangers to,—therefore, in my opinion, have rated them too high. Dr. Swift thought mere Philos a ridiculous sort of people, as appears by a song of his on two very remarkable ones—Whiston and Ditton. I forget it particularly, but it was about the longitude being mist on by Whiston, and not better hit on by Ditton: sing Whiston, etc. etc. Ditton has wrote a good book on speculative perspective."
Hogarth then alludes to Highmore's critique on Rubens' ceiling at Whitehall, and asks, "What is it but what almost every child knows, even without the knowledge of perspective? viz. that parallel lines always meet in a point, and that he has with penetration discovered. Oh, wonderful discovery! that Rubens, unskilfully, has kept them parallel in his column, to embellish which he has tacked two fibs: one, that the error was owing to the drawing them as they would appear to the eye; the other, that the historical figures are truly in perspective; whereas King James, the principal, has a head widened or distorted, though it goes off from the eye almost as much as he would have the side columns, which are the subjects of controversy."
[66] Though Mr. Malton's description is built on fancy as much as Mr. Hogarth's design, it must be acknowledged that some of his criticism is just. With respect to the column, nothing either elevated or grand has yet been produced by violently deviating from the first models. Mr. Emlyn, in the year 1782, published a proposition for a sixth order, which in some points resembles Hogarth's. The plan of his column is to represent the particular character of our English chivalry in its most illustrious order—the order of the Garter: it is to be composed of the single trunks of trees; his capitals are to be copied from the plumage of the knights' caps, with the Ionic volutes interwoven and bound together in the front, with the star of the order between them. The fluting of the trunk is cabled, and the cables hollow and filled with the English arrow, the feathered end rising out of each of them. The ornament of the frieze over the columns is a plume of three ostrich feathers, etc. etc. etc.
Sir Joshua Reynolds, in his discourse delivered December 10, 1776, gives the following strong reasons against any new order succeeding:—
"Though it is from the prejudice we have in favour of the ancients, who have taught us architecture, that we had adopted likewise their ornaments; and though we are satisfied that neither nature nor reason are the foundation of those beauties which we imagine we see in that art; yet if any one, persuaded of this truth, should therefore invent new orders of equal beauty, which we will suppose to be possible, yet they would not please; nor ought he to complain, since the old has that great advantage of having custom and prejudice on its side. In this case we leave what has every prejudice in its favour, to take that which will have no advantage over what we have left, but novelty, which soon destroys itself, and at any rate is but a weak antagonist against custom."
[67] "On our own stage we have seen dances in which the ingenious composer thought he represented the four seasons, the four elements, and the five senses. These jigs conveyed about as much meaning as dancing odes or dancing sermons."
[68] Mr. Rouquet, enamel painter to the King of France, in his book on The Present State of the Arts in England, printed for Nourse in 1755, after enumerating chasing, engraving, painting, sculpture, architecture, etc., as arts that are practised in England, concludes with a chapter on the Art of Cookery, which he thus gravely introduces:—
"There is an art, the only one that can justly pretend to unite pleasure with absolute utility; but this art, born in servitude, to which it is still condemned, notwithstanding its extreme importance, is reckoned ignoble, for which reason some perhaps will be surprised at seeing me give it a place in this work; I mean the art of preparing aliments."