5. A copy of the same, under the following title, &c.
The Opera House, or the Italian Eunuch's Glory. Humbly inscribed to those Generous Encouragers of Foreigners, and Ruiners of England.
From France, from Rome we come,
To help Old England to to b' undone.
Under the division of the print that represents the Italian Opera, the words—Stage Mutiny—are perhaps improperly added.
On the two sides of this print are scrolls, containing a list of the presents made to Farinelli. The words are copied from the same enumeration in the second plate of the Rake's Progress.[1]
At the bottom are the following lines:
"Brittains attend—view this harmonious stage,
And listen to those notes which charm the age.
How sweet the sound where cats and bears
With brutish noise offend our ears!
Just so the foreign singers move
Rather contempt than gain our love.
Were such discourag'd, we should find
Musick at home to charm the mind!
Our home-spun authors must forsake the field,
And Shakespear to the Italian Eunuchs yield."[2]
Perhaps the original print was the work of Gravelot, Vandergucht, or some person unknown.[3] The idea of it is borrowed from a French book, called Les Chats, printed at Amsterdam in 1728. In this work, facing p. 117, is represented an opera performed by cats, superbly habited. The design is by Coypel; the engraving by T. Otten. At the end of the treatise, the opera itself is published. It is improbable that Hogarth should have met with this jeu d'esprit; and, if he did, he could not have read the explanation to it.
[1] The following paragraph appeared in the Grub-street Journal for April 10, 1735; and to this perhaps Hogarth alluded in the list of donations already mentioned: "His Royal Highness the Prince hath been pleased to make a present of a fine wrought gold snuff-box, richly set with brilliants and rubies, in which was inclosed a pair of brilliant diamond knee buckles, as also a purse of 100 guineas, to the famous Signor Farinelli, &c."
[2] These two last lines make part of Addison's Prologue to Phædra and Hippolytus, reading only "the soft Scarlatti," instead of Italian Eunuchs.
[3] At the back of an old impression of it, in the collection of the late Mr. Rogers, I meet with the name of Echerlan, but am unacquainted with any such designer or engraver.——I have since been told he came over to England to dispose of a number of foreign prints, and was himself no mean caricaturist. Having drawn an aggravated likeness of an English nobleman, whose figure was peculiarly unhappy, he was forced to fly in consequence of a resentment which threatened little short of assassination.