If fulness be a fault, it is a fault that Gainsborough, Hoare, Pine, Reynolds, and many other of our modern geniuses are guilty of; and if it be sin, the best judges will acquit them for committing it, where dignity is to be considered.
Madame Valliere appears to have been scattering about her jewels, is tearing her hair, crying, and looking up to the heavens, which seem bursting forth a tempest over her head. The picture is well imagined, and finely executed.
I found upon the bulk of a portable shop in Paris, a most excellent engraving from this picture,[I] and which carried me directly to visit the original; it is indeed stained and dirty, but it is infinitely superior to a later engraving which now hangs up in all the print shops, and I suppose is from the first plate, which was done soon after the picture was finished. Under it are written the following ingenious, tho' I fear, rather impious lines:
Magdala dam gemmas, baccisque monile coruscum
Projicit, ac formæ detrahit arma suæ:
Dum vultum lacrymis et lumina turbat; amoris
Mirare insidias! hac capit arte Deum.
[I] In the possession of Mr. Gainsborough.
Shall I attempt to unfold this writer's meaning? Yes, I will, that my friend at Oxford may laugh, and do it as it ought to be done.