CULTURE FOR THE MILLION; or, SOCIETY AS IT MAY BE.
Ingenuas Didicisse Fideliter Artes, etc., etc.—Nursemaid. The perspective of the Chiaroscuro is divine, Augustus. But, oh! the impasto, is it not a leetle too pizzicato?
Leonardo da Vinci. Is Art so honoured by the great of England?
Sir J. Reynolds. Hum! Oh, His Majesty George the III was pleased to give a charter to the Royal Academy. I have been presented—but, certainly, I don’t remember to have seen him in my painting room at Leicester Square, or to have been asked to take a seat in the Privy Council.
Rafael. But your reigning monarch is a Queen. Woman has ever loved the Beautiful. Surely she much affects you painters.
Sir J. Reynolds. Hum—ha—I am extremely deaf.
P. Veronese (shouting into his trumpet). Does the Queen give due honour to our brethren?
Sir J. Reynolds. I am assured she has had painted already ten portraits of her gracious self, thirty of her Royal consort, twenty of the Royal infants, and fifty of the Royal pets, from paroquet to Brazilian monkey.
M. Angelo. These are your court painters, who so disgrace their calling. But your Artists? How goes it at the palace with them?
Rubens. Seated at the Royal board, doubtless—in places of honour.