Hence it follows that wherever, in any design, separate portions are intended to arrest attention, the outline should be more defined and, accordingly, we may remark that Albert Durer, and others like him, who were very careful of minutiæ, are also distinct and hard in their outlines, which is also the case, for the most part, in the Dutch school, and in architectural paintings, fruit-pieces, &c.; and we find that in proportion as the artist discards the comparatively unworthy minute accompaniments of his subject, and aims at unity of effect, so does he neglect sharpness of outline. Which is the correct practice—distinctness, or indistinctness of outline—will be differently judged by those who hold different opinions on painting in general. While one person will maintain that a picture, to be perfect, must be an exact copy of nature, in short an artistic daguerreotype; another will hold almost the contrary; so that the subject of outline must be matter of opinion still. However, the lover of general effect has this rational ground of argument on his side, viz., there is no such thing as a strictly defined outline in nature, even to an eye at rest; while to one in motion, which is perhaps the normal state, that outline is rendered still more indistinct.
H.C.K.
—— Rectory, Hereford, Dec. 28. 1850.
TEN CHILDREN AT A BIRTH.
(Vol. ii., p. 459.)
The curiosity excited by the perusal of my previous communication under the foregoing head, and the interesting editorial note appended in "NOTES AND QUERIES," induce me to continue the attempt to verify one of the most remarkable instances of abnormal fecundity in an individual of the human species recorded in modern times. The reader must judge of the following "circumstantial evidence:"—
1. I have just seen widow Platts (formerly Sarah Birch), a poor, fat, decent woman, who keeps a small greengrocer's shop, in West Bar, Sheffield. She says she was born in Spring Street in the same town, on the 29th Sept. 1781; well remembers wondering why she was so much looked at when a girl: and her surprise, when afterwards told by her mother, that she was one of ten children born at the same time. Had often been told that she was so small at birth, that she was readily put into a quart measure; and for some time, lay in a basket before the fire "wrapped in a flannel like a newly hatched chicken."
2. The improbability of finding any living gossip who was present at the birth, must be obvious: but I have conversed with old women who had heard their mothers describe the occurrence from personal knowledge.
3. One ancient dame had no more doubt of the fact than the cause of it. Having apparently heard and believed a monstrous tradition of a multitudinous gestation extant in common "folklore." "It was," said she, with all gravity, "the effect of a wish," intended to spite the father; who, having had two children by his wife, and an interval of nine years elapsing before the portentous pregnancy in question, did not desire, it seems, any further increase to his family.