The quotation from Burke to Barry (vol. I. p. 148) has the following footnote:—
‘Yet Mr. Burke knew something of Art and of the world. He thought the Art should be encouraged for the sake of Artists. They think it should be destroyed for their sakes. They would cut it up at once, as the boy did the goose with golden eggs.’
After such heavy drollery (vol. I. p. 150) add: ‘with the stupid, knowing air of a horse-jockey or farrier, and in the right slang of the veterinary art.’
After will speak more (Ibid.) add: ‘We concluded our last with some remarks on Claude’s landscapes. We shall return to them here; and we would ask those who have seen them at the British Institution, “Is the general effect,”’ etc. [here Hazlitt inserted the criticism on Claude he used later in the article on Fine Arts for the Encyclopædia Britannica, see p. [394] of the present volume, ending with ‘What landscape-painter does not feel this of Claude?’]
‘It seems the author of the Catalogue Raisonné does not; for he thus speaks of him:—
“David Encamped.—Claude. Rev. W. H. Carr:—If it were not for the horrible composition of this landscape—the tasteless hole in the wall—the tents and daddy-long-legs, whom Mr. Carr has christened King David, we should be greatly offended by its present obtrusion on the public; as it is, we are bound to suppose the possessor sees deeper into the mill-stone than ourselves; and if it were politic, could thoroughly explain the matter to our satisfaction. Be this as it may, we cannot resist expressing our regret at the absence of Claude Gillee’s Muses.—The Public in general merely know, by tradition, that this painter was a pastry-cook: had this delectable composition to which we now allude been brought forward, they would have had the evidence of his practice to confirm it. It is said to represent Mount Parnassus; and no one, who for a moment has seen the picture, can entertain the smallest doubt of its having been taken from one of his own Plateaux. The figures have all the character and drawing which they might be expected to derive from a species of twelfth-cake casts. The swans are of the truest wax-shapes, while the water bears every mark of being done from something as right-earnest as that at Sadler’s Wells, and the Prince’s Fete of 1814.”
‘This is the way in which the Catalogue-writer aids and abets the Royal Academy in the promotion and encouragement of the Fine Arts in this country. Now, what if we were to imitate him, and to say of the “ablest landscape-painter now living,” that.... No, we will not; we have blotted out the passage after we had written it—Because it would be bad wit, bad manners, and bad reasoning. Yet we dare be sworn it is as good wit, as good manners, and as good reasoning, as the wittiest, the most gentlemanly, and the most rational passage, in the Catalogue Raisonné. Suppose we were to put forth voluntarily such a criticism on one of Mr. Turner’s landscapes? What then? we should do a great injustice to an able and ingenious man, and disgrace ourselves: but we should not hurt a sentiment, we should not mar a principle, we should not invade the sanctuary of Art. Mr. Turner’s pictures have not, like Claude’s, become a sentiment in the heart of Europe; his fame has not been stamped and rendered sacred by the hand of time. Perhaps it never will.[[66]]
‘We have only another word to add on this very lowest of all subjects. The writer calls in the cant of morality to his aid. He was quite shocked to find himself in the company of some female relations, vis-à-vis with a naked figure of Annibal Caracci’s. Yet he thinks the Elgin Marbles likely to raise the morals of the country to a high pitch of refinement. Good. The fellow is a hypocrite too.’
Instead of ‘return? nothing‘, the paper ends thus:—‘return; the low buffoonery of a mechanic scribbler, a Bart’lemy-fair puppet-shew, Mrs. Salmon’s Royal Wax-work, or the exhibition of the Royal Academy, King George the Third on horseback, or his son treading in his steps on foot, or Prince Blucher, or the Hetman Platoff,[[67]] or the Duke with the foolish face, or the great Plenipotentiary[[68]]? God save the mark!’
WEST’S PICTURE OF DEATH ON THE PALE HORSE