The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 408 pages of information about The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4.

The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 408 pages of information about The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4.
attempted to rival him in his moral walk.  The line of art pursued by my very ingenious predecessor and brother Academician, Mr. Penny, is quite distinct from that of Hogarth, and is of a much more delicate and superior relish; he attempts the heart, and reaches it, whilst Hogarth’s general aim is only to shake the sides; in other respects no comparison can be thought of, as Mr. Penny has all that knowledge of the figure and academical skill which the other wanted.  As to Mr. Bunbury, who had so happily succeeded in the vein of humor and caricatura, he has for some time past altogether relinquished it, for the more amiable pursuit of beautiful nature:  this, indeed, is not to be wondered at, when we recollect that he has, in Mrs. Bunbury, so admirable an exemplar of the most finished grace and beauty continually at his elbow.  But (to say all that occurs to me on this subject) perhaps it may be reasonably doubted, whether the being much conversant with Hogarth’s method of exposing meanness, deformity, and vice, in many of his works, is not rather a dangerous, or, at least, a worthless pursuit; which, if it does not find a false relish and a love of and search after satire and buffoonery in the spectator, is at least not unlikely to give him one.  Life is short; and the little leisure of it is much better laid out upon that species of art which is employed about the amiable and the admirable, as it is more likely to be attended with better and nobler consequences to ourselves.  These two pursuits in art may be compared with two sets of people with whom we might associate; if we give ourselves up to the Footes, the Kenricks, &c. we shall be continually busied and paddling in whatever is ridiculous, faulty, and vicious in life; whereas there are those to be found with whom we should be in the constant pursuit and study of all that gives a value and a dignity to human nature.” [Account of a Series of Pictures in the Great Boom of the Society of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, at the Adelphi, by James Barry, R.A., Professor of Painting to the Royal Academy, reprinted in the last quarto edition of his works.]

    “——­It must be honestly confessed, that in what is called
    knowledge of the figure, foreigners have justly observed,” &c.

It is a secret well known to the professors of the art and mystery of criticism, to insist upon what they do not find in a man’s works, and to pass over in silence what they do.  That Hogarth did not draw the naked figure so well as Michael Angelo might be allowed, especially as “examples of the naked,” as Mr. Barry acknowledges, “rarely (he might almost have said never) occur in his subjects;” and that his figures under their draperies do not discover all the fine graces of an Antinoues or an Apollo, may be conceded likewise; perhaps it was more suitable to his purpose to represent the average forms of mankind in the mediocrity (as Mr. Burke expresses it) of the age in which he lived:  but that his

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The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.