Anecdotes of Painting in England; with fome Account of the principal Artifts, and incidental Notes on other Arts; collected by the late Mr. George Vertue; and now digefted and published from his riginal MSS. by Mr. Horace Walpole. Vol. 3d. and 4th.

WE

E are indebted to our readers a long arrear on the account of the honourable editor of thefe memoirs. The two firft volumes were publifhed in the year 1762 and a fhort view of the compiler's plan, together with our opinion of the judicious and lively manner in which it was executed, were given in the Annual Register of that date. The third volume came out the following year; but the account of it was deferred till the publication of the fourth and laft, which was then promifed, and for which we have waited with all the impatience, that the fingular merit of the preceding parts had, we believe, very generally excited.

But, how much foever we may have fuffered from this delay in the gratification of our curiofity, the motives that occafioned it cannot be fufficiently commended. Mr. Walpole, whofe humanity and benevolence are as much admired in private life, as his fine genius and

lively talents are by the public, was unwilling, as he himself informs us," to utter even gentle cenfures, which might wound the affections, or offend the prejudices, of those related to perfons, whom truth forbad him to commend beyond their merits.- As he could not therefore refolve, like most biographifts, to difpenfe univerfal panegyric, the publication of this laft volume, which contains the lives of artifts in the two late reigns, though it had been long written, and even printed, was deferred, from motives of tendernefs towards their furviving friends and relations." To rifk the tide of popular curiofity would have been a dangerous experiment in an author of doubtful reputation. On the other hand, to facrifice a long period of certain fame to the gratification of a private fatisfaction, was ftill lefs to be expected from the vanity of an applauded favourite. But Mr. Walpole's genius and virtues make him fuperior to both these considerations; and he knows that men of true tafte will not lefs admire the beneficent exertions of the one, than the moft brilliant productions of the other.

The first of the volumes now before us commences with the reign of Charles the second. "The

arts,

in a manner expelled with the royal family from Britain. The anecdotes of a civil war are the hiftory of destruction. In all ages, the mob have vented their haired to tyrants, on the pomp of tyranny. The magnificence, the people have envied, they grow to deteft; and miftaking confequences for caufes, the firft objects of their fury are the palaces of their mafters. If religion is thrown into the quarrel, the moít innocent arts are catalogued with fins. This was the cafe in the contefts between Charles and his parliament. As he had blended affection to the fciences with a luft of power, nonfenfe and ignorance were adopted into the liberties of the fubject. Painting became idolatry, monuments were deemed carnal pride, and a venerable cathedral feemed equally contradictory to Magna Charta and the Bible. Learning and wit were conftrued to be fo heathen, that one would have thought the Holy Ghoft could en dure nothing above a pun. What the fury of Henry the VIIIth had fpared, was condemned by the Puritans: Ruin was their harveft, and they gleaned after the reformers. Had they countenanced any of the fofter arts, what could thofe arts have reprefented? How pictureique was the figure of an Anabaptift? but fectaries have no oftenfible enjoyments; their pleafures are private, comfortable, and grofs. The arts that civilize fociety, are not calculated for men who mean to rife on the ruins of eftablished order. Jargon and aufterities are the weapons that beft ferve the purposes of herefiarcs and

excommunicated, from the Gnoftics to Mr. Whitfield.

"The restoration of royalty brought back the arts, not tafte, Charles the lId had a turn to mechanics, but to none of the politer fciences. He had learned to draw in his youth. In the imperial li brary at Vienna is a view of the. Ile of Jerfey, defigned by him. But he was too indolent to amuse himself. He introduced the fafhions of the court of France, without its elegance. He had feen Louis the XIVth countenance Corneille, Moliere, and Boileau, who forming themfelves on the models of the ancients, feemed by the pu rity of their writings to have itudied in Sparta. Charles found as much genius at home, but how licentious, how indelicate was the file be permitted or demanded! Dryden's tragedies are a compound of bombait and heroic obicenity, inclofed in the most beautiful numbers. If Wycherley had nature, it is nature ftark naked. The painters of that age veiled it but little more. Sir Peter Lely fcarce faves appearances but by a bit of fringe or embroidery. His nymphs, ge nerally repofed on the turf, are too wanton and too magnificent to be taken for any thing but maids of honour. Yet fantastic as his compofitions feem, they were pretty much in the drefs of the times, as it is evident by a Puritan tract published in 1678, and intituled "Just and Reasonable Reprehenfions of Naked Breafts and Shoulders." The court had gone a good way beyond the fathion of the preceding reign, when the gallantry in vogue was to wear a lock of fome

favourite

favourite object; and yet Prynne had thought that mode fo damnable, that he published an abfurd piece against it, called The Unlovelinefs of Love locks *.

The fectaries in oppofition to the king, had run into the extreme against politeneis: The new court, to indemnify themfelves and mark averfion to their rigid adverfaries, took the other extreme: Elegance and delicacy were the point from which both fides ftarted different ways; and tafte was as little fought by the men of wit, as by those who called themfelves the men of God. The latter thought that to demolith was to reform; the others, that ridicule was the only rational corrective; and thus, while one party destroyed all order, and the other gave a loofe to disorder, no wonder the age produced no work of art, that was worthy of being preferved by pofterity. Yet in a history of the arts, as in other hiftories, the times of confusion and barbarim muft have their place, to preferve the connection, and to afcertain the ebb and flow of genius. One likes to fee through what clouds broke forth the age of Auguftus."--

The thort and tempeftuous reign of James, fays our author, though he himself feems to have had much inclination to them, afforded finall encouragement to the arts. His religion was not of a complexion to exclude decoration; but four years, crouded with infurrections, profecutions, innovations, were not

likely to make a figure in a history of painting."

King William follows next in order. "This prince, he obferves, like moft of thofe in our annals, contributed nothing to the advancement of arts. He was born in a country where tafte never flourished, and nature had not given it him as an embellishment of his great qualities. He courted fame, but none of her minifters. Holland owed its prefervation to his heroic virtue; England its liberty to his ambition; Europe its independence to his competition with Louis the XIVth; for however unfuccefsful in the conteft, the very ftruggle was falutary. Being obliged to draw all his refources from himself, and not content to acquire glory by proxy, he had no leifure, like his rival, to prefide over the registers of his fame. He fought his own battles, inftead of chooling mottoes for the medals that recorded them; and although my Lord Hallifax promited him that his wound, in the battle of the Boyne,

Should run for ever purple in our looms, his majefty certainly did not bespeak a fingle fuit of tapestry in memory of the action. In England he met with nothing but difgutts. He understood little of the nation, and feems to have acted too much upon a plan formed before he came over; and, however neceifary to his early fituation, little adapted to fo peculiar a peo

ple

prostituted by fuffering the moft wretched daubings of hired fubftitutes to pafs for his works, while at moft he gave himself the trouble of taking the likeness of the perfon who fat to him. His bold and free manner was the fole admiration of his fucceffors, who thought they had caught his ftyle, when they neglected drawing, probability, and finishing. Kneller had exaggerated the curls of full-bottomed wigs and the tiaras of ribbands, lace and hair, till he had ftruck out a graceful kind of unnatural grandeur; but the fucceeding modes were ftill lefs favourable to picturefque imagination. The habits of the time were thrunk to awkward coats and waistcoats for the men; and for the women, to tight-laced gowns, round hoops, and half a dozen fqueezed plaits of linen, to which dangled behind two unmeaning pendants, called lappets, not half covering their ftrait-drawn hair. Dahl, Dagar, Richardfon, Jervas, and others, rebuffed with fuch barbarous forms, and not poffefling genius enough to deviate from what they faw into graceful variations, cloathed all their perfonages with a loofe drapery and airy mantles, which not only were not, but could not be the drefs of any age or nation, fo little were they adapted to cover the limbs, to exhibit any form, or to adhere to the perfon, which they fearce enveloped, and from which they muft fall on the leaft motion. As thofe cafual lappings and flowing ftreamers were imitated from nothing, they feldom have any folds or chiaio icuro; anatomy and colouring being equally forgotten. Linen, from what conomy I know not, is feldom allowed

in thofe portraits, even to the la dies, who lean carelefly on a bank, and play with a parrot they do not look at, under a tranquillity which ill accords with their feeming fituation, the flightness of their veftment and the lankness of their hair having the appearance of their being juft rifen from the bath, and of having found none of their cloaths to put on, but a loofe gown. Architecture was perverted to meer house-building, where it retained not a little of Vanbrugh ; and if employed on churches, produced at best but corrupt and tawdry imitations of Sir Chriftopher Wren. Statuary fill lefs deferved the name of an art.

The new monarch was void of taste, and not likely at an advanced age to encourage the embellishment of a country, to which he had little partiality, and with the face of which he had few opportunities of getting acquainted; though had he been better known, he must have grown the delight of it, poffeffing all that plain goodhumoured fimplicity and focial integrity, which peculiarly diftinguithes the honeft English private gentleman. Like thofe patriots, it was more natural to George the firft to be content with, or even partial to whatever he found eftablifhed, than to feek for improvement and foreign ornament. But the arts, when neglected, always degenerate. Encouragement must keep them up, or a genius revivify them. Neither happened under the first of the house of Brunswic."

Having finished the reign of George the firft," it is with complacency, fays the author, I enter upon a more fhining period in the hiftory of arts, upon a new

æra;