lovers of arts the industry of Mr. Vertue, who preferved notices of all his cotemporaries, as he had collected of past ages, and thence gave birth to this work. In that fupplement will not be forgotten the wonderful progrefs in miniature of lady Lucan, who has arrived at copying the most exquisite works of Ifaac and Peter Oliver, Hoskins and Cooper, with a genius that almost depreciates those masters, when we confider that they fpent their lives in attaining perfection; and who, foaring above their modest timidity, has transferred the vigour of Raphael to her copies in water-colours. There will be recorded the living etchings of Mr. H. Bunbury, the fecond Hogarth, and first imitator who ever fully equalled his original; and who, like Hogarth, has more humour when he invents, than when he illustrates † —probably because genius can draw from the fources of nature with more fpirit than from the ideas of another. Has any painter ever executed a fcene, a character of Shakespeare, that approached to the prototype fo near as Shakespeare himself attained to na

* Margaret Smith, Wife of Sir Charles Bingham Baron Lu. can in Ireland.

For instance, in his prints to Tristram Shandy,

ture?

ture? Yet is there a pencil in a living hand as capable of pronouncing the paffions as our unequalled poet; a pencil not only inspired by his infight into nature, but by the graces and taste of Grecian artifts-but it is not fair to excite the curiofity of the public, when both the rank and bashful merit of the poffeffor, and a too rare exertion of fuperior talents, confine the proofs to a narrow circle. Whoever has feen the drawings, and bafreliefs, designed and executed by lady Diana Beauclerc, is fenfible that these imperfect encomiums are far fhort of the excellence of her works. Her portrait of the duchefs of Devonshire, in feveral hands, confirms the truth of part of these affertions. The nymph-like fimplicity of the figure is equal to what a Grecian statuary would have formed for a dryad or goddess of a river. Bartolozzi's print of her two daughters after the drawing of the fame lady, is another fpecimen of her fingular genius and taste. The gay and fportive innocence of the younger daughter, and the demure application of the elder, are as characteristically contrafted

Eldest Daughter of Charles Spencer fecond Duke of Marlborough, married first to Frederic St. John Viscount Bolingbroke, and afterwards to Topham Beauclere, only fan of Lord Sidney Beauclerc.

8

as

as Milton's Allegro and Penferofo. A third female genius is Mrs. Damer,* daughter of General Conway, in a walk more difficult and far more uncommon than painting. The annals of ftatuary record few artifts of the fair fex, and not one that I recollect of any celebrity. Mrs. Damer's bufts from the life are not inferior to the antique, and theirs we are fure were not more like. Her fhock dog, large as life, and only not alive, has a looseness and foftness in the curls that feemed impoflible to terra-cotta: it rivals the marble one of Bernini in the royal collection. As the ancients have left us but five animals of equal merit with their human figures, namely, the Barberini goat, the Tufcan boar, the Matter eagle, the eagle at Strawberry-hill, and Mr. Fennings's, now Mr. Duncombe's, dog, the talent of Mrs. Damer muft appear in the most diftinguished light. Aided by fome instructions from that mafterly ftatuary Mr. Bacon, The has attempted and executed a bust in marble. Ceracchi, from whom first she received four or five leffons, has given a whole figure:

Only child of general Henry Seymour, commander in chief 1782 and 1783, by lady Caroline Campbell, countess dowager of Ailebury. Mrs. Damer was widow of John Damer, eldest son of Jofeph lord Milton,

of

of her as the mufe of fculpture, in which he has happily preferved the graceful lightness of her form and air.

Little is faid here but hiftorically of the art of gardening. Mr. Mason in his first beautiful canto on that fubject has shown that Spenfer and Addison ought not to have been omitted in the lift of our authors who were not blind to the graces of natural tafte. The public must wish with the author of this work, that Mr. Mason would complete his poem, and leave this effay as unneceffary as it is imperfect.

The historic compofitions offered for St. Paul's by fome of our first artists, seemed to disclose a vifion of future improvement - a period the more to be wifhed, as the wound given to painting through the fides of the Romish religion menaces the arts as well as idolatry -unless the methodists, whofe rigour feems to foften and adopt the artifices of the catholics, [for our itinerant mountebanks already are fond of being fainted in mezzotinto, as well as their St. Bridgets and Terefas] fhould borrow the paraphernalia of enthusiasm now waning in Italy, and fuperadd the witchery of painting to that of mufic. Whitfield's temples encircled with glory may

convert

convert ruftics, who have never heard of his or Ignatius Loyola's peregrinations. If enthufiafm is to revive, and tabernacles to rife as convents are demolished, may we not hope at leaft to fee them painted? Le Sueur's cloyster at Paris makes fome little amends for the imprisonment of the Carthufians. The abfurdity of the legend of the reviving canon is lost in the amazing art of the painter; and the last fcene of St. Bruno expiring, in which are expreffed all the ftages of devotion from the youngest mind impreffed with fear to the compofed refignation of the prior, is perhaps inferior to no fingle picture of the greatest master. If Raphael died young, fo did Le Sueur; the former had feen the antique, the latter only prints from Raphael: yet in the Chartreuse, what airs of heads! what harmony of colouring! what aerial perspective! How Grecian the fimplicity of architecture and drapery! How diverfified a fingle quadrangle, though the life of a hermit be the only fubject, and devotion the only pathetic! In fhort, till we have other pictures than portraits, and painting has ampler fields to range in than private apartments, it is in vain to expect the art should recover its genuine luftre. Statuary

has