EPIGRAMS AND SATIRICAL PIECES

ON ART AND ARTISTS.

I.

ORATOR PRIG.

ASKED of my dear friend orator Prig: "What's the first part of oratory?" He said: "A great wig."

"And what is the second?" Then, dancing a jig

And bowing profoundly, he said: "A great wig." "And what is the third?" Then he snored like a

pig,

And, puffing his cheeks out, replied: "A great wig." So, if to a painter the question you push,

"What's the first part of painting?" he'll s

paint-brush."

66

say: A

"And what is the second?" With most modest blush,

He'll smile like a cherub, and say: "A paint-brush." "And what is the third?" He'll bow like a rush, With a leer in his eye, and reply: "A paint-brush." Perhaps this is all a painter can want:

But look yonder, that house is the house of Rembrandt.

II.

DEAR mother Outline, of wisdom most

sage,

What's the first part of painting?" She
said: "Patronage.”

← And what is the second to please and engage?”
She frowned like a fury, and said: "Patronage."
And what is the third ?" She put off old age,
And smiled like a siren, and said: "Patronage."

III.

ME look to see the sweet outlines
And beauteous forms that Love does wear:
Some look to find out patches, paint,
Bracelets and stays and powdered hair.

IV.

ON THE VENETIAN PAINTer.

E makes the lame to walk, we all agree;
But then he strives to blind all who can
see!

TO VENETIAN ARTISTS.

HAT God is colouring Newton does show ;
And the Devil is a black outline, all of us

Perhaps this little fable may make us merry.
A dog went over the water without a wherry.

A bone which he had stolen he had in his mouth : He cared not whether the wind was north or

south.

As he swam, he saw the reflection of the bone: "This is quite perfection, one generalizing tone!Outline? There's no outline, there's no such thing: All is chiaroscuro, poco-pen,-it's all colouring!".Snap, snap! He has lost shadow, and substance too!

He had them both before." Now how do

ye do ?” "A great deal better than I was before: Those who taste colouring love it more and more."

VI.

COLOUR AND FORM.

ALL that the public voice which is their
error?

Like as a monkey, peeping in a mirror,
Admires all his colours brown and warm,
And never once perceives his ugly form.

VII.

HANK God, I never was sent to school, To be flogged into following the style of a fool!

VIII.

ON CERTAIN FRIENDS.

FOUND them blind, I taught them how to see,

And now they know neither themselves

nor me.

IX.

ON THE GREAT ENCOURAGEMENT GIVEN BY ENGLISH NOBILITY AND GENTRY TO CORREGGIO, RUBENS, REMBRANDT, REYNOLDS, GAINSBOROUGH, CATALANI, and Dilberry Doodle.

IVE pensions to the learned pig,

Or the hare playing on a tabor;
Anglus can never see perfection

But in the journeyman's labour.

As the ignorant savage will sell his own wife
For a button, a bauble, a bead, or a knife,—
So the taught savage Englishman spends his whole
fortune

On a smear or a squall to destroy picture or tune:
And I call upon Colonel Wardle

To give these rascals a dose of caudle.

All pictures that's painted with sense or with thought

Are painted by madmen, as sure as a groat;
For the greater the fool, in the Art the more blest,

And when they are drunk they always paint best. They never can Raphael it, Fuseli it, nor Blake it: If they can't see an outline, pray how can they make it?

All men have drawn outlines whenever they saw them;

Madmen see outlines, and therefore they draw them.

EEING a Rembrandt or Correggio,

Of crippled Harry I think and slobbering
Joe;

And then I question thus: Are artists' rules
To be drawn from the works of two manifest fools?
Then God defend us from the Arts, I say;
For battle, murder, sudden death, let's pray.
Rather than be such a blind human fool,
I'd be an ass, a hog, a worm, a chair, a stool.

XI.

To ENGLISH CONNOISSEURS.

OU must agree that Rubens was a fool,
And yet you make him master of your
school,

And give more money for his slobberings
Than you will give for Raphael's finest things.
I understood Christ was a carpenter,
And not a brewer's servant, my good sir.