English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism; Great Britain -- Intellectual life -- 18th century
There is usually one thing to be found in Stothard's designs which many
of his latter-day successors, who seem to care for little except making
an effective 'compo,' are often in the habit of neglecting. He is
generally fairly loyal to his text, and honestly endeavours to interpret
it pictorially. Take, for example, a sketch at random,--the episode of
the accident to Count Galiano's baboon in Sharpe's 'Gil Blas.' You need
scarcely look at Le Sage; the little picture gives the entire
story. There, upon the side of the couch, is the Count in an
undress,--effeminate, trembling, almost tearful. Beside him is his
wounded favourite, turning plaintively to its agitated master, while the
hastily summoned surgeon, his under lip protruded professionally, binds
up the injured limb. Around are the servants in various attitudes of
sycophantic sympathy. Or take from a mere annual, the 'Forget-me-not' of
1828, this little _genre_ picture out of Sterne. Our old friend Corporal
Trim is moralizing in the kitchen to the hushed Shandy servants on
Master Bobby's death. He has let fall his hat upon the ground, 'as if a
heavy lump of clay had been kneaded into the crown of it.' 'Are we not
here now,' says Trim, 'and are we not gone! in a moment.' Holding her
apron to her eyes, the sympathetic Susannah leans her hand confidingly
upon Trim's shoulder; Jonathan the coachman, a mug of ale upon his
knee, stares--with dropped chin--at the hat, as if he expected it to do
something; Obadiah wonders at Trim; the cook pauses as she lifts the lid
of a cauldron at the fire, and the 'foolish fat scullion'--the 'foolish
fat scullion' who 'had been all autumn struggling with a dropsy' and
is still immortal--looks up inquiringly from the fish-kettle she is
scouring on her knees. It is all there; and Stothard has told us all of
it that pencil could tell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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