“Three Poetical Epistles. To Mr. Hogarth, Mr. Dandridge, and Mr. Lambert, Masters in the Art of Painting. Written by Mr. Mitchell. _Dabimus, capimusque vicissim._ London: Printed for John Watts, at the Printing Office in Wild-Court near Lincoln’s Inn Fields. MDCCXXXI. Price sixpence. 4to. “The epistle to Hogarth, whom the poet styles his friend, and ‘Shakspeare in Painting,’ occupies pp. 1-5, and is dated ‘June 12th, 1730.’ Passages are quoted at p. 32. The following, from that to the ‘eminent Face Painter,’ Bartholomew Dandridge, p. 6, gives the names of Hogarth’s artistic contemporaries:-- ‘Nor wou’d I, partial or audacious, strive To show what artists most excel alive: ... How Thornhill, Jervas, Richardson and Kent, Lambert and Hogarth, Zinks (Zincke) and Aikman paint; What Semblance in the Vanderbanks I see, And wherein Dall (Dahl) and Highmore disagree; How Wooten, Harvey, Tilliman and Wright, To one great End, in diff’rent Roads delight,’ &c.” The verse is sorry stuff, is it not? One might go on for pages quoting from this bovrilised Bibliography. Under the date 1753 is the announcement of Hogarth’s unfortunate experiment in æsthetics--“The Analysis of Beauty. Written with a view of fixing the fluctuating ideas of Taste.” It would be pleasant to contrast Lamb’s eulogy from the famous essay in “The Reflector” with Mrs. Oliphant’s sorrowful comments. Space permits a few words only. “I contend,” says Lamb, “that there is in most of his subjects that sprinkling of the better nature, which, like holy-water, chases away and disperses the contagion of the bad.” Says Mrs. Oliphant: “Before his pictures the vulgar laugh, and the serious spectator holds his peace, gazing, often with eyes awestricken, at the wonderful unimpassioned tragedy. But never a tear comes at Hogarth’s call. It is his sentence of everlasting expulsion from the highest heaven of art.” [Illustration: PLATE IV.--JAMES QUIN (In the National Gallery, London) Quin, the actor, was Garrick’s portly rival. Note the eloquent eye and the voluble mouth. This hearty, eighteenth-century mummer wears a full-bottomed grey wig, and is dressed in a brown coat richly frogged with gold. The portrait is inscribed “Mr. Quin.”]