"We have had recourse to the works of the ancients, not because the moderns have not produced some as excellent, but because the works of the former are more generally known; nor would we have it thought that either of them has ever yet come up to the utmost beauty of nature. Who but a bigot to the _antiques_ will say, that he has not seen faces and necks, hands and arms, in living women, that even the Grecian Venus doth but coarsely imitate?" [17] Hogarth might possibly have some oblique allusion to the manner in which _Cæsar suffered_ in the capitol _of an English theatre.--They might as well have hanged him_; or, _the actor deserved hanging for so personating the character_,--which the reader likes best. In an early impression of the print I have seen written (I believe by Hogarth) on the pedestal upon which this figure is placed, TU BRUTE. That he greatly disliked Quin, is evident from the following epigram, with the injustice or justice of which I have nothing to do, but to the painter it is attributed:-- "Your servant, Sir," says surly Quin.-- "Sir, I am yours," replies Macklin.-- "Why, you're the very Jew you play, Your face performs the task well."-- "And you are Sir John Brute, they say, And an accomplished Maskwell." Says Rich, who heard the sneering elves, And knew their horrid hearts, "Acting too much your very selves, You overdo your parts." [18] In the Analysis, he asserts that a completely new and harmonious order of architecture might be produced by making choice of variety of lines, and then again, by varying their situations with each other; in a word, that the art of composing well is the art of varying well. In the frontispiece to Brook Taylor's perspective, he has given an example, by a broken sceptre, somewhat resembling the Roman fasces, and girt round with the Prince of Wales' coronet, as an astragal, through which the fasces rise, and swell into a crown adorned with embroidered stars. [19] Mr. Shee, in his _Rhymes on Art_, has very happily introduced a similar character, accompanied by _congenial connoisseurs_:-- "No awkward heir that o'er Campania's plain, Has scamper'd like a monkey in his chain; No ambush'd ass, that, hid in learning's maze, Kicks at desert, and crops wit's budding bays; No baby grown, that still his coral keeps, And sucks the thumb of science till he sleeps; No mawkish son of sentiment who strains Soft sonnet drops from barley-water brains; No pointer of a paragraph, no peer, That hangs a picture-pander at his ear; No smatterer of the ciceroni crew, No pauper of the parish of Virtú; But starts an Aristarchus on the town, To hunt full cry dejected merit down; With sapient shrug assumes the critic's part, And loud deplores the sad decline in art."