"In curious paintings I'm exceeding nice, And know their several beauties by their price; Auctions and sales I constantly attend, But choose my pictures by a skilful friend. Originals and copies, much the same; The picture's value is the painter's name." [Illustration: BATTLE OF PICTURES.] In one corner of this very ludicrous print he has represented an auction-room, on the top of which is a weathercock, in allusion perhaps to Cock the auctioneer. Instead of the four initials for North, East, West, and South, we have P, U, F, S, which, with a little allowance for bad spelling, must pass for _Puffs_! At the door stands a porter, who from the length of his staff may be high-constable of the old school, and gentleman-usher to the modern connoisseurs. As an attractive show-board, we have an high-finished Flemish head, in one of those ponderous carved and gilt frames, that give the _miniatures_ inserted in them the appearance of a glow-worm in a gravel pit. A catalogue and a carpet (properly enough called the _flags of distress_) are _now_ the signs of a sale; but _here_, at the end of a long pole, we have an unfurled standard, emblazoned with that _oracular talisman_ of an auction-room, the _fate-deciding hammer_. Beneath is a picture of St. Andrew on the cross, with an immense number of _fac-similes_, each inscribed _ditto_. _Apollo_, who is flaying _Marsyas_, has no mark of a deity, except the rays which beam from his head; he is placed under a projecting branch, and we may truly say the tree shadows what it ought to support. The coolness of poor Marsyas is perfectly philosophical; he endures torture with the apathy of a Stoic. The third tier is made up by a herd of Jupiters and Europas, of which _interesting_ subject, as well as the foregoing, there are _dittos_, _ad infinitum_. These invaluable _tableaux_ being unquestionably painted by the great Italian masters, is a proof of their unremitting industry;--their labours evade calculation; for had they acquired the _polygraphic_ art of striking off pictures with the facility that printers roll off copperplates, and each of them attained the age of Methusaleth, they could not have painted _all_ that are exhibited under their names. Nothing is therefore left us to suppose, but that _some of these undoubted originals_ were painted by their disciples.[12] Such are the _collections_ of _fac-similes_; the other pictures are drawn up in battle array; we will begin with that of _St. Francis_, the corner of which is in a most unpropitious way driven through Hogarth's _Morning_. The third painting of the Harlot's Progress suffers equal degradation from a weeping Madonna, while the splendid saloon of the repentant pair in Marriage à la Mode is broken by the Aldobrandini Marriage. Thus far is rather in favour of the ancients; but the aerial combat has a different termination: for, by the riotous scene in the Rake's Progress, a hole is made in Titian's