The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851Various
History
The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851
Various
Art, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- History -- Periodicals
Allan Cunningham was a better disciplinarian, and less prone to look for
or care for enjoyment, than Hogarth; though we have many pleasant
memories how he truly relished both music and conversation. But there
was more sentiment in the Scottish poet than in the English painter; and
the deep dark eyes of the Scot had more of fervor and less of sarcasm in
their brightness. We repeat, Allan, of all writers, could thoroughly
appreciate Hogarth; and his biography is written _con amore_. He says
that "all who love the dramatic representations of actual life,--all who
have hearts to be gladdened by humor,--all who are pleased with
judicious and well-directed satire,--all who are charmed with the
ludicrous looks of popular folly, and all who can be moved with the
pathos of human suffering, are admirers of Hogarth." But to our
thinking; Hogarth had a calling even more elevated than the Scottish
poet has given him in this eloquent summing-up of his attributes; "he is
one of our greatest teachers--a TEACHER to whom is due the _highest_
possible honor; and the more we feel the importance of the teacher, the
more we value those who teach well. In grappling with folly and in
combating with crimes, he was compelled to reveal the nature of that he
proposed to satirize; he was obliged to set up sin in its high place
before he could crown it with infamy." The times were full of internal
as well as foreign disturbance, and Hogarth's studio was no hermitage to
exclude passing events or their promoters. He lived with the living,
moving _present_,--his engravings being his pleasures; portraits, as
they are now to many a high-hearted man of talent, his means of
subsistence; heavy weights of mortality that fetter and clog the
ascending spirit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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