Note 19 — HOGARTH.
Reading edition
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."