Note 41 — HOGARTH ILLUSTRATED.
Reading edition
It is said, I don't know upon what authority, to be intended as a burlesque delineation of John Stephen Liotard, of whom Mr. Walpole thus writes in p. 195 of his Anecdotes:—
"Devoid of imagination, and one would think of memory, he could render nothing but what he saw before his eyes. Freckles, marks of the small-pox, everything found its place; not so much from fidelity, as because he could not conceive the absence of anything that appeared to him."
This miserable personage may, however, be only intended to show the state of the arts at that time, when an English painter, if not excellent in portraits, had no other patronage than that of those gentlemen who put out signs of Blue Lions, Green Dragons, and Red Harts. Thanks to the talents of our immortal bard, it is not so now. Whether the artists of the present day drain copious draughts of humble porter, or fill their flagons with Falernian or French wines, let not the memory of their patron poet be forgotten. "He merits all their wonder, all their praise!"