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[Notes:

2: Another French writer, the Abbe le Blanc, gives a depressing account of English portraits before Vanloo came to England: “At some distance one might easily mistake a dozen of them for twelve copies of the same original. Some have the head turned to the left, others to the right; and this is the most sensible difference to be observed between them. Moreover, excepting the face, you find in all the same neck, the same arms, the same flesh, the same attitude; and to say all, you observe no more life than design in those pretended portraits. Properly speaking, they [the artists] are not painters, they know how to lay colours on the canvas; but they know not how to animate it” ( Letters on the English and French Nations, 1747, i. 160).

3: He died in 1749.]

“La peinture a l’huile, C’est bien difficile; Mais c’est beaucoup plus beau Que la peinture a l’eau.” About la peinture a l’eau, M. Rouquet says very little, in all probability because the English Water Colour School, which, with the advance of topographic art, grew so rapidly in the second half of the century, was yet to come. He refers, however, with approval to the gouaches of Joseph Goupy, Lady Burlington’s drawing-master, perhaps better known to posterity by his (or her ladyship’s) caricature of Handel as the “Charming Brute.” (Caricature, by the way, is a branch of Georgian Art which M. Rouquet neglects.) As regards landscape and animal painting, he “abides in generalities”; but he must have been acquainted with the sea pieces of Monamy, and Hogarth’s and Walpole’s friend Samuel Scott; and should, one would think, have known of the horses and dogs of Wootton and Seymour. Upon Enamel he might be expected to enlarge, although he mentions but one master, his own model, Zincke, who carried the art of portrait in this way much farther than any predecessor. Moreover, like Petitot, he made discoveries which he was wise enough to keep to himself. “It is most humiliating,” says Rouquet, “for the genius of painting that it can sometimes exist alone. M. Zincke left no pupil.” Seeing that Rouquet is also accused of jealously guarding his own contributions to the perfection of his art, the words are–as Diderot says–remarkable.

With Sculpture, chiefly employed at this date for mortuary purposes, he has less opportunity of being indefinite, since there were but three notabilities, Scheemakers, Rysbrack, and Roubillac,–all foreigners. Of these Scheemakers, whom Chesterfield regarded as a mere stone-cutter, and who did the Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey, is certainly the least considerable. Next come Rysbrack, whom Walpole and Rouquet would put highest, the latter apparently because Rysbrack had been spoken of contemptuously by the Abbe le Blanc. But the first is assuredly Roubillac, whose monument to Mrs. Nightingale, however, belongs to a later date than the Etat des Arts, though he had already achieved the masterly figure of Eloquence on the Argyll monument. The only other sculptor referred to by Rouquet is Gabriel Cibber, whose statues of Madness and Melancholy, long at Bedlam, and now at South Kensington, certainly deserve his praise. But Cibber died in 1700, and belongs to the Caroline epoch. He no doubt owes his place in the Etat des Arts to the fact that he had been abused in the already-mentioned Letters on the English and French Nations.

At this point we may turn M. Rouquet’s pages more rapidly. It is not necessary to linger over his account of Silk Stuffs, more excellent in his opinion by their material than their make up. Under Medallists he commends the clever medals of great men by his compatriot, Anthony Dassier; under Printing he refers to that liberty of the Press which, in England, amounted to impunity. “A few too thinly disguised blasphemies; a few too rash reflections upon the Government, a few defamatory libels–are the sole things which, at the present time, are not allowed.” And this brings about the following lively and very accurate description of the eighteenth-century newspaper:–“One of the most notable peculiarities which liberty of the Press produces in England, is the swarm of fugitive sheets and half-sheets which one sees break forth every morning, except Sunday, covering all the coffee-house tables. Twenty of these different papers, under different titles, appear each day; some contain a moral or philosophical discourse; the majority of the rest offer political, and frequently seditious, comments on some party question. In them is to be found the news of Europe, England, London, and the day before. Their authors profess to be familiar with the most secret deliberations of the Cabinet, which they make public. If a fire occurs in a chimney or elsewhere; if a theft or a murder has taken place; if any one commits suicide from ennui or despair, the public is informed thereof on the morning after with the utmost amount of detail. After these articles come advertisements of all sorts, and in very great numbers. In addition to those of different things which it is desired to let, sell or purchase, there are some that are amusing. If a man’s wife runs away he declares that he will not be liable for any debts she may contract; and as a matter of fact, this precaution, according to the custom of the country, is essential if he desires to secure himself from doing so. He threatens with all the rigour of the law those who dare to give his wife an asylum. Another publishes the particulars of his fortune, his age and his position, and adds that he is prepared to unite himself to any woman whose circumstances are such as he requires and describes; he further gives the address where communications must be sent for the negotiation and conclusion of the business. There are other notices which describe a woman who has been seen at the play or elsewhere, and announces that some one has determined to marry her. If any one has a dream which seems to him to predict that a certain number will be lucky in the lottery, he proclaims that fact, and offers a consideration to the possessor of the number if he cares to dispose of it.”