it, possessing all that plain good-humoured simplicity and social integrity which peculiarly distinguishes the honest English private gentleman. Like those patriots, it was more natural to George I. to be content with, or even partial to whatever he found established, than to seek for improvement and foreign ornament. But the arts, when neglected, always degenerate. Encouragement must keep them up, or a genius revivify them. Neither happened under the first of the House of Brunswick. I shall be as brief as I can in my account of so ungrateful a period; for though the elder Dahl and Richardson, and a very few more had merit in some particulars, I cannot help again advertising my readers, that no reign, since the arts have been in any esteem, produced fewer works that will deserve the attention of posterity. As the reign too was of no long duration, most of the artists had lived under the predecessors of George I. or flourished under his son, where several will be ranked with more propriety. Of the former class was
(1663—1721,)
the assistant and imitator of Verrio, with whose name his will be preserved when their united labours shall be no more, both being immortalized by that unpropitious line of Pope,
" Where sprawl the saints of Verrio and Laguerre."
The same redundancy of history and fable is displayed in the works of both ; and it is but justice to say that their
-261-
Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information:
Book title: Anecdotes of Painting in England: With Some Account of the Principal Artists.
Volume: 2.
Contributors: Horace Walpole - Author.
Publisher: Swan Sonnenschein.
Place of publication: London.
Publication year: 1888.
Page number: 261.
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