THANKS FOR A PLACE!

An old Borough-reeve served a politic Duke,
And proved, by so doing, a wise man ;
For the politic Duke opportunity took

To make his friend's son an exciseman.

Dick, led by his father, the Nobleman saw,
And certainly well to behave meant;
With many a bow he put out his fore paw,

And scraped his hind leg on the pavement.

"I'm come, Sir, to thank you, but feel here a burr;

At speaking I be but a fresh un:"

The Borough-reeve whisper'd-" Boy, don't call him Sir,
Your Grace is the proper expression."

"When feyther, Sir, told me I'd gotten the place,

I skipt like a colt in a paddock;"

"Sir, again?" cried the father,-"You fool! say Your Grace-
Say Your Grace-you're as deaf as a haddock!"

Thus tutor'd, the son of the old Borough-reeve
Cried out with a pious endeavour,-

"For what we are going this day to receive,
The Lord make us thankful for ever!"

ON AFFECTATION IN PORtraiture.

THERE is no one branch of the Fine Arts in which there is so much of barefaced affectation and bad taste as in portraiture. Whether this arises from the vulgar inclinations and perverted tastes of the painted, or from the want of capacity and invention of the painter, it is not our purpose to inquire. That these errors are thick as the leaves in spring, no one can doubt who glances his eye round the walls of an exhibition-room, or an amateur's gallery-through the portfolios of our illustrators, or at the windows of Colnaghi or Molteno.

There are several eras, or rather schools, in the affectation alluded to. The first is the Lely, or wig-and-armour affectation. Hogarth has ridiculed this humorously enough in his "Marriage à la Mode," where you may perceive the portrait of an officer of rank in a flowing wig and armour, grasping in his lady-like hand the lightning of Jupiter: it looks for all the world like an embodied imagination of the

"Brave Dalhousie, that great god of war,
Lieutenant-colonel to the Earl of Mar."

There is a portrait extant of Cotton, which makes Hogarth's exaggeration hardly a caricature, a man celebrated only for being an angler of Isaac Walton's school, and a writer of piscatory. eclogues (or, as a punning friend calls them, water-logs), dressed most impregnably in armour, and inundated with a heavy fall of wig, or, as the same friend observes, wearing his fine

horse-hair fishing-lines about his head and shoulders, to the great terror of all young jacks in the water who hope to become pikes. The second is the lady, or cherry-and-parrot affectation. The third, the Reynolds, or lamb-and-shepherdess affectation. The fourth, the Jervas, or wig, or night-cap and bed-room affectation. Some portraits in this style are indisputably vulgar, ill-looking, and almost disgusting. No man appears like a hero to his valet; nor does a man look much like a poet or a philosopher in his night-shirt. Franklin himself must have looked like an ostler to the night-mare, in his white shirt and republican red night-cap; or a surly landlord, disturbed by his first-floor lodger ringing to get in. We remarked that these portraits were almost disgusting; there is one that is so: it is that of Phillips, the cider-celebrater. His filthy cap is falling flashily on one side of an entirely bald head; he has too a low, collarless, skinfitting jerkin, opening the bare breast to the eye; and if, reader, thou knowest him from his butcher, why then his "splendid shilling" was a Brummagem ballad-halfpenny. Even the finetasted Addison could not keep himself out of the hands of this affectation. There is a portrait of him by Jervas; the countenance looks modest, and unambitious of effect; but look at the externals: the wig is white, flowing, and profuse, and has a more daring length of curls than ruined Absalom. You would surmise, if you look no farther, that he has just slipped away from Queen Anne's dull drawing-room to unloose his brilliant mind; but you see that he has only unloosed his waistcoat with sleeves, and altogether it is a very half-drest and half-disagreeable portrait. The fifth is the Kneller, or wry-wigged affectation; for which see the heads and perukes of Swift, Sterne, Gay, and Pope with his finger thrust under one. The sixth is the Romney, or white-cap affectation; for which see Thomson, whe looks as glum and surly as Mr. Giblet in fly-blowing weather; Cowper, who seems as if he had just got out of bed, to avoid his physician; Dilworth, the awfulness of whose boy-compelling brow, that looks big and burly with the threatening terrors of whole brooms of birch, is softened off into something like a safe consciousness that he is nothing higher than human, or else men and gods might tremble as much as "apple-munching" boys; and Farrance, whose white wonder (on a cook's head) assures us of cleanly patties and savoury, and might almost have quieted the cook-shaving apprehensions of his late Majesty. The seventh is the modern, or the most superlative affectation; but this we shall leave untouched for some future paper; and as the Academy is now likely to become a gallery for the exhibition of portraits only, we shall not want matter for remark.

There are several other affectations, but not of any particular school: there is one, however, which must not be forgotten, namely, that of painters, in their personal portraits, not seeming

what they are. This is the very Mount Ossa of affectation. What should we have thought if the glorious images of the imaginary and the real great of old had come down in equivocal actions and appearances-Hercules resting on a turnpike-gate instead of on his club; Homer stringing a kite instead of a lyre; Demosthenes ducking and draking the pebbles he cured his impediment with, instead of standing like a god, with outstretched arms, commanding the waves to silence; Apollo jarring a pestle and mortar, instead of reining-in the glorious strength of his pawing steeds; Scipio dusting his sandals, like a Bond-street beau, with the walking-stick he was named after, instead of showing an arm that was the stay and young strength of his father's old age? It is too silly to be thought seriously of; and an ingenious friend of ours, thinking as we do, and holding it in the like humorous contempt, has ridiculed it very pleasantly: he is modest enough (a rare virtue among artists) to think that he has a fine hand in nothing so much as in drawing a cork, and has made a sketch of himself, where he is very sedentarily seated before his easel, with a bottle of champagne between his knees, screwing in a corkscrew, and screwing up his mouth, with a most intense look of blended expectation and perseverance. You can see in it that he has either a noble thirst for glory, or for champagne; and that nothing short of the attainment of his ambition will satisfy his soul. In the back-ground, on the right, Gerard Dow is touching his viol de gamba with great complacency, and without even a latent suspicion, or the slightest betraying, of his real profession ;-and on the left, Rubens is seen carrying home his own venison, with a most porter-like perplexity of personal doubt as to his own identity, leaving you to decide whether he looks most like a porter or a painter; and seems to be going off before you can give your opinion, sucking either his own thumb or the toe of the dead deer by the way. This is a pleasant mode of satirizing absurdity, and absolutely tells better than the critic's thong, or the connoisseur's table-talk.

But you ask, what is affectation in portraiture? Whatever is forced, uneasy, out of nature in action or expression, or foreign to the picture, is affectation. Here is an illustration of it, though not so extravagant a one as many which we have met.with. Look at this portrait of Hamlet Winstanley, an engraver, "who learned to draw under the Knellers, being designed for a painter," a very bad design not well executed, for what designs might not have tortured the eye of taste from a man who could at the outset write himself down an ass? Such a man could not be safely trusted to illustrate an Old Bailey execution, for his vanity would make him play the principal figure in it. You can see in his face and body that he cares not for his art; the only art that is in his mind is that of showing himself off to the most connoisseur-killing advantage. He is at his easel; his pallet is

duly displayed, and there is all the usual cant-attitude which no artist in that act falls into; consequently it is an affectation. But we will pass this; and now let us look at this rich lengthy scarf that passes over the left arm, and falls gracefully in folds from the shoulder. What has an Englishman in his morninggown and velvet cap to do with a scarf? He might as well have had his clothes-bag slung there. It may be said that it is not so agreeable an object; but it is quite as necessary to the man and the picture. What would be thought of a man's grandmother, if, upon being introduced to her for the first time, she were found in a studied attitude stirring a premeditated pudding (the thing she had most reputation for designing), and, the more to strike with admiration of her taste or of her extravagance, having her shoulders arrayed in a bear-skin, whose inmate had been taught to dance by her father? Why it would be thought that she looked very fierce and foolish; and this scarf-wearing young gentleman painter is equally false-tasted, fantastical, and foppish.

Three or four seasons back there was a large picture exhibited in the Academy, in which affectation was portrayed to the life. A middle-aged, ugly-looking, be-spectacled gentleman, was seen seated in what appeared to be the foreground of a forest with a black sky in the distance, and every indication of an approaching coachless shower, playing his bass-viol with a Tommy-and-Harry-don't-careishness of manner, that was very distressing to one who had read the pathetic narration of the shirt-rending consequences connected with such a spirt of sangfroid. The first sensation we felt on seeing this gentleman was one of humanity, the second of politeness; and we were very unconsciously about to offer him the loan of our best waterproof hat, till an elbowing gentleman jogged us out of the illusion, by asking us who Mr. Tomkins was, the multiplied portrait of whom appeared in all corners of the great room, with a most Protean variety of visage, and perplexity of person.

But you ask, what is bad taste in portraiture? Any expression, irrelevant object, exaggeration in dress, or harsh and violent action which is not affectation and yet is not natural, that is displeasing to the eye, or that disagrees with sensible notions of propriety, or that mars the harmony and grand tone of the design, is bad taste. There is a Scylla and Charybdis (affectation and bad taste) which our artists have to steer between; and though there is sea-room enough in the middle current for even the great Leviathans of the art to work their way safely through, yet they are usually to be found floundering on the one or the other.

To say truly, this is the age of affectation. A man will not write an apology to his tailor, unless you allow him to sit in the attitude of the latest portrait of Lord Byron; or sing a manly

English song without mincing it Tuscanly; or wear his shirtcollar, unless it hangs by his cheeks like a white greyhound's ears; or comb his hair, unless it be with the Milton division running up the middle; or bow to a bailiff on Sunday, or the parish-beadle out of church, unless it be in imitation of a high personage; or eat a bunch of currants without contrasting them for an hour with the whiteness of his fingers, and the redness of his ruby ring; or blow his flute or his fire, but with an air; or be disappointed of his clean linen, without venting his spleen in satire. In good truth, the wholesome manliness of England is gone or going; its hair of strength (like Sampson's) is shorn; it has lolled so long in the lap of pleasure (its mistress Dalilah) that the Philistines have at last bound it hand and foot; not that such restrictions are necessary, for it has no strength left but what shows itself in burly words and no-meaning bluster. The age is in its dotage. Imbecility of body, effeminacy of manners, affectation, and great-girlishness, are perceivable in all its limbs and motions. It is a starched-collared, man-stayed, French-dancing, Italian-squalling, sight-seeing, splendour-loving, over-excited, and sated age. And it is with nations, as with individuals, who are intense in their love of pleasure; they at last grow over-exquisite, effeminate, and careless of every thing that is not momentary and pleasurable. But to return.

To do our modern portrait-painters justice, they have not the fine originals to paint from which their more fortunate precursors had; and this they are either conscious of, and make up by affectation what is deficient in nature; or the originals themselves make up for them, by assuming what is not their's, and running out into all sorts of extravagances of body and feature, making a youth of age, and passing flattery for the sterling truth. When we look at the fine unadulterated Saxon faces of Gower, Lydgate, Occleve, Chaucer, and their contemporaries; at the more mixed, or half Saxon, half native, heads of the Elizabethan age; or at the decidedly English ones of the Cromwell period, (the Sydneys, Miltons, Hampdens, Fairfaxes, and Vanes,) our modern heads are left far in the shade. The untawdry splendour or plain elegance of their costume, the unstudied expressiveness of their high-minded faces, and their native ease, grace, and manly unaffectedness of attitude and appearance, look our living faces clean out of countenance. The

first show like men of intellect and greatness caught unconsciously and by chance glancing out of their open windows; and the latter, like beaux, literary and finical, barefacedly gloating on themselves in their looking-glasses.

To say, however, that there are no modern fine heads, would be like denying that the heavens have no superior stars sprinkled about them; but how few there are of them! These we should be thought invidious by enumerating; but we still think that