I mean to go again and again, many times more, and will take each day
some one department, and so endeavor to get some real use and improvement
out of what I see. Much that is most valuable must be immitigably
rejected; but something, according to the measure of my poor capacity,
will really be taken into my mind. After all, it was an agreeable day,
and I think the next one will be more so.
July 28th.--Day before yesterday I paid a second visit to the Exhibition,
and devoted the day mainly to seeing the works of British painters, which
fill a very large space,--two or three great saloons at the right side of
the nave. Among the earliest are Hogarth's pictures, including the
Sigismunda, which I remember to have seen before, with her lover's heart
in her hand, looking like a monstrous strawberry; and the March to
Finchley, than which nothing truer to English life and character was ever
painted, nor ever can be; and a large stately portrait of Captain Coram,
and others, all excellent in proportion as they come near to ordinary
life, and are wrought out through its forms. All English painters
resemble Hogarth in this respect. They cannot paint anything high,
heroic, and ideal, and their attempts in that direction are
wearisome to look at; but they sometimes produce good effects by
means of awkward figures in ill-made coats and small-clothes, and hard,
coarse-complexioned faces, such as they might see anywhere in the street.
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