ch, and frugal in commendation. "I remember, when I was a
lad," says Smith, in his account of Nollekens, "asking the late
venerable President West what he thought of Hogarth's _Analysis of
Beauty_, and his answer was, 'It is a work of the highest value to
everyone studying the art. Hogarth was a strutting consequential little
man, and made himself many enemies by that book; but now that most of
them are dead, it is examined by disinterested readers, unbiassed by
personal animosities, and will be more and more read, studied and
understood.'"

In his memoranda respecting the establishment of an Academy of Art in
England, Hogarth writes well and wisely. Voltaire asserts that after
the establishment of the French Academy not one work of genius appeared,
for all the painters became mannerists and imitators. Hogarth agrees
with him, declaring that "the institution will serve to raise and
pension a few bustling and busy men, whose whole employment will be to
tell a few simple students when a leg is too long, or an arm too short.
More will flock to the study of art than genius sends; the hope of
profit, or the thirst of distinction, will induce parents to push their
offspring into the lecture-room, and many will appear and but few be
worthy. The paintings of Italy form a sort of ornamental fringe to their
gaudy religion, and Rome is the general storeshop of Europe. The arts
owe much to Popery, and Popery owes much of its universality to the
arts. The French have attained to a sort of foppish magnificence in art;
in Holland, selfishness is the ruling passion, and in England vanity is
united with selfishness. Portrait-painting, therefore, has succeeded,
and ever will succeed better in England than in any other country, and
the demand will continue as new faces come into the market.

"Portrait painting is one of the ministers of vanity, and vanity is a
munificent patroness; historical painting seeks to revive the memory of
the dead, and the dead are very indifferent paymasters. Paintings are
plentiful enough in England to keep us from the study of nature; but
students who confine their studies to the works of the dead, need never
hope to live themselves; they will learn little more than the names of
the painters: true painting can only be learnt in one school, and that
is kept by Nature."

Hogarth disliked a formal school, says Cunningham, because he was the
pupil of nature, and foresaw that students would flock to it from the