390
HINTS FROM HORACE.
Abused his art, till Nature, with a blush,
Saw cits grow Centaurs underneath his brush?
Or, should some limner join, for show or sale,
A Maid of Honour to a Mermaid's tail?[1]
Or low Dubost[2]—as once the world has seen—
Degrade God's creatures in his graphic spleen?
Not all that forced politeness, which defends
Fools in their faults, could gag his grinning friends.10
Believe me, Moschus, like that picture seems[3]
- ↑ After line 6, the following lines (erased) were inserted:—
Or patch a Mammoth up with wings and limbs,
And fins of aught that flies or walks or swims.—[MS. M.]Another variant ran—
Or paint (astray from Truth and Nature led)
A Judge with wings, a Statesman with a Head!—[MS. M.] - ↑ In an English newspaper, which finds its way abroad wherever there are Englishmen, I read an account of this dirty dauber's caricature of Mr. H—— as a "beast," and the consequent action, etc. The circumstance is, probably, too well known to require further comment. [Thomas Hope (1770-1831) was celebrated for his collections of pictures, sculpture, and bric-à-brac. He was the author of Anastasius, or Memoirs of a Greek, etc., which was attributed to Byron, and, according to Lady Blessington, excited his envy. "Low Dubost" was a French painter, who, in revenge for some fancied injustice, caricatured Hope and his wife as Beauty and the Beast. An exhibition of the sketch is said to have brought in from twenty to thirty pounds a week. A brother of Mrs. Hope (Louisa Beresford, daughter of Lord Decies, Archbishop of Tuam) mutilated the picture, and, an action having been brought, was ordered to pay a nominal sum of five pounds. Dubost's academy portrait of Mrs. Hope did not please Peter Pindar.
"In Mistress Hope, Monsieur Dubost!
Thy Genius yieldeth up the Ghost."Works (1812), v. 372.] - ↑ Believe me, Hobhouse.—[MS. M.]
