Part 3 (1/2)
THE Pa.s.sIONATE PRINTER TO HIS LOVE
(_Whose name is Amanda._)
With Apologies to the Shade of Christopher Marlowe.
Come live with me and be my Dear; And till that happy bond shall lapse, I'll set your Poutings in _Brevier_,[l8]
Your Praises in the largest CAPS.
There's _Diamond_--'tis for your Eyes; There's _Ruby_--that will match your Lips; _Pearl_, for your Teeth; and _Minion_-size.
To suit your dainty Finger-tips.
In _Nonpareil_ I'll put your Face; In _Rubric_ shall your Blushes rise; There is no _Bourgeois_ in _your_ Case; Your _Form_ can never need ”_Revise_.”
Your Cheek seems ”_Ready for the Press_”; Your Laugh as _Clarendon_ is clear; There's more distinction in your Dress Than in the oldest _Elzevir_.
So with me live, and with me die; And may no ”FINIS” e'er intrude To break into mere ”_Printers' Pie_”
The Type of our Beat.i.tude!
(ERRATUM.--If my suit you flout, And choose some happier Youth to wed, 'Tis but to cross AMANDA out, And read another name instead.)
Note:
[18] ”p.r.o.nounced Bre-veer” (Printers' Vocabulary).
M. ROUQUET ON THE ARTS
M. Rouquet's book is a rare duodecimo of some two hundred pages, bound in sheep, which, in the copy before us, has reached that particular stage of disintegration when the scarfskin, without much persuasion, peels away in long strips. Its t.i.tle is--_L'etat des Arts, en Angleterre. Par M. Rouquet, de l'Academie Royale de Peinture & de Sculpture_; and it is ”_imprime a Paris_” though it was to be obtained from John Nourse, ”_Libraire dans le_ Strand, _proche_ Temple-barr”--a well-known importer of foreign books, and one of Henry Fielding's publishers. The date is 1755, being the twenty-eighth year of the reign of His Majesty King George the Second--a reign not generally regarded as favourable to art of any kind. In what month of 1755 the little volume was first put forth does not appear; but it must have been before October, when Nourse issued an English version. There is a dedication, in the approved French fas.h.i.+on, to the Marquis de Marigny, ”_Directeur & Ordonnateur General de ses Batimens, Jardins, Arts, Academies & Manufactures_” to Lewis the Fifteenth, above which is a delicate headpiece by M. Charles-Nicolas Cochin (the greatest of the family), where a couple of that artist's well-nourished _amorini_, insecurely attached to festoons, distribute palms and laurels in vacuity under a coroneted oval displaying fishes. For Monsieur Abel-Francois Poisson, Marquis de Marigny et de Menars, was the younger brother of Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, the celebrated Marquise de Pompadour.
Cochin's etching is dated ”1754”; and the ”Approbation” at the end of the volume bears his signature in his capacity of _Censeur_.
Of the ”M. Rouquet” of the t.i.tle-page biography tells us little; but it may be well, before speaking of his book, to bring that little together.
He was a Swiss Protestant of French extraction, born at Geneva in 1702.
His Christian names were Jean-Andre; and he had come to England from his native land towards the close of the reign of George the First. Many of his restless compatriots also sought these favoured sh.o.r.es. Labelye, who rose from a barber's shop to be the architect of London Bridge; Liotard, once regarded as a rival of Reynolds; Michael Moser, eventually Keeper of the Royal Academy, had all migrated from the ”stormy mansions” where, in the words of Goldsmith's philosophic Wanderer--
Winter ling'ring chills the lap of May.
Like Moser, Rouquet was a chaser and an enameller. He lodged on the south side of Leicester Fields, in a house afterwards the residence of another Switzer of the same craft, that miserable Theodore Gardelle, who in 1761 murdered his landlady, Mrs. King. Of Rouquet's activities as an artist in England there are scant particulars. The ordinary authorities affirm that he imitated and rivalled the popular miniaturist and enameller, Christian Zincke, who retired from practice in 1746; and he is loosely described as ”the companion of Hogarth, Garrick, Foote, and the wits of the day.” Of his relations with Foote and Garrick there is scant record; but with Hogarth, his near neighbour in the Fields, he was certainly well acquainted, since in 1746 he prepared explanations in French for a number of Hogarth's prints. These took the form of letters to a friend at Paris, and are supposed to have been, if not actually inspired, at least approved by the painter. They usually accompanied all the sets of Hogarth's engravings which went abroad; and, according to George Steevens, it was Hogarth's intention ultimately to have them translated and enlarged. Rouquet followed these a little later by a separate description of ”The March to Finchley,” designed specially for the edification of Marshal Foucquet de Belle-Isle, who, when the former letters had been written, was a prisoner of war at Windsor. In a brief introduction to this last, the author, hitherto unnamed, is spoken of as ”_Mr. Rouquet, connu par ses Outrages d'email_.”
After thirty years' sojourn in this country, Rouquet transferred himself to Paris. At what precise date he did this is not stated, but by a letter to Hogarth from the French capital, printed by John Ireland, the original of which is in the British Museum, he was there, and had been there several months, in March 1753. The letter gives a highly favourable account of its writer's fortunes. Business is ”coming in very smartly,” he says. He has been excellently received, and is ”perpetualy imploy'd.” There is far more encouragement for modern enterprise in Paris than there is in London; and some of his utterances must have rejoiced the soul of his correspondent. As this, for instance--”The humbug _virtu_ is much more out of fashon here than in England, free thinking upon that & other topicks is more common here than amongst you if possible, old pictures & old stories fare's alike, a dark picture is become a d.a.m.n'd picture.” On this account, he inquires anxiously as to the publication of his friend's forthcoming _a.n.a.lysis_; he has been raising expectations about it, and he wishes to be the first to introduce it into France. From other sources we learn that (perhaps owing to his relations with Belle-Isle, who had been released in 1745) he had been taken up by Marigny, and also by Cochin, then keeper of the King's Drawings, and soon to be Secretary to the Academy, of which Rouquet himself, by express order of Lewis the Fifteenth, was made a member. Finally, as in the case of Cochin, apartments were a.s.signed to him in the Louvre. Whether he ever returned to this country is doubtful; but, as we have seen, the _etat des Arts_ was printed at Paris in 1755.
That it was suggested--or ”commanded”--by Mme. de Pompadour's connoisseur brother, to whom it was inscribed, is a not unreasonable supposition.
In any case, M. Rouquet's definition of the ”Arts” is a generous one, almost as wide as Marigny's powers, already sufficiently set forth at the outset of this paper. For not only--as in duty bound--does he treat of Architecture, Sculpture, Painting and Engraving, but he also has chapters on Printing, Porcelain, Gold-and Silver-smiths' Work, Jewelry, Music, Declamation, Auctions, Shop-fronts, Cooking, and even on Medicine and Surgery. Oddly enough, he says nothing of one notable art with which Marigny was especially identified, that ”art of creating landscape”--as Walpole happily calls Gardening--which, in this not very ”s.h.i.+ning period,” entered upon a fresh development under Bridgeman and William Kent. Although primarily a Londoner, one would think that M. Rouquet must certainly have had some experience, if not of the efforts of the innovators, at least of the very Batavian performances of Messrs. London and Wise of Brompton; or that he should have found at Nonsuch or Theobalds--at Moor Park or Hampton Court--the pretext for some of his pages--if only to ridicule those ”verdant sculptures” at which Pope, who played no small part in the new movement, had laughed in the _Guardian_; or those fantastic ”coats of arms and mottoes in yew, box and holly”
over which Walpole also made merry long after in the famous essay so neatly done into French by his friend the Duc de Nivernais. M. Rouquet's curious reticence in this matter cannot have been owing to any consideration for Hogarth's old enemy, William Kent, for Kent had been dead seven years when the _etat des Arts_ made its appearance.