[Illustration: FIG. 94.--HOGARTH. SHORTLY AFTER MARRIAGE. NAT. GAL.
LONDON.]
BRITISH PAINTING: It may be premised in a general way, that the
British painters have never possessed the pictorial cast of mind in
the sense that the Italians, the French, or the Dutch have possessed
it. Painting, as a purely pictorial arrangement of line and color, has
been somewhat foreign to their conception. Whether this failure to
appreciate painting as painting is the result of geographical
position, isolation, race temperament, or mental disposition, would be
hard to determine. It is quite certain that from time immemorable the
English people have not been lacking in the appreciation of beauty;
but beauty has appealed to them, not so much through the eye in
painting and sculpture, as through the ear in poetry and literature.
They have been thinkers, reasoners, moralists, rather than observers
and artists in color. Images have been brought to their minds by words
rather than by forms. English poetry has existed since the days of
Arthur and the Round Table, but English painting is of comparatively
modern origin, and it is not wonderful that the original leaning of
the people toward literature and its sentiment should find its way
into pictorial representation.
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