Abstract
In 1726, when Savage finally published his long-delayed Miscellaneous Poems and Translations by members of the Hillarian circle, 8 of the 92 poems were explicitly devoted to the theme of paintings or pictures, exploring how the medium is effective (or not) in communicating the essence, or soul, of the subject portrayed.1 Three years earlier, John Dyer, a 24-year-old Welshman, poet, aspiring painter, and member of the circle, painted Martha Fowke’s portrait. Like other men within the coterie, he had come under Fowke’s spell. His portrait of Fowke, a physical artifact of his youthful passion for her, has long since been lost, leaving us to wonder whether he destroyed it after renouncing their relationship in 1727. 2 While the painting did exist, it was admired by members of Hill’s literary group and inspired a number of poetic responses. In the Miscellany, Hill and Savage each address a poem to Dyer specifically about his Clio portrait. Savage’s “To Mr. John Dyer, a Painter, Advising Him to Draw a Certain Noble and Illustrious Person, Occasioned by Seeing His Picture of the Celebrated Clio,” and Hill’s “To the Author of the Foregoing Verses, a Painter, on His Attempting a Lady’s Picture” commend the artist for trying to capture Clio’s soul on canvas but must ultimately admit that he fails. Unfortunately, for them, their poetic endeavors also fall short of communicating her sublimity.
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A skilful Painter, to express (as much as in him lyes) the thoughts and passions of the person whom he draws, gives his Picture such touches and lines, as he observes to be in the Face after extraordinary provocation; which strokes, are great indications of the temper of the Mind.
—Bernard Lamy, The Art of Speaking
It is impossible to describe you, either in your mind, or your person … One may see you for ever, unwearied, and admiring; but to speak you, is as impossible, as to excell you!
—Aaron Hill to Martha Fowke
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Notes
Jonathan Richardson, An Essay on the Theory of Painting, 2nd ed. (London: 1725, 3; 4.
Charles Le Brun, preface to A Method to Learn to Design the Passions, trans. John Williams (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1980 [1734]), ix–x.
Marisilio Ficino, Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love, trans. Sears Jayne. (Dallas: Spring, 1995), 115.
Elizabeth C. Mansfield, Too Beautiful to Picture: Zeuxis, Myth, and Mimesis (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2007), 32.
Marguerite A. Tassi, The Scandal of Images: Iconoclasm, Eroticism, and Painting in Early Modern English Drama (Selinsgrove, PA: Susque-hanna UP, 2005), 26.
Vincent B. Leitch, “Longinus,” in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), 133; 153.
Jonathan Lamb, “The Sublime,” The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: Vol. IV: The Eighteenth Century, ed. H. B. Nisbet and Claude Rawson (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005), 399.
Eliza Haywood, “An Irregular Ode, To … Bowman,” in Poems on Several Occasions (London: 1724, 1 (henceforth PSO).
Eliza Haywood, La Belle Assemblée (London: 1724, 108–10.
Aphra Behn, “Preface to The Lucky Chance,” in The Other Eighteenth Century: English Women of Letters 1660–1800, ed. Robert W. Uphaus and Gretchen M. Foster (East Lansing: Colleagues, 1991), 65.
Ovid, “The Poet Concludes,” in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, trans. John Dryden (London: 1717, 15:548.
Plato, “Ion,” in Great Dialogues of Plato, trans. W. H. D. Rouse (New York: New American Library, 1956), 18.
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© 2014 Earla Wilputte
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Wilputte, E. (2014). The Miscellany’s Picture Poems and Haywood’s Poems on Several Occasions . In: Passion and Language in Eighteenth-Century Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137442055_4
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