15 



can receive from art; and consequently 

 must think the finest composition of 

 Claude, whom I mention as the most or- 

 namented of all the great masters, compa- 

 ratively rude and imperfect; though he 

 probably might allow, in Mr. Brown's 

 phrase, that it had " capabilities/' 



No one, I believe, has yet been daring 

 enough to improve a picture of Claude*, 



* The account in Peregrine Pickle r of the gentleman 

 who had improved Vandyke's portraits of his ancestors, 

 used to strike me as rather outre; but I met with a similar 

 instance some years ago, that makes it appear much less 

 so. I was looking at a collection of pictures with Gains- 

 borough ; among the rest the housekeeper shewed us a 

 portrait of her master, which she said was by Sir Joshua 

 Reynolds : we both stared, for not only the touch and the 

 colouring, but the whole style of the drapery .and the ge- 

 neral effect had no resemblance to his manner. Upon 

 examining the housekeeper more particularly, we disco- 

 vered that her master had had every thing but the face — 

 not re-touched from the colours having faded — but totally 

 changed, and newly composed as well as painted, by ano- 

 ther, and, I need not add, an inferior hand. 



Such a man would have felt as little scruple in making 

 a Claude like his own place, as in making his own portrait 

 like a scare-crow. 



