imitators, yet both possessing
a genius that made the works their own creations. Sir Joshua saw
Rembrandt in every motion of his hand; and Mr Poole was not unconscious
of Nicolo Poussin in the design and execution of his "Plague." This is
not said to the disparagement of either painter; on the contrary, we
should augur ill of that man's genius who would be more ambitious to be
thought original in all things than of painting a good picture. Great
minds will be above this little ambition. Raffaelle borrowed without
scruple from those things that were done well before him, a whole
figure, and even a group; yet the result was ever a work that none could
ever suspect to be by any hand but Raffaelle's. In saying that Mr Poole
has seen Nicolo Poussin, we do not mean to insinuate more than that
fact: others may say more; and, depreciating a work of surprising power,
and that, too, coming from an artist who has hitherto exhibited nothing
to be compared with it, will add that he has stolen it from Nicolo
Poussin. This we boldly deny. The works of Nicolo Poussin of similar
subjects are well known, and wonderful works they are; we need mention
but two--the one in the National Gallery, the "Plague of Ashdod," and
that in the collection of P.S. Miles, Esq., and exhibited last year at
the British Institution, and which is engraved in Forster's work. We do
not believe that one group or single figure in Mr Poole's picture can be
shown in these or any others of Poussin. And in the conception there is
a striking difference. Mr Poole's subject, though we have called it the
"Plague of London," is not, strictly speaking, the awfulness and the
disgust of that dire malady, but the insanity of the fanatic Solomon
Eagle, taking a divine, an almost Pythean impress from its connexion
with that woful and appalling mystery. This being his subject, he has
judiciously omitted much of that dreadfully disgusting detail, which
_his_ subject compelled Poussin to force upon the spectator. There is,
therefore, in Mr Poole's picture more to excite our wonder and pity than
disgust; nay, there is even room for the exhibition of tender,
sensitive, apprehensive, scarcely suffering beauty, and set off by
contrasts not too strong; so that nothing impedes the mind in, or draws
it off from, the contemplation of the madman--here more than madman, the
maniac made inspired by the belief of the spectator in denunciations
which appear verifying themselves visibly before h